From January 3–6, 2025, the IberLAND research team participated in the American Historical Association (AHA) Annual Meeting in New York City. Sarah Limão Papa and Manuel Bastias Saavedra presented their research as part of the panel From Good Government to Administration: Transformations in the Governance of Land, Public Goods, and Common Resources in (Post-) Imperial Contexts. The full programme of the event is available here.
The panel, organized by Sarah Limão Papa and chaired by Manuel Bastias Saavedra, explored governance transformations during the 18th and 19th centuries across the Habsburg, Portuguese, and Spanish empires. Sarah’s paper, Normativity and Environmental Governance in 18th-Century Colonial Brazil: A Case Study of Land Tenure, Sugar Plantations, and the Atlantic Forest, analyzed legal conflicts and shifts in environmental governance in Portuguese America. Manuel’s presentation, Good Government, Administration, and Private Law: The Privatization of Law in the Chilean Frontier (1790–1860), examined the privatization of indigenous and public lands in southern Chile and the central role of private legal instruments in this transformation.
The panel also featured Svit Komel, a doctoral researcher at the University of Ljubljana, whose work focuses on legal history and scientific practices in the Habsburg Empire. Svit’s presentation, Governing Common Property Rights and Peasant Resistance: The Redemption and Regulation of Easements (1853–1914), delved into the impact of surveys and reforms in redefining customary rights to align with national economic interests.
The panel benefited from the commentary of Professor Tristan G. Brown from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). Professor Brown, author of the recent book Laws of the Land: Fengshui and the State in Qing Dynasty China, is a leading scholar on the intersections of law, environment, and governance in early modern China. His groundbreaking work documents the role of fengshui in Qing legal practices, illustrating its importance in managing forestry, farming, and industrialization in a rapidly changing imperial society.
