It may be a bit long, compared to the usual blog, but got to tell the story right.
Animesh
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Land Tenure Practices of the British in
Introduction
Democracy, as we usually understand it, is the system that provides every member of the state an equal opportunity to achieve success in life. This is enabled through a set of institutions such as a representative legislature, a responsive and independent judiciary with the ability to enforce its laws, a state led by an effective executive that implements the policies of the legislature and maintains peace inside the state and with its neighbors, a health system that ensures each citizen is healthy and productive, an education system that gives everyone the chance to make use of their intellectual faculties to get ahead, and the freedom to pursue their spiritual beliefs or religion. This is the ideal, and even bastions of democracy like the
In a primarily agricultural nation (this was before oil became important in
- how is land ‘owned’ and ‘worked’, and how is that ownership managed over time
- how is the agricultural and other output from the land distributed between the owner, producer, local institutions, and the state
- who is responsible for changes in land use, improvements in irrigation, soil conservation, ecology, environment and conflict management between agriculture, forestry, mineral rights, nature preservation and urban growth
- how the relationships between the various stakeholders, current and future are managed
In
Land Ownership Until Mid-Nineteenth Century
Traditionally tribes in the geographical area now known as
The position of the shaykh was primarily that of a military leader, a patriarch who gained his position increasingly by inheritance, but not necessarily primogeniture. The leader was chosen based on proven skills, not just because he was the eldest. While the position carried prestige and power, it did not provide private property or inordinate wealth. Hence they did not form a “class” in the modern sense as the private property they had was substantially more than that of the tribesman, nor the lifestyle very different. The shaykh class was created after 1858 and cemented into existence by the British, especially the Land Settlement Act of 1932[3].
Until the mid-nineteenth century, the tribal people were mostly engaged in subsistence agriculture or animal husbandry, growing or rearing only what was needed for their own needs and some minimal trading. Urban centers were small and life, while hard, was uncomplicated.
Ottoman Reforms
After the mid-nineteenth century there were several changes in this region as the
In 1858, the progressive Governor, Midha Pasha attempted to change the land tenure from the collective tribal ownership of lands that were subject to shifting nomadic cultivation to individual tapu ownership. This was part of the overall reforms in the
During the period 1871 to 1912, agricultural production increased 60-fold, possibly as a result of the shift to commercial farming based on tapu rights. Ownership of land leads to a long view that can contemplate improvements such as irrigation, development of markets as regular deliveries of agricultural produce are assured, and the utilization of credit, which is obtained by mortgaging the land, to increase cropped acreage. Thus the reforms while flawed in terms of identifying the appropriate owners, and helping to eliminate the tribal way of life, made it possible for these provinces to enter into the agricultural market. It also provided revenue for the state and the growth of the elite. Ironically, most of the grain produced was sold in
The change of ownership of the land from communal to private property in the hands of the shaykhs, as well as the introduction of commercial agriculture contributed to the deconstruction of tribal society, as it led to the growth of urban areas and wealth. Firstly, the military prestige and command of the shaykh was lost as the members of the tribe were converted to peasants and good farmers and foremen were more valuable than warriors. Secondly, a dissatisfied tribal, now a peasant, could move to another estate or the urban centers, thus loosening the bonds of the tribe. Thirdly, the shaykh, by becoming a member of a propertied class, lost his former relationship with the other members of the tribe[4].
Thus by time of the fall of the Ottomans during World War I, the region had evolved from a tribal society into a mixture of urban and rural populations, great disparity in wealth and property ownership and increasing urbanization.
British & Monarchic Period 1920 - 1932
After stabilizing its hold on the provinces of
The British not only upheld the tapu distribution of 1858 (in spite of the large numbers of disputes as the Ottomans had taken many of the records with them), but introduced lazmah as a new class in the 1932 Land Settlement law. Thus they effectively reinforced the ownership of most of the land by just a few persons. The rest of the rural population was to eke out a miserable existence[7].
Resultant Pattern of Land Tenure
In the century from 1858 (when private ownership of land was introduced) to 1958 (when a revolution abolished the monarchy),
Batatu provides some statistics that show the land ownership position in 1958. Firstly, the majority of the land had been distributed under the tapu and lazmah laws. Third came miri land that was theoretically leasehold, but actually never changed hands. While all land theoretically belonged to the state, it had actually been given away free of charge to private owners[8].
| Ownership Type | Area Covered (Million dunum*) | Percentage |
| Tapu (1858) | 12.48 | 38.8% |
| Lazmah (1932) | 10.59 | 32.9% |
| Mulk (Urban) | 0.26 | 0.8% |
| Waqf (Charitable) | 0.44 | 1.4% |
| Miri (Leasehold) | 4.68 | 14.6% |
| Unsettled Title | 3.7 | 11.5% |
| Total | 32.15 | 100.0% |
*1 dunum = 0.168 acre
Who were these private owners? In terms of total numbers, they were quite substantial, over a quarter million in number. However, summarizing the data[9], we see that a few owners hold almost 1000 times more land on an average than the majority:
| Estate Size (dunum) | Number of Holders | Percentage of land owned | Index of Ownership |
| <500 | 246000 | 30% | 1 |
| > 500 & <> | 6876 | 40% | 48 |
| > 10000 | 252 | 30% | 976 |
The index of ownership is assumed as 1 for the average size of the holdings under 500 dunum. The next group of owners, almost 7000 in number, own almost 50 times the land of the smallest landowners. The largest landowners, just 252 of them, each own almost 1000 times that owned by the smallest. This was surely a basis for gross inequalities.
The role of the shaykh in the ownership of land is borne out by further statistics. Of the 49 estates larger than 50,000 dunum, 22 are owned by tribal shaykhs, 12 by Sadah (descendants of the Prophet), and 11 by merchants[10]. Thus the British policy of favoring the shaykhs ensured that they became large land owners.
This concentration of wealth was aggravated by the rent, tax and other burdens on the peasantry. From the produce of the land it was customary to divide almost a quarter amongst the village guards, the coffee-man (qawaji), the guest-house, the man of god, the crop measurer and the supervisor of civil works. From what was left, the peasant received between an eight (during the British time) to one-half (if he provided the seeds and it was a difficult land to till), i.e. 10-38% of the produce. With poor tax collection methods in most areas, the land owner was the beneficiary as the amount meant for the state remained with him. Moreover, the reduced state revenue meant that social services like health and education, as well as improvements in irrigation and transportation could not be funded, affecting the poor rather than the rich.
The Indian Experience
The result in
Conclusion
-
- Woodrow Wilson’s 14-point agenda, the establishment of the League of Nations and growth of Arab nationalism (ironically catalyzed by the British against the Ottomans) created the Mandate which meant that they were to create the state of
- The British population was weary of war and foreign adventures and wanted to have nothing to do with the expensive project of creating a modern state
They however decided to take on the challenge, but chose expediency over thoroughness, and their established ideas of state control over democracy, and created a state that had a monarch imposed from outside, a set of landed shaykhs with wealth and power to countervail against the King, a government apparatus that was constrained in terms of scope, budget and power, and a set of warring ethnicities that were intentionally divided to help rule them better. In addition, they made a land tenure system that was riddled with inequity even more unequal, creating a very small class of very rich landowners, and marginalizing the common people even more than when they came to Iraq in the first place.
In the area of land tenure the British followed the practice they had in
Bibliography
- Baden-Powell, B.H., Land Revenue and Tenure in
- Batatu, Hanna, The Old Social Classes and the Revolutionary Movements of
- Dodge, Toby, Inventing
- Dowson, Ernest and Sheppard, V.L.O., Land Registration, H.M Stationery Office, 1956
- Farouk-Sluglett, Marion & Sluglett,
- Frykenberg, Robert Eric, Editor, Land Control and Social Structure in Indian History, The
- Habib, Irfan, The Agrarian System of Mughal
- Meouchy, Nadine and Sluglett, Peter, Editors, The British and French Mandates in Comparative Perspectives, Brill, ISBN 90 04 13313 5, 2004
- Owen, Roger, Editor, New Perspectives on Property and Land in the Middle East,
- Robb, Peter, Editor, Rural
- Solami, Declaration Of The Kingdom Of Iraq, May 30, 1932<>
