Beyond Property. Ownership Regimes in the Iberian World (1500-1850)

Volume I: The Normative Role of Kinship and Community

Manuel Bastias Saavedra (Hg.)
Max Planck Studies in Global Legal History of the Iberian Worlds 5
Leiden: Brill 2025

ISSN 2590-3292
ISBN (Hardback): 978-90-04-72271-2
ISBN (e-book): 978-90-04-72272-9

Explore a new perspective on land relations with Ownership Regimes, which shifts focus from traditional legal views to socio-historical contexts. This book reveals how land holding was influenced by diverse practices, including doctrine, laws, customs, regional kinship, and community ties. By understanding these as components of a broader normative framework, scholars from different regions show how complex social, religious, and cultural norms shaped efficient and enduring land-use arrangements. It challenges historians and legal scholars to examine the interplay of these norms in the Iberian world, uncovering how they defined ownership, division, regulation, and conflict resolution in various regions.

Contributors are: Manuel Bastias Saavedra, Alessandro Buono, Thiago Mota, José Carlos De La Puente Luna, Íñigo Ena Sanjuán, Alcira Dueñas, Marta Martín Gabaldón, Carolina Jurado, Crislayne Alfagali, and Rosa Congost.

Contents

Preface
List of Illustrations
Notes on Contributors

1 Beyond Private and Common
Ownership Regimes in the Iberian World (1500–1800)
  Manuel Bastias Saavedra

2 The Rights of Things and the Obligations of the Owner
Exploring the Deep Normative Grammars of the Early Modern Ownership Regime
  Alessandro Buono

3 Guests in Foreign Lands
Land Control and Ownership in Greater Senegambia in the Face of the Portuguese Presence (16th and 17th Centuries)
  Thiago Henrique Mota

4 A Widow’s Tale
Shifting Land Regimes and the Interplay of Household and Community in Colonial Peru
  José Carlos de la Puente Luna

5 Ownership and Seigniorial Relationships
Land and Territory in Colonial Tlaxiaco (the Mixteca, Mexico)
  Marta Martín Gabaldón

6 Domestic Rights in Indigenous Communal Lands and the Expression “Menester” during the Execution of the 1591 Royal Decrees in Charcas, Viceroyalty of Peru
  Carolina Jurado

7 Concordias, Sentencias Arbitrales, and Vistas
Ownership and Possession of Grassland in the Valleys of Ansó and Hecho (17th–19th Centuries)
  Íñigo Ena Sanjuán

8 Amparos and Mapas
Communal Land Possession and Dispossession in the Late Colonial Andes
  Alcira Dueñas

9 Sobas, Ilamba, and Residents
On the Diverse Meanings of Land in Angola’s Hinterland in the 18th century
  Crislayne Gloss Marão Alfagali

10 Epilogue: The Necessary De-Westernisation of the Models of Land Ownership
Reflections on the Idea of Feudal Remnants in Core Western Countries
  Rosa Congost

Index