Colonial taxation converted communal land into male-owned private property

Evidence

Women in Kenya have born the brunt of successive waves of dispossession, dating back to the late nineteenth century, when the British colonialists shifted the structures of land ownership to women’s detriment. Previously, land had belonged inalienably to the extended family or clan; with the introduction of colonial taxation that same land became deeded to a male deemed to be head of the household. As taxation forced more and more Kenyans into a wage economy, and as (first under colonialism and later under neocolonial structural adjustment) cash crops like tea, coffee, and sugar cane shrank the arable land available for food production, women became disproportionately marginalized from economic power. In the resultant cash economy, men typically owned the bank accounts. — Rob Nixon, Slow Violence and the Environmentalism…, 394

Categorization

• XREF: A concrete mechanism of gendered land dispossession usable across the eco-justice polyad’s colonialism and land/place threads. — connects to: Colonial taxation chiefly aimed to force locals into the colonial capitalist system — Fanny Pigeaud_ Ndongo Samba Sylla, Africa’s Last Colonial Currency, 58; The advent of private property converted woman from sacred being into owned property — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 167; Federal Indian policy deliberately dismantled communal landholding and gender roles — Nikole Hannah-Jones et al., The 1619 Project: A New American Origin…, 482 (+3 more)

Broader Connections

• Taxation in colonial currency was designed to force conversion to capitalism. #expands (0.85)
• Federal Indian policy deliberately dismantled communal landholding and gender roles #exemplifies (0.82) — Nikole Hannah-Jones et al., The 1619 Project, 482
• The advent of private property converted woman from sacred being into owned property #expands (0.78) — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 167
• Colonial taxation chiefly aimed to force locals into the colonial capitalist system #complicates (0.75) — Fanny Pigeaud_ Ndongo Samba Sylla, Africa’s Last Colonial Currency, 58
• Colonial warfare gave men new dominance over previously matriarchal societies #expands (0.70)