Latifundium
As a latifundium ( Latin lātifundium , pl. Lātifundia , German also latifundia ; from Latin lātus , "large-scale" and Latin fundus , "property, estate"), an extensive estate or large estate was designated in the Roman Empire , the size of which was 500 iugera (Roman unit of measure, which corresponds to about a quarter of an hectare) exceeded.
history
Latifundia appeared in the Roman Republic after the Second Punic War . They resulted from the increasing size of estates that u. a. a consequence of the senators applicable prohibition was to conduct financial transactions, and repressed in the late Republic in many areas of the existing small-scale or medium in size farms supported agriculture . In the 2nd and 1st centuries BC Chr. Repeatedly tried this development through establishment of adopted Legion soldiers and a field legislation limiting.
In newly emerging areas of the Roman Empire, they were a basic form for the development of Roman forms of agriculture, especially in Sicily , Greece , North Africa , Gaul and the Danube region. There they were also part of the imperial administration of these areas.
In addition to the agricultural goods to supply the owners and their workers, a latifundium mostly produced a regionally important agricultural good: grain , olives and oil , wine or cattle , but also special products such as garum . Workers on the latifundium were slaves ; In late antiquity, there was an increasing number of colonies , i.e. semi-free farmers who cultivated individual parcels of the latifundium and paid rent for them . A latifundium was mostly managed by a villa rustica as the center.
Latifundia were partly owned by the state (and thus later owned by the Roman emperor), but partly also owned by individual families. As state property, they were given by the emperor to influential families and thus remained the economic basis for the senators. Some latifundia have been able to hold onto large estates in Sicily, for example, into modern times.
Usage today
Following the Roman model, large estates of later times, especially in Portugal , Spain and Latin America , are called latifundia (Spanish: latifundio ). The latifundia economy was often criticized because of the concentration of ownership and the destruction of small-scale village structures, the exploitation of indigenous farm workers and small tenants, the resulting rural exodus and, more recently, the climate-damaging clearing of forests for the purpose of planting monocultures (coffee, cattle breeding, since 1870 bananas , later soy, palm oil etc.) and the consequences such as soil erosion and water shortage. The political conflict between the latifundistas (the conservative large agrarians) and the liberal urban bourgeoisie was the dominant political conflict in Latin America from around 1830 to 1930. After the global economic crisis , the latifundistas stagnated or declined in many regions, due to political growth social reform forces that were interested in low food prices and wanted to limit the influence of foreign investors. This often led to diplomatic entanglements with the USA.
While traditional latifundia were cultivated rather extensively and the basic rents were accumulated privately without reinvesting the proceeds, the latifundia economy has increasingly been based on high capital investment (technocratic latifundismo) and the so-called tabula rasa policy, i.e. large-scale deforestation, since the 1970s .
See also
literature
- Karl Christ: The Roman Empire: from Augustus to Diocletian. 3rd act. Edition. Munich 2006, ISBN 978-3-406-47052-3 .
Individual evidence
- ^ Karl Georges: Comprehensive Latin-German Concise Dictionary , Volume 2, 2014, column 2878.
- ^ KD White: Roman Farming . Cornell University Press, 1970, ISBN 978-0-8014-0575-4 .
- ^ Marc Edelman: The Logic of the Latifundio: The Large Estates of Northwestern Costa Rica Since the Late Nineteenth Century. Stanford University Press, 1992, pp. 19 ff.