Grand larceny in the tropics: Patrick McAuslan’s role in limiting legal land theft in Africa

Grand larceny – the stealing of other people’s moveable property – but what term exists in common law for the stealing of people’s land? Given the extent of such theft it is odd there is no ready term for this crime. Perhaps that is the point; much land theft has been engineered by parliaments as perfectly legal. Therefore we must be content with the odd conjunction of ‘lawful theft’ or more pallid ‘dispossession’.