Nature, Bodies, and Land

Reframing Ownership and Property in Early Modern Spanish America

authored by: Manuel Bastias Saavedra, Alina Rodríguez Sánchez
Abstract: Rooted in medieval juridical thinking, early modern legal culture saw community’s law as the expression of an underlying order of things, something defined not by the willing agreement of the parts that constituted the community, but rather by nature and nurture. For the Iberian world, this belief was expressed in the idea of the ‘señorío natural’, which according to legal doctrine was a bond that linked subjects to the land where they were born and subjected them to a common jurisdiction (Hespanha, Uncommon Laws). Communities and all kinds of corporate bodies thus also had a natural origin, which points to an intertwinement, and not a contradiction, between nature and different kinds of collective bodies. These bodies—corporations, guilds, communities, families, and so on—were the basis for the assignment of rights, obligations, privileges, and duties, but also for the distribution of access to land. This article seeks to reframe ownership and property within this framework as a way of rethinking the ways in which communities defined their relations to land.
Organisation(s): History Department
Type: Article
Journal: Journal of Interdisciplinary History of Ideas
Volume: 12
No. of pages: 31
Publication date: 31.12.2023
Publication status: Published
Peer reviewed: Yes
ASJC Scopus subject areas: Philosophy
Electronic version(s): https://doi.org/10.13135/2280-8574/7895 (Access: Open)

BibTeX

@article{d767414caa6c405f88c12da47a82e111,
title = "Nature, Bodies, and Land: Reframing Ownership and Property in Early Modern Spanish America",
abstract = "Rooted in medieval juridical thinking, early modern legal culture saw community{\textquoteright}s law as the expression of an underlying order of things, something defined not by the willing agreement of the parts that constituted the community, but rather by nature and nurture. For the Iberian world, this belief was expressed in the idea of the {\textquoteleft}se{\~n}or{\'i}o natural{\textquoteright}, which according to legal doctrine was a bond that linked subjects to the land where they were born and subjected them to a common jurisdiction (Hespanha, Uncommon Laws). Communities and all kinds of corporate bodies thus also had a natural origin, which points to an intertwinement, and not a contradiction, between nature and different kinds of collective bodies. These bodies—corporations, guilds, communities, families, and so on—were the basis for the assignment of rights, obligations, privileges, and duties, but also for the distribution of access to land. This article seeks to reframe ownership and property within this framework as a way of rethinking the ways in which communities defined their relations to land.",
keywords = "18th-Century Francophone Encyclopedism, Physiocracy, Pierre-Nicolas Gautier, Ren{\'e}-Louis de Girardin, State Knowledge",
author = "{Bastias Saavedra}, Manuel and {Rodr{\'i}guez S{\'a}nchez}, Alina",
note = "Funding Information: This article has been written as part of the IberLAND project. This project has received funding from the European Research Council ?ERC) under the European Union{\textquoteright}s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme ?grant agreement No. 101000)̊̉ff). ",
year = "2023",
month = dec,
day = "31",
doi = "10.13135/2280-8574/7895",
language = "English",
volume = "12",
journal = "Journal of Interdisciplinary History of Ideas",
issn = "2280-8574",
publisher = "University of Torino",
number = "24",
}