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Property Rights and Political Development in Ethiopia and Eritrea, 1941-74 Sandra Fullerton Joireman Oxford: James Currey Publishers, and Athens: Ohio State University, 2000. PB, $24.50
Africanists have long investigated how claims to land are contested, negotiated, and legitimized by African farmers and rulers. Recently, scholars of land tenure have raised new questions and offered new interpretations concerning land and landed property rights, thereby deepening our understanding of the social and economic history of Africa. Sandra Fullerton Joireman's Property Rights and Political Development in Ethiopia and Eritrea is a comparative study of property rights to land in Ethiopia and Eritrea, focusing primarily on the evolution of land tenure in imperial Ethiopia from 1941 to 1974.
The book has five chapters. Chapters one and two deal with theories of property rights and how land rights change over time. Chapter three examines the efforts made by the imperial Ethiopian government to create new systems of taxation and judiciary to strengthen its hold over the peasantry and the nobility during the post-World War II years (38). The next three chapters are case studies examining changes in land rights in three provinces. Chapter seven summarizes the main argument and suggests policy implications of land rights in the Horn and the rest of Africa.
Unlike many Ethiopianists who tend to focus on empirical research and shy away from theories, Joireman carefully mixes empirical research with theory and brings a fresh perspective to Ethiopian studies, a field long dominated by conflict and political history. The book is informed by archival research in Ethiopia, Eritrea, Italy, and the United Kingdom. It is also based on interviews and personal observations of the author. Joireman's findings suggest that the development of the landholding system is not always linear, that is, from...