David Hume viewed property as a relation between an object and its possessor. With land, he says it is even more psychological. “The sight of a thing is seldom a considerable relation and is only regarded as such when the object is hidden or very obscure, in which case we find that the view alone conveys a property.” By that logic, he says, a nation can claim a whole continent by being the first to discover it. “It is however, remarkable that both in the case of discovery and that of possession, the first discoverer and possessor must join to the relation an intention of rendering himself proprietor (Hume [1740], 506). Of course Christopher Columbus and all subsequent conquistadors had been appointed proxy “proprietors” by their patron governments, thus the right of possession. But how did they rationalize away the idea that the present occupants might also have a legitimate claim to possession? For that answer, we look to the Doctrine of Discovery.
During the time of the Crusades, and for years after, all European nations were united in their allegiance to Christianity, and all non-Christian nations were considered enemies. In five Hundred Years of Injustice: The Legacy of Fifteenth Century Religions Prejudice, Steve Newcomb documents the history of property right by conquest. “In 1452, Pope Nicholas V issued to King Alfonso V of Portugal the bull Romanus Pontifex, declaring war against all non-Christians throughout the world, and specifically sanctioning and promoting the conquest, colonization, and exploitation of non-Christian nations and their territories (Newcomb 1992, 1). As “discovery” and colonization became all the rage among European nations after Columbus, they each made agreements to honor each others claims, except when they didn’t. The overseas land-rush thus caused much violence by the European nations not only against the indigenous peoples who happened to already occupy those lands, but often against each other, especially after the Protestant revolution when the Christian nations were no longer united by Catholicism.
However, as Newcomb points out in the rest of his research, the Catholic Popes kept on issuing bulls (the line that divided all of the South American continent between Portugal on the east and Spain on the west is a good example.) and even some Protestant nations decided to honor them when it became politically expedient to do so.
“In 1823, the Christian Doctrine of Discovery was quietly adopted into U.S. law by the Supreme Court in the celebrated case, Johnson v. McIntosh. In Chief Justice John Marshall’s opinion, since the “Christian European nations had assumed ‘ultimate dominion’ over the lands of America during the Age of Discovery, and that - upon ‘discovery’ - the Indians had lost ‘their rights to complete sovereignty as independent nations’ and only retained a right of ‘occupancy’ in their lands” (Newcomb 1992, 2). I can really appreciate the logic of the U.S. government here. Locke’s theory of labor was sacred to all God-fearing American politicians and legal experts. If you are a farmer, then farming is your labor and your labor gives you the right to own the land. If you are a conquistador, then conquistadoring is your labor &c. &c. America couldn’t, after all, refuse to accept such already accepted wisdom.
I have already mentioned how Locke paid lip service to the Native Americans by using them as examples of his theory of labor (Locke [1690], 338) The “Nations of Americans” used bows and arrows to take possession of game animals and hides, and they used trees to build their homes, but they only (unwittingly) used Locke’s labor theory to justify their personal possessions. In spite of what Locke meant, or what anybody else thought he meant, the Native Americans never tried to take possession of the land itself because they had no such concept. The land to them was nature, wholly a part of their environment which included the water and the air and the sunshine. So I guess the European’s attitude was like “Oh well, if they don’t want it…” and when they couldn’t trick them out of it, they took it by force. After all, the Christian nations had honored the Doctrine of Discovery as law for centuries, and the newly formed government of the United States naturally inherited it from the English, purchased if from the French, and re-conquered it from the Spanish. The Native Americans never understood what was happening until it was too late, and Chief Justice Marshall declared it a done deal.
David Wilkins, in “A History of Federal Indian Policy” tells the long sad tale of Native Americans’ treatment by the Federal Government over the “land as a commodity” economic system. During those periods when the Government tried to redress past injustices by giving land back to the Indians, it was on the condition that the Indians learn to use it as a commodity, to help them assimilate into the free-market system. (Wilkins 2002). Thomas Paine, Henry George, Karl Polanyi and others would explain how this economic attitude was devastating to poor white people in America and Europe, but it was even more devastating to the Native Americans because they didn’t even understand what the white man meant by “land.”
Tuesday: "Thomas Skidmore Had A Plan to Save the Whole World"
Alert all your friends who won't give up their racial identities and/or who make money from owning private property that this blog challenges their personal and social constructs.
For those of you who have only recently joined us, my rants began on January 1, 2011. Scroll down to that date to begin.
My rants on racial identity began on July 9th, 2015.
My rants on private property began on July 14th, 2015.
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