While doing research for my map of the New Feudalism, I found this 2010 book by Irish journalist Kevin Cahill. Despite the shrill cover rhetoric, the book is basically a nation-by-nation (and, in the United States, state-by-state) inventory of land ownership patterns. There are a lot of question marks about some countries, but it helps to fill in some of the blanks in Eastern Europe on my map.
Click image to find booksellers offering this book through abebooks.com.
Cahill’s thesis is that “the main cause of most remaining poverty in the world is an excess of landownership in too few hands.” The book is a follow-up to Cahill’s 2002 book, Who Owns Britain? Cahill makes much of Britain’s claim that the crown is the ultimate owner of all the land in the United Kingdom, and goes further and claims the Queen owns all of the land in Canada, Australia, and two-thirds of Antarctica. In fact, 60 to 70 percent of families in Australia, Britain, and Canada have fee-simple title to their land, which is just as valid as the titles Americans have to the land they own.
