Land reform in the 1950s largely eliminated a centuries-old system of debt peonage.

Businessmen and other people with large sums began depositing cash with the money changers, whose centuries-old system has worked through wars and natural disasters.

When the British took over administration, the centuries-old system of land proprietorship was left intact.

When you start fiddling with a centuries-old system like this, you're just asking for trouble.

In Scotland the centuries-old system of minimum legal rights to a deceased estate for a widowed spouse were expressly extended to civil partners by section 131 of Act.

This is especially true since the Chicago Board of Trade voted last month to start electronic trading of financial contracts during the daytime, side by side with the raucous, centuries-old open-outcry system.

But, then, you also insist that they conform to a centuries-old ecclesiastical system that may conflict with equally venerable ideas that they inherited from their families or social standing in the world.

Missionaries are generally welcomed throughout the nation, although their teachings seldom replace centuries-old systems of spiritual belief and practice that form the basis of cultural unity.

Since 1868, Japan's rulers, worried by ever-greater foreign encroachment, had overthrown the centuries-old system of the Shōgun, who acted as regent for the emperor.

There is a bitter irony here, that the party that insists it is conservative and patriotic now threatens the centuries-old political system that lies at the core of the US's national identity.