Land Tensure System, With very limited exceptions, mostly in the United States, all land ownership is technically encumbered in some fashion. What this means is that nobody actually “owns” the entirety of their property, just most of it. This allows the state to impose taxes upon land that is held under any system other than allodial title, which grants the holder complete rights to everything.
Land tenure systems mostly derive from ancient laws wherein the king, as sovereign lord, owned everything in his kingdom including the people of it. He would then allow others to occupy portions of his land in return for various obligations due to him. A knight, for example, would have to fight for the king. The knight, in turn, would sublet portions of his tenancy from the king to the peasants below him, who in turn were required to render obligations to him as the king’s agent.