ABSTRACT
Over the last five centuries, the commodification of land has fundamentally helped and shaped the expansion of global capitalism. In this process, land reform has been deployed as an essential mechanism in the struggle over the allocation of, and rights over, resources. Although land reforms have a long history that can be traced back to the Greeks and Romans, it is especially from the late eighteenth century onwards that land reforms have acted as a strategic tool in the globalization of one specific type of property relation that was inspired by the idea of ‘perfect property’. In its current and strictly juridical definition, ‘perfect’ property refers to a bundle of rights that is enforceable against all others. The absoluteness, or exclusiveness, of this ideal type of rights lays in its registration through legal instruments. Essentially transatlantic, the formation and spread of property-based land regimes, together with the process of land commodification, started symbolically in 1492.
