Originally published on April 25, 2022 (Episode 261)
Introduction
For most of human history, the wealthy of any given society have been those who owned land. To change concepts of property ownership, therefore, is to change the very structure of society itself.
In The Long Land War: The Global Struggle for Occupancy Rights (Yale University Press, 2022), Jo Guldi explores land and its distribution as an overlooked engine driving politics in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. While strategies for turning land over to the poor go back as far as ancient Canaan and Rome, she notes that modern state-engineered land reform first emerged in nineteenth-century Britain, and the first rent-control law dates to Ireland in 1881. From Ireland and India to postcolonial Africa, Guldi shows how the politics of land redistribution shaped the rise and fall of nationalism, communism, internationalism, and even influenced the spread of free-market economics and information technology.
About the Guest
Jo Guldi is Professor of Quantitative Methods at Emory University. A historian of capitalism, her work ranges widely across problems of the past and the methods we use to know the truth.
For Further Investigation
Jo Guldi, The Long Land War: The Global Struggle for Occupancy Rights (Yale University Press, 2022)
Jo Guldi’s website – essays, projects, and resources
Amber Waves of Grain – Scott Nelson on wheat, capitalism, and world history
Petrarch’s War – Bill Caferro on why sometimes the “short view” matters as much as the “long view”
💬 Listen & Discuss
How does land reform help us understand both the stability and fragility of societies? Do Guldi’s arguments about occupancy rights resonate with contemporary debates over housing and inequality? Share your reflections in the comments — and pass this episode along to someone interested in the politics of land.
