The Long Land War
Metadata
- Author: [[Jo Guldi]]
- Full Title: The Long Land War
- Category: #books
Highlights
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Locke’s historical contribution was, rather, an argument for the superiority of one form of ownership-the ability to exclude-over other traditions of property in English law that recognized a right not to be displaced, or a right to hold land in common. Even in his time, Locke’s ideas were used to nullify native and collective versions of property holding around the world. In the following generations, Locke’s arguments would be used by the English to elevate the interests of a tiny minority of elites, who would instrumentalize Locke’s theory of property in the name of profit, both in England and around the globe. ยน5 Locke’s theory thus offers little by way of an explanation of the later historical moments when broad movements of working men, colonized subjects, women, and indigenous people demanded a system of justice that restored rights that they had lost as Lockean property came to dominate world 15 affairs.
- The Haitian story demonstrates a problem with narratives that describe occupancy rights as a product of the English Civil War or the French Revolution.
The stakes around property were higher in general in the colonies than in Europe. Settler colonial landscapes like Haiti-where indigenous people survived in scant numbers, having been enslaved or murdered-were historically the most impervious to claims about land justice. In Canada, Australia, and the United States, few cases effectively defended native rights in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.24 In settler colonial colonies, no Magna Carta stayed the hand of the colonizer; no rights whatsoever protected the inhabitants of the earth. Even when former slaves paid the price of blood for their freedom, European law recognized no possible claim to land.