the efficiency of the latifundia that they survived the collapse of the Western Roman Empire largely unscathed and many of them continued in approximately the same form into the Middle Ages (though their ownership often changed), as an important system of agricultural and economic organization. In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, the system became one of the first and most significant European exports to the New World, where haciendas and plantations were directly based on the Roman latifundia.

During the Roman empire, latifundia were huge estates of land worked by slaves that represent perhaps the earliest example of industrial, export-driven agriculture. These farms were owned by elite-class individuals, who would be socially shamed for making money by their labor. This created an incentive to buy more, smaller properties and consolidate their land ownership. This consolidation meant that many people lost the land they subsisted on and were forced into the wage economy.

In the modern colonial period, this same name has been given to farms created by the dual practices of awarding large tracts of land as payment for services and permitting locals to be forcibly recruited to work on them. This represents a historical continuation of the connection between latifundia and dispossessing populations and forcing them into labor relationships in order to profit the newly declared landholder.

Centuries after its establishment in ancient Rome, the large landholding called latifundium, plural latifundia, proved remarkably durable, and its influence can still be felt today.

As the European powers extended colonial rule, they established large properties, and royal decrees often awarded them to conquerors and administrators. The term is widely used in Latin America, where it is contrasted with the minifundia, or tiny properties of the masses, which were further reduced by inheritance among many heirs. Latifundia may be used as synonymous with plantations in the U.S. and the Caribbean, and with haciendas or fazendas in post-Independence Latin America.

Breaking up these vast holdings, which sometimes were as large as a county or province, became one of the primary goals of Latin American revolutionary movements. Ongoing struggles over land and calls for agrarian reform fueled the 20th-century civil wars in Guatemala and El Salvador, and the ascent of related Marxist regimes in Cuba and Nicaragua.

A latifundium was a Roman agricultural estate worked largely by peasants and slaves. The historical importance of these estates is usually brought into focus in general history books in relation to their proliferation during the second century B.C. and the implications for the health of the Roman state. Many poor farmers were displaced as aristocrats bought out large swaths of land from small farmers. The result was a decreasing pool of military recruits: only landowners could serve in the military. The brothers Tiberius and Gaius Gracchus were killed owing at least in part to their plan to redistribute the land. Marius, a general and consul, dropped the requirement of land ownership in order to increase the recruitment pool for the military. He understood that the defense of the vast Roman territories required numbers. Some opposed this policy on the grounds that the admission of farmers into the army would undermine the spirit and quality of the military. After Marius' death, his reforms were undone. The same problem presented itself under Julius Caesar, as he attempted to revive small agricultural landholdings, and he was assassinated by members of the Roman aristocracy who saw this and other popular reforms as a threat to their status. In short, land reform was no laughing matter. The aristocrats who dominated the Senate struggled against the practical reforms of the rulers, so as to preserve the latifundia and their privileged position in Roman society.

The historical significance of the latifundia is that their creation helped lead to social unrest in the later part of the Roman Republic.

The latifundia were large estates owned by riche landowners.  They were formed by buying up land form small farmers or taking over government land.  They were worked mainly by slaves and tenant laborers.

The development of these estates was a problem because it displaced people who used to be small farmers.  These people then tended to gravitate to the cities where they helped to form a large urban lower class that could be very unstable and prone cause trouble in bad economic times.  The presence of this underclass helped lead to turmoil such as that caused by the reforms of the Gracchi.