In colonial contexts, the configuration of land rights (those concerning the ownership, tenure, use, and transfer of land, plus the related rights of rent collection) invariably followed, in our view, four rules. The first one was the transposition of European notions and institutions of property, those of the “colonizer”, and their adaptation to local circumstances. The second was that legal regulations underwent a reinterpretation and appropriation by social actors on the ground. The third rule, which largely derived from the second, was that the system was based on the coexistence of formal norms (those that were legally defined) and informal norms (those that depended on use, tradition and force). The fourth was that all this was based on processes of negotiation and conflict between the parties (the crown authorities, the local ones, other corporate bodies, the social groups on the side of the colonizer and those on the side of the colonized).

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