Land Grants to American Railroads: Social Cost or Social Benefit?

1969 ◽  
Vol 43 (2) ◽  
pp. 134-151 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lloyd J. Mercer
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Social Cost ◽  
Large Fraction ◽  
Social Benefit ◽  
Public Domain ◽  
Land Grant ◽  
Land Grants ◽  
Rates Of Return ◽  
Economic Issues ◽  
Federal Land

Every schoolboy knows that a large fraction of the American public domain was granted to pioneer railroads in the nineteenth century. But was the federal land-grant policy socially beneficial? Professor Mercer provides one imaginative answer based upon an analysis of the economic issues involved and estimates of the private and social rates of return on the investment in the subsidized railroads.

Railroad Land Grants in an Incongruous Legal System: Corporate Subsidies, Bureaucratic Governance, and Legal Conflict in the United States, 1850–1903

2017 ◽  
Vol 35 (2) ◽  
pp. 391-432
Author(s):  
Sean M. Kammer
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Legal System ◽  
The United States ◽  
Public Domain ◽  
Great Power ◽  
Land Grants

Near the end of the nineteenth century, English scholar James Bryce criticized Western railroad land grants as “often improvident” and as giving “rise to endless lobbying and intrigue, first to secure them, then to keep them from being declared forfeited in respect of some breach of the conditions imposed by Congress on the company.” Bryce also observed the extent to which grants of land to railroads allowed the beneficiary companies to exercise great power not only through their role as carriers of people and commerce, but also through their role as large landowners. This, he noted, brought them “yet another source of wealth and power” and “brought them into intimate and often perilously delicate relations with leading politicians.” From the perspective of the so-called “railroad tycoons” and their financial backers, the land grants became sources of wealth and power independent of and sometimes contrary to the interests of the railroad corporations themselves as carriers. Whereas Congress intended the railroad land grants to serve as a means to the end of railroad construction and the settlement of the federal government's expansive public domain, the railroads came to see them as an end in themselves: as independent sources of wealth and power.

San Antonio's Old Franciscan Missions: Material Decline and Secular Avarice in the Transition from Hispanic to Mexican Control

1987 ◽  
Vol 44 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-22
Author(s):  
Félix D. Almaráz
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Church And State ◽  
Municipal Government ◽  
San Antonio ◽  
Land Grants ◽  
Indigenous Cultures ◽  
Catholic Faith ◽  
Franciscan Missions

In the twilight years of the eighteenth century, Spanish authorities of church and state resolved that the original Franciscan missions of Texas had achieved the goal of their early foundation, namely conversion of indigenous cultures to an Hispano-European lifestyle. Cognizant that the mission as a frontier agency had gained souls for the Catholic faith and citizens for the empire, Hispanic officials initiated secularization of the Texas establishments with the longest tenure, beginning with the missions along the upper San Antonio River. Less than a generation later, in the transition from Spanish dominion to Mexican rule in the nineteenth century, the Franciscan institutions, woefully in a condition of material neglect, engendered widespread secular avarice as numerous applicants with political contact in municipal government energetically competed to obtain land grants among the former mission temporalities.

Rates of Return for Land-Grant Railroads: The Central Pacific System

1970 ◽  
Vol 30 (3) ◽  
pp. 602-626 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lloyd J. Mercer
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Economic Analysis ◽  
Economic Effects ◽  
Land Policy ◽  
Central Pacific ◽  
Rates Of Return ◽  
The Public ◽  
Nineteenth Century America ◽  
American Economy ◽  
Distribution Of Income

Land was the resource that nineteenth-century America possessed in greatest abundance. A large part of the land was initially in the public domain and was transferred to private ownership in the course of the century. Land policy, therefore, had the potential for creating significant and long lasting effects on the American economy—on the rate of settlement of the West, the distribution of income, the rate of economic growth. A substantial body of literature, much of it severely critical, has developed concerning the economic effects of nineteenth-century American land policy. Unfortunately, the criticisms often rest primarily on tales of corruption and thievery, rather than on economic analysis. Certainly many of the stories are true, but they represent an insufficient basis for evaluating the economic effects of land policy. A detailed economic analysis of individual policies is required.

scholarly journals Soldiers & Colonists: Imperial Soldiers as Settlers in Nineteenth-Century New Zealand

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
◽  
John McLellan
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
New Zealand ◽  
British Empire ◽  
Settler Colonialism ◽  
Land Grants ◽  
Family Networks ◽  
History Of ◽  
First Arrival ◽  
Government Records ◽  
Decision To Stay

<p>The approximately 18,000 imperial troops who arrived in New Zealand with the British regiments between 1840 and 1870 as garrison and combat troops, did not do so by choice. However, for the more than 3,600 non-commissioned officers and rank and file soldiers who subsequently discharged from the army in New Zealand, and the unknown but significant number of officers who retired in the colony, it was their decision to stay and build civilian lives as soldier settlers in the colony. This thesis investigates three key themes in the histories of soldiers who became settlers: land, familial relationships, and livelihood. In doing so, the study develops an important area of settler colonialism in New Zealand history. Discussion covers the period from the first arrival of soldiers in the 1840s through to the early twentieth century – incorporating the span of the soldier settlers’ lifetimes. The study focuses on selected aspects of the history of nineteenth-century war and settlement.  Land is examined through analysis of government statutes and reports, reminiscences, letters, and newspapers, the thesis showing how and why soldier settlers were assisted on to confiscated and alienated Māori land under the Waste Lands and New Zealand Settlement Acts. Attention is also paid to documenting the soldier settlers’ experiences of this process and its problems. Further, it discusses some of the New Zealand settlements in which military land grants were concentrated. It also situates such military settlement practices in the context of the wider British Empire.  The place of women, children, and the regimental family in the soldier settlers’ New Zealand lives is also considered. This history is explored through journals, reminiscences, biography and newspapers, and contextualised via imperial and military histories. How and where men from the emphatically male sphere of the British Army met and married women during service in New Zealand is examined, as are the contexts in which they lived their married lives. Also discussed are the contrasting military and colonial policies towards women and marriage, and how these were experienced by soldier settlers and their families.  Lastly, the livelihood of soldier settlers is explored – the thesis investigating what sort of civilian lives soldier settlers experienced and how they made a living for themselves and their families. Utilising newspapers, reminiscences, biography, and government records the diversity of work army veterans undertook in the colony is uncovered. Notable trends include continued military-style roles and community leadership. The failed farming enterprise is also emphasised. Going further, it offers analysis of the later years of life and the different experiences of soldier settlers in their twilight years, particularly for those with and without family networks in the colony. The thesis challenges the separation between ‘war’ and ‘settlement’ by focusing on a group whose history spanned both sides of the nineteenth-century world of colony and empire.</p>

Minor Dynasties of Early Mediaeval Bengal According to Epigraphical Data: the Dynasty of Varmans (ca. 1050-1125 AD)

2021 ◽  
pp. 48
Author(s):  
Alexander A. Stolyarov
Keyword(s):  
Economic Condition ◽  
Land Grant ◽  
Historical Sources ◽  
Land Grants ◽  
Short Period ◽  
Feudal Lord ◽  
Commodity Money ◽  
A Minor ◽  
Economic Ties ◽  
Peace And War

The paper presents a description of the socio-political and economic condition of South-Eastern Bengal in a relatively short period at the cusp of the 11th and 12th centuries, when the dynasty of Varmans ruled there. It is based on the data contained in their inscriptions. Altogether the period of the dynasty&apos;s reign did not exceed ¾ century. During this time four rulers succeeded the throne, namely Jatavarman, his both sons – Harivarman and Samalavarman, and also Bhojavarman, the son of the latter. There are seven historical sources ascribed to the dynasty, among them two manuscripts and five inscriptions. These five inscriptions contain three land-grant charters, and two inscriptions on large objects. Three land-grant charters are compiled on behalf of Harivarman, Samalavarman and Bhojavarman, while two inscriptions on large objects are dated back to the reigns of Harivarman and Bhojavarman. The first two of the three charters are poorly preserved; therefore, they cannot be deciphered in full, only the charter of Bhojavarman can be read moderately well. Of the two inscriptions on large objects, one is a panegyric of Bhatta Bhavadeva, who was the minister of peace and war of Harivarman, and the other was compiled on behalf of a minor feudal lord during the reign of Bhojavarman The dynasty&apos;s charters show that Varmans were a ‘regional’ dynasty whose interests did not extend beyond Bengal. Their status allowed them to give land-grants on their own; at the same time, they may be considered as minor independent rulers who constitute the orbit of the regional hegemon – the Pāla dynasty. In turn, the inscriptions on large objects ascribed to the dynasty of Varmans speak for the existence of a system of the hierarchical administration in their principality, as well as the existence of developed commodity-money relations and intensive social and economic ties of the territories controlled by the Varman with the rest of Bengal as well as with other regions of not only India, but probably with more distant countries. It should also be emphasized that their inscriptions witness the earliest evidence of the presence of Muslims in Bengal.

Egypt’s Coptic Museum: From Patriarchal to National

2020 ◽  
pp. 181-204
Author(s):  
Dina Ishak Bakhoum
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Material Culture ◽  
Public Domain ◽  
Early Nineteenth Century ◽  
Greco Roman ◽  
Late Nineteenth ◽  
Religious Nature ◽  
Egyptian History

This chapter traces the most significant episodes of the Coptic Museum’s history and argues that the museum was not founded as a ‘minority’ museum but rather as an archaeological museum holding valuable religious Coptic art. Its foundation aimed at demonstrating that Coptic material culture had equivalent value in Egyptian history to Pharaonic, Greco-Roman and Islamic arts, which in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries already had their own museums. Unlike other museums, however, the Coptic Museum was established under the aegis of the Patriarch, giving it an unconventional status within Egyptian heritage owing to the religious nature of its initial collection. The essay presents the museum’s foundation during the early nineteenth century and discusses the context of its nationalization and transformation into a public domain museum (1931) as well as its expansion (1947).

“No Operation in an Academic Ivory Tower”: World War II and the Politics of Social Knowledge

2020 ◽  
Vol 60 (2) ◽  
pp. 214-227 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christopher P. Loss
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
American Revolution ◽  
Central Government ◽  
Land Grant ◽  
World War ◽  
Land Grants ◽  
Freedmen's Bureau ◽  
War Department ◽  
Charles Tilly ◽  
Publicly Supported

America's sprawling system of colleges and universities has been built on the ruins of war. After the American Revolution the cash-strapped central government sold land grants to raise revenue and build colleges and schools in newly conquered lands. During the Civil War, the federal government built on this earlier precedent when it passed the 1862 Morrill Land-Grant College Act, which created the nation's system of publicly supported land-grant colleges. And during Reconstruction, the Freedmen's Bureau, operating under the auspices of the War Department, aided former slaves in creating thousands of schools to help protect their hard-fought freedoms. Not only do “wars make states,” as sociologist Charles Tilly claimed, but wars have also shaped the politics of knowledge in the modern university in powerful and lasting ways.

Bengali Women’s Writings in the Colonial Period: Critique of Nation, Narration, and Patriarchy

2018 ◽  
Vol 66 (1) ◽  
pp. 19-34
Author(s):  
Sanchayita Paul Chakraborty ◽  
Dhritiman Chakraborty
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Women Writers ◽  
Social Exclusion ◽  
Public Domain ◽  
Colonial Period ◽  
Women's Agency ◽  
The Public ◽  
Indian Tradition ◽  
Women’S Agency ◽  
Spiritual Commitment

Abstract Critical engagements like the first autobiography written by a Bengali woman, Rasasundari Devi, and the non-fictions by Kailashbasini Devi, Krishnabhabini Das, and other women writers in the second half of the nineteenth century contested the imagined idealization of the Hindu domesticity and conjugality as spaces of loveableness and spiritual commitment. They criticized coercion in child-marriages and the forceful injunctions of the Hindu scriptures on both married and widowed women. Such rhetoric of quasi empowerment needs to be disaggregated to perpetuate issues of ‘double colonization,’ ‘dual-hold’ in feminism in India. The question is whether there can be any grounds of women’s agency in the Indian tradition. Eurocentric critiques are ill-equipped to politicize all modalities of a culture of social exclusion in Hindu imaginaries. Henceforth, as questions of equality, emancipation, and empowerment are fiercely debated in the public domain in contemporary India, we need to argue how immanent dissenting woman subjectivity can originate to counteract multiple patriarchies formed in Indian immediacies.

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