And what’s the history behind it?
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Before the early 19th century only the eldest son could inherit land; there was no inheritance tax then either.
It reached the stage where 12 families controlled the vast majority of land
Farmers are a big part, there are 100,000 farmers in the UK, and about 3 people per farm. Making farm owners <0.5% of the population.
The UK is mostly farmland. Then you have national parks that are owned by the national trust. And so on.
So really, it isn’t as bad as it sounds.
The Robber Barons
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robber_baron_(feudalism)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robber_baron_(feudalism))
there is a bit about England in there
Basically – I have power in military. You have less power in military but you have many gold. I take your many gold and your lands now. I give some land to friend who helped
Now I have more wealth and land. I take more power
Power wins
It took a culmination of all of this land grab stuff to create a country, a kingdom and then an empire. The TLDR is it was all stolen. And now we love the monarchy…. fail
When we transitioned from feudalism to capitalism the land ownership progressed from 100% ownership by the Crown and aristocracy to ownership largely by the Crown, aristocracy, and landlords (farmers for the most part). The Crown and aristocracy still owns a disgusting amount of land, but much of it is also owned by private landlord farmers now. The rest is made up by more regular ownership such as home owners with freehold land deeds etc.
You’re gonna want to look into the whole of European feudalism… but farmers who own their own land aren’t serfs anymore, thankfully, and I believe they own a lot more land than the estates of barons and earls
But (at least in the US) there’s a lot of farms owned by absentee businessmen who aren’t that different from feudal lords
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