BOOK: Elisabetta FIOCCHI MALASPINA, "Dans cette diversité, des principes d'unité": intrecci transnazionali nei sistemi di pubblicità immobiliare tra Otto e Novecento [Collana di Studi di Storia del diritto medievale e moderno - Monografie, eds. Paolo ALVAZZI DEL FRATE, Giovanni ROSSI & Elio TAVILLA; 11] (Roma: Historia et Ius, 2023), 360 p. ISBN 9791281621015 [OPEN ACCESS]

 

(image source: Historia et Ius)

Abstract:

This book covers the period between the 19th and the first half of the 20th centuries. It investigates the different land registration systems in certain European countries, the relationship between Europe and the African colonies regarding the systems of land ownership and land registration, and the international scientific collaboration developed to deal with problems that might arise when introducing a European land registration system in a colonial context. It may seem that these three issues merit independent investigation, given their breadth and the many possible viewpoints from which they could be studied. However, by researching them together within a manifestly national legal institution such as a land registration system, the transnational entanglements, that took place across various spatial-temporal contexts, can be discerned. To convey the dynamism and complexity of these topics, the book has adopted the structure of Greek tragedy, a literary genre that best achieves the concept of entanglement. The first episode takes place in Europe. Some mechanisms occurring between the 18th and 19th centuries are examined to understand how land registration was used to «harmonise» property without limiting its contents. From the construction of the national space, the scope of the research is expanded to demonstrate how European debates on land registration systems were, in reality, discussed and resolved in several parts of the world. In the African colonial context, the introduction of a specific land regime responded to the creation of an «organised colonial space». The type of land registration system depended not only on the decisions of the «motherland», which might introduce its own system, but also on geographical, historical, political, and legal factors. These factors were decisive in selecting, for the second episode, three African colonies with particularly interesting land regimes: Eritrea, Congo Free State, and Togo. This second episode shows that the majority of colonial empires, before deciding which system to adopt and how to regulate relations between citizens and foreigners from Europe and local populations, always sought «inspiration» from models adopted by other colonial powers. In 1894, former colonial officials and administrators, as well as jurists, founded the Institut Colonial International in Brussels, which is the subject of the third episode. It aimed to construct a common space to discuss and resolve colonial problems, such as teaching, acclimatisation, labour in the colonies, and above all, property and land tenure. The ambitious goal of the members of the Institut Colonial International was to «scientifically» construct a variety of legal principles that would create unity across systems of land register legislation, despite the profound diversity of individual colonies.

Read the full book here in open access.