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A ''latifundium'' ( Latin: ''latus'', "spacious" and ''fundus'', "farm, estate") is a very extensive parcel of privately owned land. The latifundia of
Roman history The history of Rome includes the history of the city of Rome as well as the civilisation of ancient Rome. Roman history has been influential on the modern world, especially in the history of the Catholic Church, and Roman law has influenced ma ...
were great landed estates specializing in agriculture destined for export: grain, olive oil, or wine. They were characteristic of
Magna Graecia Magna Graecia (, ; , , grc, Μεγάλη Ἑλλάς, ', it, Magna Grecia) was the name given by the Romans to the coastal areas of Southern Italy in the present-day Italian regions of Calabria, Apulia, Basilicata, Campania and Sicily; these re ...
and Sicily, Egypt, Northwest Africa and Hispania Baetica. The ''latifundia'' were the closest approximation to industrialized agriculture in Antiquity, and their economics depended upon slavery. During the modern colonial period, the European monarchies often rewarded services with extensive land grants in their empires. The forced recruitment of local labourers allowed by colonial law made these land grants particularly lucrative for their owners. These grants, ''
fazenda A ''fazenda'' () is a plantation found throughout Brazil during the colonial period (16th - 18th centuries). They were concentrated primarily in the northeastern region, where sugar was produced in the ''engenhos'', expanding during the 19th ...
s'' (in Portuguese) or ''
hacienda An ''hacienda'' ( or ; or ) is an estate (or ''finca''), similar to a Roman ''latifundium'', in Spain and the former Spanish Empire. With origins in Andalusia, ''haciendas'' were variously plantations (perhaps including animals or orchards), ...
s'' (in Spanish), were also borrowed as loanwords, Portuguese ''latifúndios'' and Spanish ''latifundios'' or simply ''fundos''. Agrarian reforms aimed at ending the dominance of the ''latifundia'' system are still a popular goal of several national governments around the world.


Ancient Rome

The basis of the ''latifundia'' in Spain and Sicily was the '' ager publicus'' that fell to the dispensation of the state through Rome's policy of war in the 1st century BC and the 1st century AD. As much as a third of the arable land of a new province was taken for ''agri publici'' and then divided up with at least the fiction of a competitive auction for lease holdings rather than outright ownership. Later in the Empire, as leases were inherited, ownership of the former common lands became established by tradition, and the leases became taxable. The first ''latifundia'' were accumulated from the spoils of war, confiscated from conquered peoples beginning in the early 2nd century BC. The prototypical ''latifundia'' were the Roman estates in
Magna Graecia Magna Graecia (, ; , , grc, Μεγάλη Ἑλλάς, ', it, Magna Grecia) was the name given by the Romans to the coastal areas of Southern Italy in the present-day Italian regions of Calabria, Apulia, Basilicata, Campania and Sicily; these re ...
(the south of Italy) and in Sicily, which distressed Pliny the Elder (died AD 79) as he travelled, seeing only slaves working the land, not the sturdy Roman farmers who had been the backbone of the Republic's army. ''Latifundia'' expanded with conquest, to the Roman provinces of
Mauretania Mauretania (; ) is the Latin name for a region in the ancient Maghreb. It stretched from central present-day Algeria westwards to the Atlantic, covering northern present-day Morocco, and southward to the Atlas Mountains. Its native inhabitants, ...
(modern Maghreb) and in Hispania Baetica (modern Andalusia). Large villa rustica holdings in Campania, around Rome, in
Cisalpine Gaul Cisalpine Gaul ( la, Gallia Cisalpina, also called ''Gallia Citerior'' or ''Gallia Togata'') was the part of Italy inhabited by Celts (Gauls) during the 4th and 3rd centuries BC. After its conquest by the Roman Republic in the 200s BC it was con ...
(the modern
Po Valley The Po Valley, Po Plain, Plain of the Po, or Padan Plain ( it, Pianura Padana , or ''Val Padana'') is a major geographical feature of Northern Italy. It extends approximately in an east-west direction, with an area of including its Venetic ex ...
) and in
Gallia Narbonensis Gallia Narbonensis (Latin for "Gaul of Narbonne", from its chief settlement) was a Roman province located in what is now Languedoc and Provence, in Southern France. It was also known as Provincia Nostra ("Our Province"), because it was the ...
were the base for a self-sufficient economy, similar to the ''haciendas'' of Latin America. They produced oil, wine or garum for export. The practice of establishing agricultural '' coloniae'' as a way to compensate Roman soldiers created smaller landholdings, which would then be acquired by large landowners in times of economic distress. Thus the direction, over time, was towards the consolidation of landholdings into larger units. ''Latifundia'' could be devoted to livestock ( sheep and cattle) or to the cultivation of olive oil, grain, and wine. However, in Italy, they did not produce grain. Rome had to import grain (in the Republican period, from Sicily and North Africa; in the Imperial era, from Egypt). Ownership of land, organized in the ''latifundia'', defined the Roman Senatorial class. It was the only acceptable source of wealth for senators, though Romans of the elite class would set up their freedmen as merchant traders, and participate as silent partners in businesses from which ''senatores'' were disqualified. The ''latifundia'' quickly started economic consolidation as larger estates achieved greater economies of scale and senators did not pay land taxes. Owners re-invested their profits by purchasing smaller neighbouring farms, since smaller farms had lower productivity and could not compete, in an ancient precursor of
agribusiness Agribusiness is the industry, enterprises, and the field of study of value chains in agriculture and in the bio-economy, in which case it is also called bio-business or bio-enterprise. The primary goal of agribusiness is to maximize profit w ...
. By the 2nd century AD, ''latifundia'' had replaced many small and medium-sized farms in some areas of the Roman Empire. As small farms were bought up by the wealthy with their vast supply of slaves, the newly landless peasantry moved to the city of Rome, where they became dependent on state subsidies. Overall, the ''latifundia'' increased productivity. Free peasants did not completely disappear: many became tenants on estates that were worked in two ways: partly directly controlled by the owner and worked by slaves and partly leased to tenants. It was one of the greatest levels of worker productivity before the 19th century. Such consolidation was not universally approved of, as it consolidated more and more land into fewer and fewer hands, mainly Senators and the Roman emperor. Efforts to reverse the trend by
agrarian law Agrarian laws (from the Latin ''ager'', meaning "land") were laws among the Romans regulating the division of the public lands, or ''ager publicus''. In its broader definition, it can also refer to the agricultural laws relating to peasants and hu ...
s were generally unsuccessful. Pliny the Elder argued that the ''latifundia'' had ruined Italy and would ruin the Roman provinces as well. He reported that at one point just six owners possessed half of the
province of Africa Africa Proconsularis was a Roman province on the northern African coast that was established in 146 BC following the defeat of Carthage in the Third Punic War. It roughly comprised the territory of present-day Tunisia, the northeast of Algeria, ...
, which may be a piece of rhetorical exaggeration as the North African cities were filled with flourishing landowners who filled the town councils. Pliny the Elder was very much against the profit-oriented estates described in the writings of Columella. His writings can be seen as a part of the 'conservative' reaction to the profit-oriented new attitudes of the upper classes of the Early Empire (Martin 1971 ).


Ancient Greece

The landscape of the Greek mainland does not lend itself to large estates. Olive oil and wine for trade were typically produced by many small groves and vineyards, concentrated in fewer hands at the presses and shipping ports. The grasslands of Thessaly and Macedon were pasture for grazing horses. Meat was not a staple in Mediterranean diets. During the Hellenistic period, ''latifundia'' were typical of the export-oriented agriculture of coastal
Syria Syria ( ar, سُورِيَا or سُورِيَة, translit=Sūriyā), officially the Syrian Arab Republic ( ar, الجمهورية العربية السورية, al-Jumhūrīyah al-ʻArabīyah as-Sūrīyah), is a Western Asian country loc ...
and the Ptolemaic Kingdom in Egypt.


Europe

In the collapse of the Western Roman Empire, the largely self-sufficient villa-system of the ''latifundia'' remained among the few political-cultural centres of a fragmented Europe. These ''latifundia'' had been of great importance economically, until the long-distance shipping of wine and oil, grain and '' garum'' disintegrated, but extensive lands controlled in a single pair of hands still constituted ''power'': it can be argued that the ''latifundia'' formed part of the economic basis of the European social, however there is no evidence of this. The gift of a ''villa'', or of a series of them, owned by a powerful patron was at the basis of all the great monasteries and abbeys founded in Western Europe until the time of Charlemagne, when the land-gifts, significantly, tended to be of forest instead.


Italy

In the 6th century, Cassiodorus was able to apply his own ''latifundia'' to support his short-lived ''Vivarium'' in the heel of Italy. Shortly thereafter, Monte Cassino was founded in a former Imperial villa. In Sicily, latifundia dominated the island from medieval times. They were abolished by sweeping land reform mandating smaller farms in 1950–1962, funded from the '' Cassa per il Mezzogiorno'', the Italian government's development fund for southern Italy (1950–1984).John Paul Russo, "The Sicilian Latifundia," ''
Italian Americana ''Italian Americana'' is a biannual peer-reviewed academic journal covering studies on the Italian-American experience. It publishes history, fiction, memoirs, poetry, and reviews. The editor-in-chief is Carla A. Simonini ( Loyola University Chic ...
,'' March 1999, Vol. 17 Issue 1, pp. 40–57


Spain

In the Iberian Peninsula, the Castilian '' Reconquista'' of Muslim territories provided the Christian kingdom with sudden extensions of land, which the kings ceded as rewards to nobility, mercenaries and
military order Military order may refer to: Orders * Military order (religious society), confraternity of knights originally established as religious societies during the medieval Crusades for protection of Christianity and the Catholic Church Military organi ...
s to exploit as latifundia, which had been first established as the commercial olive oil and grain ''latifundia'' of Roman Hispania Baetica. The gifts finished the traditional small private ownership of land, eliminating a social class that had also been typical of the al-Andalus period. In the Iberian peninsula, the possessions of the Church did not pass to private ownership until the ecclesiastical confiscations of Mendizábal ( es, desamortización), the "secularization" of church-owned ''latifundia'', which proceeded in pulses through the 19th century. Big areas of Andalusia are still populated by an underclass of ''jornaleros'', landless peasants who are hired by the latifundists as "day workers" for specific seasonal campaigns. The ''jornalero'' class has been fertile ground for socialism and
anarchism Anarchism is a political philosophy and movement that is skeptical of all justifications for authority and seeks to abolish the institutions it claims maintain unnecessary coercion and hierarchy, typically including, though not necessa ...
. Still today, among the main Andalusian trade unions is the Rural Workers Union (''Sindicato Obrero del Campo''), a far-left group famous for their
squatting Squatting is the action of occupying an abandoned or unoccupied area of land or a building, usually residential, that the squatter does not own, rent or otherwise have lawful permission to use. The United Nations estimated in 2003 that there ...
campaigns in the town of
Marinaleda Marinaleda is a Spanish municipality of the province of Seville that belongs to the region of Sierra Sur, located in the basin of Genil, in the autonomous community of Andalusia. It has an area of and a population of 2,778 inhabitants accordi ...
,
Province of Seville The Province of Seville ( es, Sevilla) is a province of southern Spain, in the western part of the autonomous community of Andalusia. It is bordered by the provinces of Málaga, Cádiz in the south, Huelva in the west, Badajoz in the north and C ...
.


Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth

Following the Union of Lublin in 1569, large expanses of land in Ukraine came under the control of the Polish Crown, which allowed for their exploitation by the Polish nobility. Over the course of the 17th century, these lands came to be mainly concentrated in vast estates, now commonly referred to as ''latifundia'', which were owned by a small number of magnate families which came to be the dominant political and social group in the commonwealth. These estates were diminished following the Cossack uprisings of the 17th century and largely disappeared following Russia's annexation of the Lithuanian lands of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth at the close of the 18th century.


German Ostsiedlung

In the course of
Ostsiedlung (, literally "East-settling") is the term for the Early Medieval and High Medieval migration-period when ethnic Germans moved into the territories in the eastern part of Francia, East Francia, and the Holy Roman Empire (that Germans had al ...
in the Germania Slavica, large plots of land were acquired by Germanic settlers giving rise to a landed gentry class called junker in what became known as East Elbia. After World War II, ethnic Germans were expulsed from areas east of the
Oder Neisse line The Oder ( , ; Czech, Lower Sorbian and ; ) is a river in Central Europe. It is Poland's second-longest river in total length and third-longest within its borders after the Vistula and Warta. The Oder rises in the Czech Republic and flows thr ...
and a land reform in the German Democratic Republic removed the junker as a class by the collectivizing of agriculture.


See also

* Roman agriculture *
Latifundio–minifundio land tenure structure The land tenure of Latin America is called the 'Latifundio–minifundio' structure. This dualistic tenure system is characterized by relatively few large commercial estates known as latifundios, which are over 500 hectares and numerous small prop ...
*
Pronoia The ''pronoia'' (plural ''pronoiai''; Greek: πρόνοια, meaning "care" or "forethought," from πρό, "before," and νόος, "mind") was a system of granting dedicated streams of state income to individuals and institutions in the late Byz ...
*
Agro-town An agro-town is an agglomeration in a rural environment with a population of several thousands but whose workforce's main occupation is agriculture. An agro-town also lacks the administrative, commercial and industrial functions that are usually ...
* Plantation *
Sánchez Navarro latifundio The Sánchez Navarro latifundio (1765-1866) in Mexico was the largest privately owned estate or latifundio in all of Latin America. At its maximum extent, the Sánchez Navarro family owned more than of land, an area almost as large as the Republ ...
, Mexico *
Encomienda The ''encomienda'' () was a Spanish labour system that rewarded conquerors with the labour of conquered non-Christian peoples. The labourers, in theory, were provided with benefits by the conquerors for whom they laboured, including military ...
* Encomiendas in Peru


Notes


References

*Stephen L. Dyson, ''The Roman Countryside (Duckworth Debates in Archaeology)'' *René Martin: ''Recherches sur les agronomes latins et leurs conceptions économiques et sociales'', Paris, 1971. * John Paul Russo, "The Sicilian Latifundia," ''Italian Americana,'' March 1999, Vol. 17 Issue 1, pp 40–57


External links

* Kautsky, Karl (1908)
The Technological Inferiority of the Slave Economy
from ''I. The Slave Economy, Book Two: Society In The Roman Empire, Foundations of Christianity.'' Published in English: Russell and Russell, 1953.

* ttps://ideas.repec.org/p/htr/hcecon/02-1.html Jonathan Conning (Hunter College), "Latifundia economics" Hunter College Department of Economics Working Papers with number 02/1. {{Authority control Economy of ancient Rome Roman villa Land tenure Country estates