Squatter's Republic

Who should have the right to own land, and how much of it? A Squatter's Republic follows the rise and fall of the land question in the Gilded Age—and the rise and fall of a particularly nineteenth-century vision of landed independence. More specifically, the author considers the land question through the anti-monopolist reform movements it inspired in late nineteenth-century California. The Golden State was a squatter's republic—a society of white men who claimed no more land than they coul...