Hello! How are you? Hope in pink condition.

I've found an irretrievable term out there:

Quote :

tenant-at-halves or tenant at halves.

I suppose it means tenants that receive 50 % of whatever grain they produce in a land they do not own. In other words owners of half the products of their work, not of the mean of production.

This being so, I am translating the notion as "tenants at 50 per cent" (that is, "aparceros al 50 por ciento"). I just be glad to know wether I have understood correctly or not the idea, because the expression could also mean "planters that own half the acres of the land", which would be quite a different thing.

All those "definitions" are mine, so potentially wrong, since there's nothing in the Net to illuminate me —save you, ça va sans dire… 

Thanks a lot for your help. Take care and kill the Omicron…

I include a brief citation for your convenience.

Quote :

The typical form of labor in Virginia at the beginning of 1622 was that of the tenant, “the planters being,” as Alderman Johnson said in reviewing the period 1619–22, “most of them Tenants at halves.
—————
Yet the tenants’ desperate situation which had made it possible for the employing class to reduce labor costs to mere “vittles” would certainly end with new corn harvests, although the price of tobacco was bound in shallows from which it would never return to its early high levels. How then would it be possible for the plantation bourgeoisie to make this momentary system of unpaid labor permanent, instead of being forced to return to “that absurd condition of tenants at halves,” or to paying wages higher than those paid in England?

Thanks again to all…

CM

Hello CM, what translation are you working on now, or is it the same one?

it's not something I know anything about but that is how I read it, so I think you have its meaning correct. I note through a quick google, that many US States, Virginia amongst them, in property rights laws still make reference to the terms "tenants by the entireties" or "tenants by the entirety" meaning tenants with sole, not shared, rights. Hope that helps.

We seem to have lost Nordmann at the moment so hopefully your post will lure him back out from hiding. And yes, thankyou, I am quite "pink" today, at least when I venture outside, as there's some snow here with a chill breeze, but it's bright and sunny.

Wow! Bright and sunny… I think I've read about that somewhere… But I don't remember exactly what it was; I'll try to see some images in the Net… Oh Yes! I see now… 
I am joking… Here we are in "rain by default" this month  —well, to be honest, last Tuesday there was a gap in the rain season and my wife and I caught the ball on the bounce and had a day off in a wonderfully sunny and snowy countryside with our beloved 4WD, just about a hundred Ks from home.

Yes, this is the same book I was asking things about last time (I think). It has got two volumes, and this is the second one. Theodore W. Allen on racism (The Invention of White Race) —a great book indeed.

Thanks a lot for your answer, I am quite sure it must be that, so I'll let it be this way unless a contradiction arises.

 Cheers!

I think MM is probably right, Comic Monster.  The wording in British English about house ownership is strange sometimes (going back to Medieval times when all land was held subject to the Crown).  Neither of my parents left a will so their house which was freehold came to my brother and I as "tenants-in-common in equal shares" though in law it's a freehold not a leasehold property.

Yes, you're right LadyinRetirement. Law jargon is always abstruse to me, in any language (it's probably a function of it to be so… That's just an opinion). 

Thanks for your contribution: the term "in equal shares" suggests me the possibility of an "a partes iguales" in Spanish, which sounds more natural to me than "al 50 por ciento"… That's useful; it didn't appear to my mind…

CM

Of course what both I and LiR were referring to are tenants' rights - while your question about "tenants at halves" would seem to refer to tenants' obligations, and in particular how much they had to pay or what proportion of their produce they had to give for the right to farm the land that they rented.

A similar situation used to exist between the owners of my house and their tenants living at the farm which is now my neighbours' house. The tenants paid rent in the form of a specified proportion of their agricultural produce (with some things being allowed for their sole use, such fish from the river and timber from the woods) but the entirety of the farm - all its buildings and lands - were still the sole property of the family that had (since the 1880s) owned the whole estate who and lived, when they visited, in what is now my house. This they had had built as a hunting lodge for weekends and holidays, while their principal home was a chateau about 30kms away. Needless to say they were very rich while the tenant farmers next door were not. It was further written into the tenancy agreement that the poor farmer's wife had to cook and provide the meals whenever the main family was in residence here - hence why my house originally had no kitchen.

Yes, Meles meles, many of these arrangements, strange as they may sound today, were well alive and kicking in 1620s Virginia. That's another reason of the difficult equivalence-finding process… But that's why a translator is needed. Words are one thing, and cultural practices (associated to sometimes very dissimular groups of words and ideas) quite another one.

Take care,

CM

An alternative interpretation of "tenants at halves" might be that two separate tenants shared the total tenancy (rather than having two separate tenancies) in what would these days be called joint tenancy, with both being equally responsible so that if one tenant in some way defaulted the other was legally bound to cover the difference - or alternatively it could mean that they were only required to cover up to half of the obligations in the event of the other's default. This would also have been important in terms of when one tenant chose to leave, or who inherited when one of the tenants died (similar situations of course exist today, such covering the electricity bills in a shared flat or whether a partner can continue to live in a house rented in another's name). But this is getting into complex legal issues and with different historic implications, and I see nothing in your book's original quotation to suggest this was what was meant. So for what it is worth I'm sticking with your interpretation.

Found this on the Web, about Tenants being entitled to half the profits. Obviously if the plantation never made a profit they would get nothing

1620 Mayflower

The Company planned to dispatch 800 new settlers to Virginia in prospect of a fast economic development. Their traveling costs were supported by the company and they all received supplies needed for their installation.They were to be distributed as follows : 200 tenants at Elizabeth Citie, 100 at Henrico, 100 at Charles Citie, 100 in Jamestown and 100 others in the service of the officials. Hereto were added 100 women for marrying tenants and 100 young apprentices assigned to plantations.It was expected that tenants receive half the profits from harvests of the plantations where they worked.
[05/31/1620]

Oh well done Trike, you've nailed it. I completely failed to take in the significance of the date in CM's initial post hence all my subsequent witterings.