Seeing like a state covers this - it could be that in the interest of making ownership legible (while dispossessing the Native Americans), people could only buy

Seeing like a state covers this - it could be that in the interest of making ownership legible (while dispossessing the Native Americans), people could only buy contiguous land. In particular, I'm reminded of the piece on how the tsar and soviets both tried to get rid of the strip system that the peasants liked because it was easy to farm and manage from their level.