Colonial Land Settlement and the Periodicity of Long-Run Inequality

• In Event: Spatial Dimensions of Inequality

Abstract

Across the British and French late colonial empires, colonial administrations implemented land settlement programs that prioritized the allocation of private property rights to the detriment of indigenous communal tenure systems. In this paper, I examine how colonial land reforms had time-varying effects on long-run patterns of inequality and poverty in the case of Jordan, a British mandate from 1921 to 1946. By combining archival data on land tenure, agricultural production, local economic conditions, and contemporary survey data, I test the effect of converting communal to private tenure on village-level economic development outcomes over time. By examining land settlement’s effects across periods, I demonstrate the importance of tracing the institutional development of what we conventionally consider to be “colonial legacies.” In the short-term, I find that the shift from communal to private tenure initially corresponded to an increase in wealth, schooling, and employment for smallholder peasants. In the medium-term, however, privatization increased rates of peasant indebtedness and agricultural labor attrition in formerly communal tenure villages as compared to other rural localities. In the long-run, formerly communal villages still experience elevated levels of poverty and reliance on state welfare programs. I examine multiple explanations for this persistence, including elected representation, the expansion of state institutions, public sector employment, education, and citizen preferences. This paper contributes to our understanding of how colonial policies may result in cascading inequalities in post-colonial autocracies, and problematizes the development economics literature on the primacy of private property rights as a prerequisite for development and democratization.

Author

• Allison Spencer Hartnett, University of Southern California