Land Tenure and the State in the Precolonial Sudan

bibliographic database
Line

Periodical article

Title:	Land Tenure and the State in the Precolonial Sudan
Authors:	Spaulding, Jay Kapteijns, Lidwien
Year:	2002
Periodical:	Northeast African Studies
Volume:	9
Issue:	1
Pages:	33-66
Language:	English
Geographic terms:	Northeast Africa Sudan
Subjects:	land tenure feudalism traditional polities social history historiography History and Exploration Agriculture, Natural Resources and the Environment Peoples of Africa (Ethnic Groups)
External link:	http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/northeast_african_studies/v009/9.1spaulding.pdf
Abstract:	The authors address both evidential and interpretive aspects of land tenure in the precolonial Sudan. They hold that the issue of land tenure in the precapitalist States of northeastern Africa should be approached at a high level of theoretical reasoning which respects the fundamental importance to the region of the agriculture of free subject commoners. They conclude that land tenure in the kingdoms of the late precolonial Sudan is best understood in terms of a precapitalist State society in which a hereditary nobility led by an elected king used its armed mastery of the land to exact political payments in many forms from an ethnically diverse class of subject producers. Notes, ref. [ASC Leiden abstract]