Littérature scientifique sur le sujet « Land tenure Landlord and tenant Agricultural laborers »

By the middle of the sixteenth century, the role of the tenant farmer and sharecropper in both Syria and France witnessed important transformations which lent increasing relevance to the social and legal status enjoyed by these cultivators. In various regions of France after the sixteenth century, a rising class of bourgeois landholders increasingly appropriated agricultural lands from both peasant proprietors and nobles, leading to the spread of both sharecropping and leasing contracts. In Ottoman Syria, the appropriation of peasant lands and proliferation of tenancy arrangements was linked to an expanding state which sought to consolidate power and ensure the consistent flow of revenue. Thus, this paper will address how the socio-legal discourse on tenants and sharecroppers differed in a context where arable lands were appropriated by private rather than public forces. Issues that are examined include: perceptions of agricultural innovation; possession rights; and payment of rent and other dues.While Islamic legal scholars articulated a discourse which sought to incorporate tenants and sharecroppers, French legal and social thinkers of the day championed the rights of the landlord above all else. Unlike their Syrian counterparts, French thinkers linked agricultural development and efficient production to private ownership of land. In Syria, on the other hand, jurists advocated a land tenure system in which the possession rights of cultivators were supported while landlord interests were not jeopardised. Thus, agricultural development in the Syrian case was articulated within a framework which conceded multiple layers of ownership. These ideas would have an important impact on nineteenth-century developments in both regions.

The article deals with the process of formation and development of lease relations in the agrarian sector of Tavria province in the second half of the 19th century-1917 in the conditions of vendible farming and animal husbandry development. The causes of widespread leasing and the specificity of this process in different counties of the province are analyzed. The role of landlord ownership in the formation of the lease fund of the region is determined. The vast lands served as a significant source of productive and non-productive profit for the local nobility. Few owners of capitalist-type farms used the proceeds of the lease to modernize their farms. Lease was the main means of land use for the vast majority of nobles. The ways of involving the Taurian peasantry in the lease relations in the conditions of its property and social differentiation are revealed here. Attention is drawn to the fact that the wealthy peasantry was the main tenant who used the leased land primarily for the organization of commercial agriculture. Characterization of the types of land constituting the lease fund of the region have been made. It has been found that private ownership constituted its vast majority, as well as peasant allotments, treasury lands and private institutions. The specifics of the lease of state-owned lands in Tavria province are shown. A wide variety of statistical sources cover the types of land leases and regional features of their using. Skopschina was a popular form of rent; however, on the areas of commercial agriculture, there was a dynamic development of monetary rent as a characteristic feature of capitalist housekeeping. The dynamics of changes in rental prices in the context of species and regional differentiation are traced. The advantages and disadvantages of rent for the owners and tenants of the province are highlighted. It was concluded that the lease occupied an important place in the land tenure and land using of the population of Tavria province - above all, the nobility and the peasantry as the main subjects of lease relations and makers of agricultural products. It contributed to the development of entrepreneurship and the strengthening of capitalist forms of farming in the countryside.