Collective Property in the Modern State: Émile de Laveleye’s Primitive Property in its Global Context

Abstract

The article discusses normative approaches to the commons and argues that similar perspectives emerged in the late nineteenth century, closely linked to claims of social and ecological justice. It posits its subject in the framework of nineteenth-century territorialization, more precisely the exercise of state power as a convergence of normative representations of the space and legislative and administrative practices. Analyzing the theoretical and political dimensions of a representative scholarly work, titled De la propriété et de ses forms primitives by the Belgian professor Émile de Laveleye (1822–1892), it formulates the thesis that Laveleye’s book is indicative of the renegotiation of the status of collective property in land as state territory. The article shows first how the book was shaping a universalist model of common land ownership by waving together European and colonial debates on the topic. Second, by following the English and German translations of the book, it shows how this model was linked to transnational agendas of social politics and land reform. These two aspects draw attention to the crucial role of the state as a historical and present stakeholder in shaping the status of commons as territories.