The Great Land Rush and the Making of the Modern World

tags: LAW 343 Dispossession

Notes

the intellectual and the applied history of property rights is of one piece.

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Part of the civil society, though, embodied defiance, because, before state control was firm, individuals frequently seized property.

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We made this country. Found it and we made it. Worth blood and empty bellies.

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individualized and transferable property rights became explicit core values in a “free world” ideology;

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The idea of a simple and exclusive right has been embedded in popular and theoretical understandings of property. So expressed, it is a mis- leading guide for many historical situations.

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t is an argument that engages only white occupants. Neither Richer nor Stark associates indigenous peoples with . rights to the land.?

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orkable balances between cheap access and marketable interests.

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the assertiveness and influence of individual and corporate colonizers generally forced governments to retreat

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Where do property rights in society originate? A relationship between persons regarding property can emerge in at least four ways - the exercise of norms or personal ethics that people understand and accept, the arranging of contracts, the setting up of organizations of people with like interests, and government activities and legislation.

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as Ellickson proposes, that norms obtain in how some people sort out workaday lives with one another; however, harmony and restraint were rare during the serious business of initial allocations of property rights.

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erratic integrity of colonizing governments.

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Contracts seem a recognition of the political rights of first peoples, but their devotees were sharp land dealers.

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forecast of improvement, based on core tenets of European - especially English — culture, was an instrumental idea on frontiers, and it chal- lenged the standing of indigenous peoples and pioneer occupants

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A troubling feature of private regulatory associations was their recourse to threats and violence,

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Any arrangement of property rights that places no burden on first-comers to consider the impact of thexr‘unlawful appro- priation on late arrivals and on the environment is problematic

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Subjects or citizens who obeyed the letter of the law were left sadly behind.

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hustling occupants, not bungling governments, made frontier land valuable.

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John Locke (1632-1704), who proposed that people could, by adding labour to things found in a state of nature, exercise a maker’s right that entitled them to articles, including fields.

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a weakly controlled initial forma- tion of property rights bears responsibility for malevolent cruelty and prosperity. Karl Marx and Joseph Schumpeter urged people to think of major economic change as destructive and liberating simultaneously. The great land rush was such an episode.

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although many of them would have denied it, they were squatting. Cotton growers in southern Mississippi during the early nineteenth century, for example, used capital first for slaves and buildings and delayed payments to government land offices, perhaps hoping for Congress to waive their obligations

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Reminds me of the corporate logic of waiting for a repatriation tax holiday

scrutiny of transactions that appropriated resources to see if they had been characterized by just steps.™™ If just steps were followed, then the entitlement so created may be considered legitimate.

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What is the imagined baseline?

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history can illustrate how some experiments in so-called bargaining worked out.

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Market Failure

Frontiers have been regions of interaction where “no one has an enduring monopoly on violence”

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order and technical support — troops, land offices, cadastral maps, courthouses, and banks - to advance marketable interests in landed property.

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Recall the cadastral map as an example in Seeing Like a State

once people cleared fields, planted crops, and erected shanties it was uncomfortable for governments to sell the land from under them.

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Once launched on their improve- ments, they never ceased to demand protection so that “things can go forward.”

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label “speculator” was applied in many circumstances to prompt or condone punitive action.

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rings a bell………

In this study, a squatter is someone who violates formal rules to occupy land in order to originate an interest.

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governments found it awkward to punish or oust squatters. For political, economic, and even humani- tarian reasons, officials avoided ejection, either because occupation probably involved economic and settlement activity that the state believed furthered its presumed civilizing mission

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To obstruct or combat occupation, yet avoid a political backlash some governments sold or granted substantial blocks of land to com- panies or group-colonization promoters.

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Improvement or betterment lies at the heart of Locke’s notion of prop- erty rights.

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To improve the land meant to apply labour and capital, so as to boost the land’s carrying capacity and hence its market value.

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While first peoples were adept cultivators and grazers, where biota and climate permitted, colonizers still thought that they stood in the way of improvement

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Christianity, which has been, of all religions, “the most insistently anti-natural.”*

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hat did lands produce as they were? Nothing. “The lands owe their value principally to us,

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Notes

the intellectual and the applied history of property rights is of one piece.

Part of the civil society, though, embodied defiance, because, before state control was firm, individuals frequently seized property.

We made this country. Found it and we made it. Worth blood and empty bellies.

individualized and transferable property rights became explicit core values in a “free world” ideology;

The idea of a simple and exclusive right has been embedded in popular and theoretical understandings of property. So expressed, it is a mis- leading guide for many historical situations.

t is an argument that engages only white occupants. Neither Richer nor Stark associates indigenous peoples with . rights to the land.?

orkable balances between cheap access and marketable interests.

Other grazers by the 188os were stringing barbed wire on public land without government consent.™ The pattern of colonizers pushing ever to increase their interests in the land — and usually succeeding — surfaced repeatedly,

In our definition of property rights, relationship stands out, because it underlines the social and political character of property rights.

the assertiveness and influence of individual and corporate colonizers generally forced governments to retreat

as Ellickson proposes, that norms obtain in how some people sort out workaday lives with one another; however, harmony and restraint were rare during the serious business of initial allocations of property rights.

erratic integrity of colonizing governments.

Contracts seem a recognition of the political rights of first peoples, but their devotees were sharp land dealers.

forecast of improvement, based on core tenets of European - especially English — culture, was an instrumental idea on frontiers, and it chal- lenged the standing of indigenous peoples and pioneer occupants

A troubling feature of private regulatory associations was their recourse to threats and violence,

Any arrangement of property rights that places no burden on first-comers to consider the impact of thexr‘unlawful appro- priation on late arrivals and on the environment is problematic

Subjects or citizens who obeyed the letter of the law were left sadly behind.

hustling occupants, not bungling governments, made frontier land valuable.

John Locke (1632-1704), who proposed that people could, by adding labour to things found in a state of nature, exercise a maker’s right that entitled them to articles, including fields.

a weakly controlled initial forma- tion of property rights bears responsibility for malevolent cruelty and prosperity. Karl Marx and Joseph Schumpeter urged people to think of major economic change as destructive and liberating simultaneously. The great land rush was such an episode.

scrutiny of transactions that appropriated resources to see if they had been characterized by just steps.™™ If just steps were followed, then the entitlement so created may be considered legitimate.

if the pie has grown and all parties share in the increase

What is the imagined baseline?

history can illustrate how some experiments in so-called bargaining worked out.

Frontiers have been regions of interaction where “no one has an enduring monopoly on violence”

order and technical support — troops, land offices, cadastral maps, courthouses, and banks - to advance marketable interests in landed property.

once people cleared fields, planted crops, and erected shanties it was uncomfortable for governments to sell the land from under them.

Once launched on their improve- ments, they never ceased to demand protection so that “things can go forward.”

label “speculator” was applied in many circumstances to prompt or condone punitive action.

In this study, a squatter is someone who violates formal rules to occupy land in order to originate an interest.

governments found it awkward to punish or oust squatters. For political, economic, and even humani- tarian reasons, officials avoided ejection, either because occupation probably involved economic and settlement activity that the state believed furthered its presumed civilizing mission

To obstruct or combat occupation, yet avoid a political backlash some governments sold or granted substantial blocks of land to com- panies or group-colonization promoters.

Improvement or betterment lies at the heart of Locke’s notion of prop- erty rights.

To improve the land meant to apply labour and capital, so as to boost the land’s carrying capacity and hence its market value.

While first peoples were adept cultivators and grazers, where biota and climate permitted, colonizers still thought that they stood in the way of improvement

Christianity, which has been, of all religions, “the most insistently anti-natural.”*

hat did lands produce as they were? Nothing. “The lands owe their value principally to us,