The Long Land War

Long Land War will be out in print in March 2022 from Yale University Press. You can pre-order on Amazon.

Struggles over land are as old as human history. Many observers and critics of human society have held, over the centuries, that the injustices of displacement and eviction, like every gap that divides human fortunes, are both perennial and inevitable. Others have argued, with enviable certainty, that a reversal of this injustice is inevitable.

Guldi argues that, to engage these complex questions, we need a wider history of justice and collaboration, and a nuanced understanding of elite will and popular action.

The Long Land War traces the circuitous path of land reform over the last century, and catalogues movements reflecting a diversity of reformers—Irish peasants, Hindu saints, development analysts, scholars, economists, indigenous farmers, squatters, and digital activists. Exploring the transformative insights and the tragic flaws of radically different approaches, the book traces state-engineered “land reform” projects from their triumphant origins in Victorian Ireland to their quiet assassination by the United States in 1974. In a bittersweet tale of thwarted idealism, the book illuminates the complex interplay of colonial inertia, the Cold War, the United Nations, the World Bank, grassroots activism, market ideology, and human short-comings. Guldi delivers a devastating and eye-opening narrative of land redistribution—its failures and its powerful lessons—and an indelible glimpse into the politics of land ownership, and the adjudication of justice on a changing planet.

The Long Land War is intended to be an absorbing read for historians and curious readers of every background—a definitive history of land reform movements in the twentieth century, their diverse ideals, ideologies, and approaches, and their powerful lessons for a new generation of global activism.