Earth, property, territory : the birth of an economic concept of land

Land is emerging as increasingly central to a range of urgent issues, foremost amongst which are the multiple and overlapping environmental crises that today pose an existential threat to human societies. In this context, economic and ecological logics so often appear to be in tension, if not outright opposition. Yet the recognition of the essential role of land in sustaining human life is far from a new one. Why is it, then, that the theory and practice of economy have come to conceive of land solely in terms of the financial revenues that it can yield, at the expense of a recognition of its broader role as the biophysical foundation of human societies? It is with this question in mind that this thesis investigates the history of the concept of land within economic theory. It focusses, in particular, on the putative birth of modern economic thought in the work of Adam Smith, suggesting that this, in fact, rested on a far richer and more nuanced conception of land than is generally recognized: one that takes into account the evolving nature of the relationship between humans and the nonhuman environment. The research further suggests that subsequent economic thought should be understood instead as following the work of David Ricardo – the most prominent of Smith’s disciples from the following generation of political economists. I argue that, whereas Smith conceived of land in broad natural historical and jurisprudential terms – as earth, property, and territory – Ricardo abstracted away these considerations, in effect creating a new, and recognizably modern, economic concept, which associated land narrowly with rent. In undertaking this investigation, the thesis attempts to cast light on the ways in which the relationship between the human and non-human worlds are understood within today’s (political) economic theory