Elites, Colonialism, and Property Rights in Historical Perspective

Abstract

This paper proposes a framework explaining the evolution of property rights in land, assuming two unequal groups of actors: elites possessing means of violence and nonelite land cultivators. It then shows that all intermediary groups – those acting between the chief violence holders (i.e., rulers) and cultivators – are in effect (greater or lesser rulers and cultivators). Using this framework, this paper explains most of the developments in the evolution of land rights in 19th century colonial Bengal. The proposed theoretical framework explains how different, hierarchically arrayed claims over land and the resulting allocation of rights was a function of asymmetries in power and information between three groups: rulers, direct cultivators, and intermediaries without their own coercive means. It explains inter alia why private property in land was not likely to emerge in this configuration, and that the (non-private) property rights of the other two groups wouldn’t attain stability as long as rulers perceived an information asymmetry. In such a situation, land rights would attain neither “private,” nor “public” character.

Keywords: political economy, property rights, state formation, colonialism, markets, India