Rosa Congost is Full Professor in economic history and researcher of the Centre for Research in Rural History at the University of Girona, Spain and ICREA Academy Researcher.Jorge Gelman is Senior Researcher and current Chair of the Instituto Ravignani, Universidad de Buenos Aires/CONICET, and Full Professor in history at the Universidad de Buenos Aires, Argentina.Rui Santos is Associate Professor in sociology and researcher at CICS.Nova and IHC at the Nova University of Lisbon, FCSH/Nova, Portugal.

• Introduction Rosa Congost, Jorge Gelman and Rui SantosChapter 1: Migration and Accommodation of Property Rights in the Portuguese Eastern Empire, Sixteenth – Nineteenth Centuries José Vicente Serrão and Eugénia RodriguesChapter 2: Alternative Uses of Land and Re-Negotiation of Property Rights: Scandinavian Examples, 1750–2000 Mats MorellChapter 3: Institutional Innovations and Economic Development in Lombardy, Eighteenth – Twentieth Centuries Andrea M. Locatelli and Paolo TedeschiChapter 4: The Shift to ‘Modern’ and Its Consequences: Changes in Property Rights and Land Wealth Inequality in Buenos Aires, 1839–1914 Julio Djenderedjian and Daniel SantilliChapter 5: Taming the Platypus: Adaptations of the Colonia Tenancy Contract to a Changing Context in Nineteenth-Century Madeira Benedita Câmara and Rui SantosChapter 6: Demythologizing and De-Idealizing the Commons: Ostrom’s Eight Design Principles and the Irrigation Institutions in Eastern Spain Samuel GarridoChapter 7: Hopes of Recovery: Struggles Over the Right to Common Lands in the Spanish Countryside, 1931–1936 Iñaki Iriarte-Goñi and José-Miguel LanaChapter 8: Hurdles to Reunification: Cultural Memories and Control over Property in Post-Socialist Rural East Germany Joyce E. Bromley and Axel WolzChapter 9: Property Rights in Land: Institutions, Social Appropriations, and Socioeconomic Outcomes Rosa Congost, Jorge Gelman and Rui Santos