villagization

plural villagizations · alternative Commonwealth UK villagisation

1. countableuncountableResettlement of citizens into designated villages by governmental or military authorities, often to counter guerrilla activities.

   1955, R. W. Sorensen, Hansard, Fifth Series, Volume 542, Session 1955-56, 21 June, 1955, p. 1207, Other developments are taking place in Malaya. Naturally, villagisation is at first often resisted by those who are compelled to live in the new villages; nobody likes being torn up by the roots.

   2 more examples

   In late 1984, the Ethiopian government began a program of villagization which was intended to regroup the scattered homesteads, small hamlets and traditional villages of the entire countryside into a completely new pattern of grid-plan villages, laid out in accordance with central directives.

   1991, Alex de Waal, Evil Days: Thirty Years of War and Famine in Ethiopia, New York: Human Rights Watch, page 231

   2012, Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o, In the House of the Interpreter: A Memoir, New York: Knopf Doubleday, 2015, Chapter 13, p. 36, Villagization, the innocuous name the colonial state gave to the forced internal displacement, was sprung on the Kenyan people in 1955, […] but living within the walls of the school, I had not heard about the agents of the state bulldozing people’s homes or torching them when the owners refused to participate in the demolition.