Land abundance and economic institutions: Egba land and slavery, 1830–19141

The ‘land abundance’ view of African history uses sparse population to explain economic institutions. This article uses colonial court records to show that the Egba of Nigeria fit this theory's predictions. Before 1914, the Egba had imprecisely defined land rights, relied on dependent and forced labour, and used labour to secure loans. These institutions responded to the changing availability of land, labour, and capital. An initial period of land scarcity altered land ownership. A market existed for the most valuable land. Slaves were used by those with better opportunities to acquire them, and credit expanded after the introduction of tree crops.     

The market in freehold land, 1300–1509: the evidence of feet of fines

This article provides time series data on the medieval market in freehold land, including the changing social composition of freeholders, level of market activity, size and complexity of landholdings, and shifts in the market value of land. These are subjects hitherto largely ignored due, in part, to the disparate nature of the evidence. It argues that feet of fines, despite archival limitations, if employed with care and an understanding of the underlying changes in the common law of real property, are capable of providing quantifiable evidence spanning hundreds of years and comparable across large areas of England.