Latifundium

A latifundium (Latin: latus, "spacious", and fundus, "farm", "estate")^[1] was originally the term used by ancient Romans for great landed estates specialising in agriculture destined for sale: grain, olive oil, or wine. They were characteristic of Magna Graecia and Sicily, Egypt, Northwest Africa and Hispania Baetica. The latifundia were the closest approximation to industrialised agriculture in Antiquity, and their economics depended upon slavery.

In the modern colonial period, the word was borrowed in Portuguese latifúndios and Spanish latifundios or simply fundos for similar extensive land grants, known as fazendas (in Portuguese) or haciendas (in Spanish), in their empires.^{[citation needed]} The forced recruitment of local labourers allowed by colonial law made these land grants particularly lucrative for their owners.

^ The singular latifundium occurs but once (in Pliny's Natural History 13.92, with the meaning "estate", suggesting to Anton J.L. van Hooff an undefined, colloquial deprecating term, rather than a description of a particular type of farm. To the linguistic evidence presented by K.D. White, (Bulletin of the Institute of Classical Studies 14 [1967:62-79]), who found only seven instances of the rare word latifundia in Roman texts, Van Hooff added five more instances in "Some More Latifundia" Historia: Zeitschrift für Alte Geschichte 31,1 (1st Quarter 1982:126-128), and found that two were "in a neutral, almost technical way" (p. 128).

[1] The singular latifundium occurs but once (in Pliny's Natural History 13.92, with the meaning "estate", suggesting to Anton J.L. van Hooff an undefined, colloquial deprecating term, rather than a description of a particular type of farm. To the linguistic evidence presented by K.D. White, (Bulletin of the Institute of Classical Studies 14 [1967:62-79]), who found only seven instances of the rare word latifundia in Roman texts, Van Hooff added five more instances in "Some More Latifundia" Historia: Zeitschrift für Alte Geschichte 31,1 (1st Quarter 1982:126-128), and found that two were "in a neutral, almost technical way" (p. 128).

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