From Freehold to Social Function: Revisiting Bromley?s Rousseau?s Revenge in the Indian Context

Sattwick Dey Biswas

HISTORY OF ECONOMIC THOUGHT AND POLICY, 2026, vol. 2026/1, issue 1, 5-27

Abstract: This paper revisits Daniel W. Bromley?s claims about Rousseau?s Revenge through the longue dur?e of India?s land regimes to rethink the place of property in the history of economic thought. Bromley?s provocation, developed largely within an Anglo-Ameri-can property rights trajectory, frames the contemporary weakening of the freehold estate as a rediscovery of land?s social function. Considering this provocation, the Indian case reveals a historically distinct, but not exceptional, configuration in which land was rarely organised as absolute exclusionary private property, but instead governed through lay-ered institutions and social arrangements of caste, community, religious authority, colo-nial law, and postcolonial state building. Drawing on South Asian historiography and historical institutionalism, the paper treats the social function of land as an analytical category in which obligation, use, and public purpose coexist alongside title. In doing so, it challenges apparent universalist narratives of property that assume a unilinear progres-sion of land regimes from common tenure to private ownership. The paper offers a con-ceptual provocation for a more pluralist understanding of property, governance, and le-gitimacy beyond Euro-American frameworks.

JEL-codes: B11 B31 B52 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2026
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