Barely three centuries ago, the the majority of the worlds productive land belonged either communally to traditional societies, or to the higher power of the monarchy or the church. Yet that pattern, and the way of life that accompanied it, had largely disappeared by the start of the nineteenth century.
In “Owning the Earth”, Andrew Linklater undertakes an examination of how the revolutionary idea, “that one person could own part of the Earth exclusively” (Page 11), developed, and the drastic reverberations felt by society at large.
Before the development of the idea of private property, English social structure had been organized around the notions of “mutual obligation” and feudalism since the early Middle Ages. In practice this dynamic meant that the country was not governed by the monarch, but by individual lords who “leased” land from the king and oversaw their own manors or estates. In exchange for the land, these lords would provide military and other services to the King when he requested. Under the same reasoning, in exchange for housing, land and protection, serfs had to perform tasks to maintain and cultivate the estate, as well as to pay several different kinds of taxes. The serf was neither a slave nor property, but was considered to be a fixture of the land. As such, a serf’s children were also tied to the land.
A similar sentiment in present in St. Augustine, Excerpt from Tractate 6 (John 1:32-33), in that, “God has distributed to mankind these very human rights [of having property] through the emperors and kings of this world”. It is up to their discretion to determine how land is divided, and which territories lords are given.
Linklater makes clear that the idea that these rights (to raise cattle and crops, construct buildings, rent land) could be owned individually promoted a, “sense of greed and selfishness in stark opposition to the previous belief that people help about property” (13).
Several events lead to this transformation. The first was the exponential growth of the wool market due Europe’s rapidly rising population. Driven by the prospect of wool profits, landowners competed to take exclusive control of the ground, and proceeded to move as many families as possible out, “whole villages and townships were soon emptied” (Page 17). The manipulation and displacement of tenants was so widespread that the church of England even found it necessary to implement a special prayer, “we heartily pray [O Lord] to send thy Holy Spirit into the heart of them that possess the grounds, pastures, and dwellings…may not rack and stretch out the rents of their houses and lands…[nor create] unreasonable fines” (Page 17).
Another major development was the seizure and subsequent redistribution of the Church’s land by King Henry VIII. Over the course of four centuries, England’s monasteries had acquired over 2 million acres of farmland, more than 20% of all the cultivated land in England at the time. Moreover, the Church’s land included some of the most fertile and valuable in the kingdom. Yet by 1540 Henry VIII had confiscated much of this estate, and subsequently sold it off over the course of seven years to pay for his seemingly unquenchable thirst for war. Aristocrats with influence were at the top of the queue to purchase this monastic land, but when the wool market collapse for the first time in a century, they were forced put it up for sale once again. This time, London merchants, careful farmers, government officials, and even tenants on fixed rents, purchased the land. Essentially, anyone who had the cash was a viable and considered buyer. This large scale redistribution of land laid waste to traditional communal civilizations, displaced entire peoples from their homelands, and for the first time made it possible fro a commoner to hold considerable territory.
Lastly, I found most fascinating the new ideas of property ownership that arose from some of the settlers in the New World. Prior to the arrival of the Puritans, possession of the Earth in both America and the Caribbean was deemed to be derived from the royal charter backed by “divine grace”, given to a particular people or company. John Winthrop however put foreword the idea that ownership of the Earth did not depend on the law, but was created by human toil. Even more, since the Native Americans did not, “inclose no land neither have any settled habitation, nor any cattle to improve the land” (Page 28). This line of reasoning was in complete opposition to the beliefs the Lenape had concerning their relationship to the Earth. While the Lenape saw themselves as part of nature (no more important than trees, animals, or the rivers), the Puritan settlers perceived nature as something to be conquered and possessed if certain criteria were met.
Good summary of the Linklater reading. (Note his name is Andro, not Andrew.) It’s striking to me how fortuitous it was that the Puritans were able to witness the enclosure revolution back in England (for the period they were there) and then adapt it to both their own understanding of the Bible and, for the Plymouth colony at least, to their tradepost-establishing mission in “the New World.” While it is easy to see the Plymouth colony as a simple group of faithful Christians seeking the freedom to practice their religion as they saw best, Linklater reminds us that we also have to understand them as carrying out the investment agenda of London merchants. In a paradigm of private property, which was partly established for the purpose of creating surplus (profit) for the owner, the pursuit of religious freedom is fully bound up with the pursuit of profitable investment. One takeaway we might derive from the story of the Plymouth colony is not that land commoning doesn’t work (which is what comes across here), but that it doesn’t produce enough surplus to be profitable in a marketplace.