“the inability to sell land isn’t evidence for the absence of ownership, but is instead evidence for its lack of commodification”

The so-called “traditional land tenure” systems of Africa may have been colonial inventions

Like any other resource in non-egalitarian societies, landholdings and rights were unevenly distributed even before the commodification of Land

here are some recommended books on land in pre-colonial Africa

17th-19th century documents referring to land grants, judicial proceedings over land disputes, and land sale contracts

Ndembu, Angola.
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funeral of Andris Poucouta, a Mafouk of Cabinda on the Loango coast. 18th-century engraving
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Ruins of the walled complex at the 17th-century capital of Wara/Ouara in Chad

www.africanhistoryextra.com/p/wealth-in-...

The king of Ashantee’s palace at Coomassie. ca. 1874
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Land charter, sultanate of Darfur, ca. 1801
www.africanhistoryextra.com/p/wealth-in-...

Land and Wealth in pre-colonial West-Central Africa: The documentary evidence from 1677 to 1920. | Isaac Samuel Get more from Isaac Samuel on Patreon

The history of land and wealth in West-Central Africa is the subject of my latest Patreon article.

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Land and Wealth in pre-colonial West-Central Africa: The documentary evidence from 1677 to 1920.
www.patreon.com/posts/155961...

Wealth-in-People and Wealth-in-Land in Pre-colonial Africa: Reassessing the Evidence. The ways in which Africans accumulated and expressed wealth have occupied a central place in Africanist scholarship for more than half a century, with particular attention given to the relationship be...

By emphasizing the absence of landed property as a central feature of African societies, scholars have overlooked how vital land was in securing social belonging, obligation, and protection.
www.africanhistoryextra.com/p/wealth-in-...

Wealth-in-People and Wealth-in-Land in Pre-colonial Africa: Reassessing the Evidence. The ways in which Africans accumulated and expressed wealth have occupied a central place in Africanist scholarship for more than half a century, with particular attention given to the relationship be...

As in medieval Nubia, Ethiopia, West Africa, Swahili, and Barosteland, evidence demonstrates that political elites and commoners in Central Africa competed for land and territorial rights, contradicting the colonial and scholarly trope of abundant land
www.africanhistoryextra.com/p/wealth-in-...

Wealth-in-People and Wealth-in-Land in Pre-colonial Africa: Reassessing the Evidence. The ways in which Africans accumulated and expressed wealth have occupied a central place in Africanist scholarship for more than half a century, with particular attention given to the relationship be...

Recent studies of land tenure in the pre-colonial archives of central Africa, dating back to the 17th cent, show that, even in this region, where theories of “wealth-in-people” were first formulated, land was neither abundant nor socially insignificant.
www.africanhistoryextra.com/p/wealth-in-...

Wealth-in-People and Wealth-in-Land in Pre-colonial Africa: Reassessing the Evidence. The ways in which Africans accumulated and expressed wealth have occupied a central place in Africanist scholarship for more than half a century, with particular attention given to the relationship be...

Besides landholdings, Africans also accumulated “wealth-in-things” that could be traded and transferred

These vast storehouses of gold, cowries, and grave-goods were also taken out of circulation, rather than being used for accumulating dependents
www.africanhistoryextra.com/p/wealth-in-...

Wealth-in-People and Wealth-in-Land in Pre-colonial Africa: Reassessing the Evidence. The ways in which Africans accumulated and expressed wealth have occupied a central place in Africanist scholarship for more than half a century, with particular attention given to the relationship be...

In many examples, conquest was followed by the establishment of administrative structures and negotiations over border disputes, which in some cases resulted in the erection of physical boundaries resembling modern borders

www.africanhistoryextra.com/p/wealth-in-...

Wealth-in-People and Wealth-in-Land in Pre-colonial Africa: Reassessing the Evidence. The ways in which Africans accumulated and expressed wealth have occupied a central place in Africanist scholarship for more than half a century, with particular attention given to the relationship be...

proponents of the wealth-in-people claim that African states were less concerned with expansion than with control of dependants
This is contradicted by the historical evidence that warfare was primarily driven by territorial expansion
www.africanhistoryextra.com/p/wealth-in-...

Wealth-in-People and Wealth-in-Land in Pre-colonial Africa: Reassessing the Evidence. The ways in which Africans accumulated and expressed wealth have occupied a central place in Africanist scholarship for more than half a century, with particular attention given to the relationship be...

Even among African societies where land was not transferred through market mechanisms, the historian Assan Sarr argues that the inability to sell land isn’t evidence for the absence of ownership, but is instead evidence for its lack of commodification
www.africanhistoryextra.com/p/wealth-in-...

Wealth-in-People and Wealth-in-Land in Pre-colonial Africa: Reassessing the Evidence. The ways in which Africans accumulated and expressed wealth have occupied a central place in Africanist scholarship for more than half a century, with particular attention given to the relationship be...

Kingdoms such as Barosteland (Zambia) and Asante (Ghana) maintained a highly structured territorial system of administration, in which title-holders were tied to specific tracts of land, some of which could be sold, transferred, and used as collateral
www.africanhistoryextra.com/p/wealth-in-...

Wealth-in-People and Wealth-in-Land in Pre-colonial Africa: Reassessing the Evidence. The ways in which Africans accumulated and expressed wealth have occupied a central place in Africanist scholarship for more than half a century, with particular attention given to the relationship be...

Multiple oral sources suggest that control over land provided a means to control people, and that the two cannot be separated.

Wealth was accumulated by issuing land grants that conferred rights over territory and labour
www.africanhistoryextra.com/p/wealth-in-...

Wealth-in-People and Wealth-in-Land in Pre-colonial Africa: Reassessing the Evidence. The ways in which Africans accumulated and expressed wealth have occupied a central place in Africanist scholarship for more than half a century, with particular attention given to the relationship be...

Examples of land charters, grants, judicial proceedings over land disputes, and contracts of sale are to be found in medieval Nubia, Ethiopia, Darfur, Funj, Bornu, Sokoto, Masina, the East African cities of Mombasa, Malindi, Zanzibar, Comoros, and Brava
www.africanhistoryextra.com/p/wealth-in-...

Wealth-in-People and Wealth-in-Land in Pre-colonial Africa: Reassessing the Evidence. The ways in which Africans accumulated and expressed wealth have occupied a central place in Africanist scholarship for more than half a century, with particular attention given to the relationship be...

This perspective is also derived from outdated colonial tropes that perpetuated images of African societies as isolated from global processes, overlooking the written evidence on land tenure in Christian and Muslim African societies since the Middle Ages.
www.africanhistoryextra.com/p/wealth-in-...

Wealth-in-People and Wealth-in-Land in Pre-colonial Africa: Reassessing the Evidence. The ways in which Africans accumulated and expressed wealth have occupied a central place in Africanist scholarship for more than half a century, with particular attention given to the relationship be...

Some scholars, particularly those ignorant of more recent African historiographic research, have cited the lack of written records on land tenure as evidence for the absence of land ownership.
www.africanhistoryextra.com/p/wealth-in-...

Wealth-in-People and Wealth-in-Land in Pre-colonial Africa: Reassessing the Evidence. The ways in which Africans accumulated and expressed wealth have occupied a central place in Africanist scholarship for more than half a century, with particular attention given to the relationship be...

www.africanhistoryextra.com/p/wealth-in-...

Wealth-in-People and Wealth-in-Land in Pre-colonial Africa: Reassessing the Evidence. The ways in which Africans accumulated and expressed wealth have occupied a central place in Africanist scholarship for more than half a century, with particular attention given to the relationship be...

Colonial administrators and anthropologists created the myth of static African societies with atavistic systems of land tenure. They invented new forms of land tenure, which became codified as “traditional land tenure” but were anything but traditional.
www.africanhistoryextra.com/p/wealth-in-...

Wealth-in-People and Wealth-in-Land in Pre-colonial Africa: Reassessing the Evidence. The ways in which Africans accumulated and expressed wealth have occupied a central place in Africanist scholarship for more than half a century, with particular attention given to the relationship be...

“Claims that Africans lacked property rights or notions of individual ownership were derived from colonial bureaucrats

Yet, evidence from the same colonial archives reveals that African rulers claimed jurisdiction and occupation rights over their land.”

www.africanhistoryextra.com/p/wealth-in-...

Wealth-in-People and Wealth-in-Land in Pre-colonial Africa: Reassessing the Evidence. The ways in which Africans accumulated and expressed wealth have occupied a central place in Africanist scholarship for more than half a century, with particular attention given to the relationship be...

Such theories positing a surplus of land or “unoccupied land” drew heavily on assumptions formulated by colonial administrators, who were seeking to justify the expropriation of African land.
www.africanhistoryextra.com/p/wealth-in-...

Wealth-in-People and Wealth-in-Land in Pre-colonial Africa: Reassessing the Evidence. The ways in which Africans accumulated and expressed wealth have occupied a central place in Africanist scholarship for more than half a century, with particular attention given to the relationship be...

According to this interpretation, the main goal of rulers was to accumulate followers, control labor, or convert goods into followers/dependents, rather than amassing land, which was imagined to be free and abundant
www.africanhistoryextra.com/p/wealth-in-...

Wealth-in-People and Wealth-in-Land in Pre-colonial Africa: Reassessing the Evidence. The ways in which Africans accumulated and expressed wealth have occupied a central place in Africanist scholarship for more than half a century, with particular attention given to the relationship be...

Many scholars advanced the argument that was abundant in Africa, which meant that wealth was accumulated through the control of labour, hence: “wealth-in-people”
www.africanhistoryextra.com/p/wealth-in-...

Wealth-in-People and Wealth-in-Land in Pre-colonial Africa: Reassessing the Evidence. The ways in which Africans accumulated and expressed wealth have occupied a central place in Africanist scholarship for more than half a century, with particular attention given to the relationship be...

The ways in which Africans accumulated and expressed wealth have occupied a central place in Africanist scholarship for more than half a century, with particular attention given to the relationship between labour and land in African value systems.
www.africanhistoryextra.com/p/wealth-in-...

Wealth-in-People and Wealth-in-Land in Pre-colonial Africa: Reassessing the Evidence. The ways in which Africans accumulated and expressed wealth have occupied a central place in Africanist scholarship for more than half a century, with particular attention given to the relationship be...

Land was neither abundant nor socially insignificant in pre-colonial Africa.

www.africanhistoryextra.com/p/wealth-in-...

Wealth-in-People and Wealth-in-Land in Pre-colonial Africa: Reassessing the Evidence. The ways in which Africans accumulated and expressed wealth have occupied a central place in Africanist scholarship for more than half a century, with particular attention given to the relationship be...

“Wealth-in-People” and “Wealth-in-Land” in Pre-colonial Africa: Reassessing the Evidence.

www.africanhistoryextra.com/p/wealth-in-...

-Transformations in Land tenure during the 19th century, and "wealth in things."

references:
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