Cambridge studies in North American Indian history Property and dispossession : natives, empires and land in early modern North America

Type

Book

Authors

Greer, Allan

ISBN 10

1316613690

ISBN 13

9781316613696

LCCN

E98.L3G73

DDC

323.1197

Tags

North America, Canada, Mexico, America, Indigenous Peoples, Colonization, Property formation, New France, New Spain, New England

Series Name

Cambridge studies in North American Indian history

Abstract

"Allan Greer examines the processes by which forms of land tenure emerged and natives were dispossessed from the sixteenth to the eighteenth centuries in New France (Canada), New Spain (Mexico), and New England. By focusing on land, territory, and property, he deploys the concept of 'property formation' to consider the ways in which Europeans and their Euro-American descendants remade New World space as they laid claim to the continent's resources, extended the reach of empire, and established states and jurisdictions for themselves. Challenging long-held, binary assumptions of property as a single entity, which various groups did or did not possess, Greer highlights the diversity of indigenous and Euro-American property systems in the early modern period. The book's geographic scope, comparative dimension, and placement of indigenous people on an equal plane with Europeans makes it unlike any previous study of early colonization and contact in the Americas." -- Provided by publisher.

Description

Contents

Introduction: property and colonization -- Part I. Three zones of colonization -- Indigenous forms of property -- Early contacts -- New Spain -- New France -- New England -- Part II. Aspects of property formation -- The colonial commons -- Spaces of property -- A survey of surveying -- Empires and colonies -- Part III. Conclusion and epilogue -- Property and dispossession in an age of revolution.

Biblio Notes

Includes bibliographical references and index.

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