Land reform in Kiravia

Land reform in Kiravia was a process that unfolded mainly during the 20th century AD as part of the agricultural policy of both the Kiravian Remnant and Kiravian Union. Both governments pursued land reform more or less concurrently, but proceeding from different ideological bases and utilising different methods to implement their desired reforms.

Background

Agriculture in Great Kirav and its colonies, despite the dramatic growth of a robust commercial and industrial economy from the 16th through 20th centuries AD, was nonetheless the most important sector of the Kiravian economy in terms of employment, and national indicators of economic wellbeing such as household income, indebtedness, and savings were closely tied to agricultural conditions. As such, matters of agriculture and landownership have always been of great interest to Kiravian policymakers. The Kiravian Agricultural Executive was calved from the Kiravian Territorial Executive at the very beginning of the Federal Period of Kiravian history as the federal government took on greater domestic responsibilities. However, it was concerned mainly with the supervision of agricultural improvements and the diffusion of useful knowledge germane to agriculture, rather than peasant welfare or agrarian reform.

The situation of land tenure and land distribution in the Kiravian domains at the time of the Civil War was diverse and varied. Topographic, bioclimatic, and institutional-historical factors combined to create vastly different land régimes in different regions. The applicability of the term feudalism to Kiravia remains a contentious issue in economic historiography, and there is agreement even among its proponents that the geographic extent of true feudalism in Great Kirav was limited. It is, however, possible to speak of a Medial Coscivian Economy that characterised the economic, spatial, and social relations of post-classical rural life in Kiravia, and also of Coscivian Manorialism, which described the mode of production and superstructure that dominated the island continent's most productive regions.

During the 19th century AD, peasants in the more intensively cultivated regions of North Kirav might be tenant farmers, smallholders, members of a village that owned the land communally, or have an interest in land belonging collectively to their clan or tuva in a multi-tuva environment. Clan- or tuva-based landholding and independent smallholds were more common in the lands of intermediate agricultural value that make up the bulk of Great Kirav, and arrangements related to crofting were common across pastoral regions, especially those settled by Celtic-Kiravians or Ĥeiran Coscivians. Completely landless labourers without any interest in land whatsoëver, even entire castes of landless persons such as the Hoppers, subsisted on the sale of their labour power to tenured farmers. Castes jealously guarded their economic niches from encroachment by others: The 'primary cultivator castes' - forerunners of the regional ethnic majorities known today - reserved for themselves the right to cultivate marketable quantities of cereals and their companion crops. Other castes might own or be permitted smaller cereal or polyculture plots, but risked violent reprisal from the numerically-superior primary cultivator castes if they produced a visible grain surplus. 'Secondary cultivator castes', while also tending these smaller plots and/or growing potato, were mainly dedicated to productive activities such as marketable vegetable cultivation, forest gardening, apiculture, specialty crops, or ancillary agricultural activities (e.g. the Veyronem or turnip-hoeing caste). More marginal to the system were pastoral, foresting, and fishing/waterman castes. Some castes, such as the yakavem or "village menials" were excluded from agriculture altogether, while the ostracised harsitem were forbidden from marketing any produce they might manage to grow, having polluted it with their touch.

In the manorial South and Baylands, the distribution of land was such that the entire arable surface of these regions was divided among relatively large estates, most corresponding to one village that housed their tillers. Estates might belong allodially to a noble lineage, be held by a notable or servitor through some feudal arrangement between the beneficial owner and a superior landlord, or exist as autonomous villages owning the land either collectively or coöperatively among their social subunits. Smaller yeomens' estates also existed; however, the vast majority of estates were in the hands of nobles of feudal beneficiaries, many of whom were absentees. Due to primogeniture and dowry practices among the propertied classes, there was a tendency for landownership to become more and more concentrated among fewer and fewer people over time. In premodern times, wars and high rates of natural mortality helped to curb this process of consolidation, but by the 19th century such pressures proved insufficient to do so any longer. In the South and Baylands, there was much less caste-based specialisation of productive activities, though village menials, functional castes, and landless ancillaries such as hop-harvesting clans were (and are) indeed present.

By the 18th century, economic writers of the Kilikas Enlightenment noted that the traditional Kiravian order of land tenure that had developed to maximise food security in an environment of high scarcity was antiquested and inefficient, and that small- and medium-sized freeholds were more productive. This was considered a problem less on the grounds of social justice or peasant welfare than of political œconomy and national competitiveness, as agriculture was still the primary generator of national wealth, and coastal intellectuals worried about losing ground to other powers like Urcea and Burgundie which had less retarded systems of land tenure.

Kiravian Union

Land reform in the Kiravian Union was motivated by core socialist principles mandating the democratisation of the means of production. However, there were differences of opinion within the ruling Kirosocialist Party over the proper manner of land reform: Members from the Convist and social-nationalist wings of the party favoured seizing large estates and subdividing them into smallholds in which farmers would be given life tenancy or usufruct rights; members from the Devinist wing favoured comprehensive collectivisation of agriculture, extending even to existing smallholds and pastoral operations. The former position would prevail after the Swimming Pool Coup, except in South Kirav, which would be extensively collectivised even after the fall of the Devinite faction from primacy.

Sydona

Sydona had a much deeper entrenchment of proper fœdalism than did Great Kirav or the Overseas Regions, an much of its land belonged to the Elamite Order or other religious institutes suppressed by the Sydosocialists. As such, the scope of land reform and collectivisation in Sydona was much wider an its effects more dramatic in Sydona than on the Mainland or in the Remnant.

Kiravian Remnant

Land reform in the Kiravian Remnant was ideologically justified by the incorporation of Georgist economic theories into the platform of the ruling Renaissance Party and was further conditioned by the distributist ideals of its junior partner, the Christian Democrats. Politically, it faced opposition from elements of the Kiravian Old Right and the United Empire Loyalists on Æonara, but the laws were forced through by Séan Kæśek during the period of martial law and were eventually accepted as fait accompli after the end of martial law once permanent compensation funds were established.

Land reform in the Remnant was targeted at Æonara and Sarolasta, where large plantations and similarly-sized "supply estates" occupied much of the arable land. It was deemed unnecessary in the Remnant's temperate territories and in Saint Kennera, which were settled mainly by smallholders. Less ambitious, more gradual land reform would be implemented in the Krasoa Islands in the 1960s.

Æonara

Land reform began in 1949 with the in 1949, Field Rent Control Act, which capped farm rents at 37.5% of yields. This was followed by the Cultivator Tenancy Act of 1950, which allowed for farm rent forgiveness by Prime Executive proclamation during natural disasters, promoted farmers' associations, and strengthened tenant farmers' protections against eviction. The Cultivator Tenancy Act helped to accelerate acquiescence to land reform by making large landholdings more of a financial liability. Collegial ordinances began to be issued in 1951 to effect the sale of arable land owned by the General Land Bureau (that is, federal revenue land) to former tenant farmers so that they might become owner-cultivators.

Confiscatory land reform and the breakup of large estates by government fiat would not begin until 1953. Such measures were opposed by members of the Kiravian Old Right, the United Empire Loyalists, the Æonaran timocracy, and (to a more limited extent) former landowning emigrés from the Mainland standing on principle. On the other hand, they were supported by the core cadre of the Renaissance Party, the Freesoil Councils (the Party's cultivators' wing), the UAP, and the Christian Democrats, to say nothing of the Æonaran tenant farmer populace.

Monocrop plantations producing certain cash crops - most importantly coffee - were exempt from most reforms. In addition to ensuring minimal disruption to the business model of an important export-oriented part of the agricultural sector during a crucial economic transition, this limitation on land reform helped to blunt much of the political opposition to land reform by demobilising the influential coffee planters (many of whom were Empire Loyalists) against the reform legislation.