Land tenure in the colonies

Infiltration of European ideas is proceeding apace. The land now provides not only the necessary means of subsistence but a surplus which can be exchanged for blankets, cotton goods, bicycles, bus and train fares, and the gewgaws of civilization which their souls love, not to speak of the wherewithal to pay taxes.

Little imagination is needed therefore to appreciate the im portance in the eyes of primitive people of their land, or to understand the extreme touchiness they display at the mere suspicion of any attempt to interfere with their rights over it.

The forms of land tenure are closely related to, and in fact form one aspect of social institutions in general. A close correla tion will be found everywhere between contemporary social and political institutions and land tenures. Feudal society, democracy, aristocracy and modern authoritarianism each stamp their im press upon the forms of tenure. A new political structure was imposed on colonial territories at a stroke when they were en veloped in the tentacles of European control,