What was colonization of america

See also Neeson, Commoners , Locke's insistence on the right of unilateral appropriation in the state of nature, appropriation requiring no one's consent, is a feature that, according to Barbara Arneil, distinguishes his theory of property from that of Hugo Grotius. McCay, and James M. Robert I. Burns, ed.

Harvey and Hanns J. Prem, eds. On the prevalence of particular claims to resources in the Pacific Northwest, see Wayne Suttles, ed. Snow, The Iroquois Oxford, George M. Wrong, trans. Langton Toronto, , William F. Ganong Toronto, , Ross and Tyrel G. Moore, eds. There is a rich literature, most of it the work of anthropologists, on the northern Algonquian hunting territories, both in the distant past and in more recent times.

Highlights include Frank G. Richard M. See also Gilbert R. Edmund S. Kenneth A. Beauceville, Quebec, , 1: Madrid, , 2: , libro 4, titulo 12, ley v, April 4, , as quoted and translated in William B.

David E. Gibson, The Aztecs under Spanish Rule , — Since rocky and swampy land was not counted toward the total, estancias generally covered much larger areas than what the law specified.

Herman W. See, for example, Solano, Cedulario de tierras , , , Elinor G. Alvin Eustis Berkeley, Calif. Subsequent research in the field suggests that Chevalier simplified this process somewhat, overlooking regions that did not fit the pattern he described.

In a late borderland variant on the New Spain pattern of dispossession through the instrumentality of the colonial commons, native populations of Alta California were driven, in the late eighteenth and the early nineteenth century, to accept baptism and the Franciscan mission regime after ranging Spanish livestock had undermined their subsistence. Steven W. David J. See also James D. Leonards, N. Buck, and Nancy E.

Wright, eds. This point is sometimes overlooked in environmental approaches to history that slight the role of human agency. See, for example, Alfred W. To cite one example from a recent reference work, see Paul C. Robert A. For the modern property rights argument, see Douglass C. Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford. It furthers the University's objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education by publishing worldwide. Sign In or Create an Account.

Sign In. Advanced Search. Search Menu. Article Navigation. Close mobile search navigation Article Navigation. Volume Article Contents. Commons and Enclosure in the Colonization of North America. Some colonies were designed and funded by joint-stock operations, others by wealthy proprietors either singly or in small groups. All were expected to be revenue-producing.

And all would supposedly be ruled, in top-down fashion, by boards of officials in the mother country. But expectations were one thing, outcomes another. Distance and the unforeseen difficulties of life on the colonial ground threw most of these founding plans off-track.

In Massachusetts, in Virginia, and later in New York and Pennsylvania, home-grown legislative bodies sprang into being and assumed an increasing measure of control.

Indeed, the same decentralizing process developed even at the local level, as individual counties and towns took charge of their own affairs. This process, like the heavy reliance on unfree labor, seemed to reverse prevailing trend-lines in England—where, especially after , the governing center the monarchy was gathering more and more power to itself. Decentralization and local autonomy did not, however, mean democracy in any modern sense. Virtually everywhere the reins of power were held by elites.

Typically, these courts would handle taxes, land titles, estate probates, poor relief, militia training, and many other matters of everyday concern. Still, voting itself was limited to a certain portion of townspeople—in the earliest years, church members only in short, a religious test ; later on, those who exceeded a specified level on the tax-list a property test.

Either way a majority might well be excluded. And since these possibilities concerned men only—nowhere in colonial America could women vote—the limiting process was effectively doubled. Still other constraints were culturally determined. The aim of voting, where and when it might occur, was to reach a unanimous outcome a consensus ; conversely, majoritarian rule—deciding policy by head-count, for and against—was disapproved.

Seventeenth-century colonists had no concept of a loyal opposition; to the contrary, political opposition meant dis loyalty, possibly treason. To be sure, this attitude began to weaken in the eighteenth century, as the actual workings of colonial politics became increasingly fragmented and factionalized.

Last but hardly least, deference was a core principle of political, no less than social, life. The weakest point in this system was the position of the elites themselves—not in their authority over ordinary folk, but rather in their relation to each other.

The process of settlement and community-building had created a certain openness at the topmost level. Social credentials, like family pedigree, counted for less on this side of the ocean than on the other. And sudden opportunity—a bonanza tobacco crop, a market success in a rapidly expanding town or county—might push a few men far up the local wealth scale, and embolden them to claim a commensurate political role.

In short, leadership might become contested to a degree rarely seen in the more firmly established communities of the Old World. Conflict among rival elites peaked in a sequence of violent events during the last quarter of the seventeenth century. Both rebellions came near to success, but ultimately failed.

There were similar, though smaller, disturbances in Maryland and Carolina at around the same time. And in Massachusetts, the existing government was overturned in response to the so-called Glorious Revolution in England the ousting in of the Stuart line of monarchs, and its replacement by King William and Queen Mary.

Taken as a whole, this cluster of conflicts showed deep fault lines in the domain of leadership. But it was a passing phase. As one century yielded to the next, colonial society attained a more solid and settled shape. The position of the leaders seemed increasingly secure, within and without their own ranks.

What were their chief goals, their most cherished values, their abiding concerns? How did they think about the meaning of their lives? The Indians and Africans are unknowable at that level, but about the colonists somewhat more can be said. Many of the people who settled in the New World came to escape religious persecution. The Pilgrims, founders of Plymouth, Massachusetts, arrived in In both Virginia and Massachusetts, the colonists flourished with some assistance from Native Americans.

New World grains such as corn kept the colonists from starving while, in Virginia, tobacco provided a valuable cash crop. By the early s enslaved Africans made up a growing percentage of the colonial population. Which elements of each culture are evident in this portrait? The abundance of European goods gave rise to new artistic objects. For example, iron awls made the creation of shell beads among the native people of the Eastern Woodlands much easier, and the result was an astonishing increase in the production of wampum , shell beads used in ceremonies and as jewelry and currency.

Native peoples had always placed goods in the graves of their departed, and this practice escalated with the arrival of European goods. Archaeologists have found enormous caches of European trade goods in the graves of Indians on the East Coast.

Native weapons changed dramatically as well, creating an arms race among the peoples living in European colonization zones. Indians refashioned European brassware into arrow points and turned axes used for chopping wood into weapons. The most prized piece of European weaponry to obtain was a musket , or light, long-barreled European gun. In order to trade with Europeans for these, native peoples intensified their harvesting of beaver, commercializing their traditional practice.

The influx of European materials made warfare more lethal and changed traditional patterns of authority among tribes. Formerly weaker groups, if they had access to European metal and weapons, suddenly gained the upper hand against once-dominant groups. The Algonquian, for instance, traded with the French for muskets and gained power against their enemies, the Iroquois. Eventually, native peoples also used their new weapons against the European colonizers who had provided them.

The European presence in America spurred countless changes in the environment, setting into motion chains of events that affected native animals as well as people. Soon, beavers were extinct in New England, New York, and other areas. With their loss came the loss of beaver ponds, which had served as habitats for fish as well as water sources for deer, moose, and other animals.

Furthermore, Europeans introduced pigs, which they allowed to forage in forests and other wildlands. Pigs consumed the foods on which deer and other indigenous species depended, resulting in scarcity of the game native peoples had traditionally hunted.

Native peoples did not believe in private ownership of land; instead, they viewed land as a resource to be held in common for the benefit of the group. The European idea of usufruct—the right to common land use and enjoyment—comes close to the native understanding, but colonists did not practice usufruct widely in America.

Colonizers established fields, fences, and other means of demarcating private property. Native peoples who moved seasonally to take advantage of natural resources now found areas off limits, claimed by colonizers because of their insistence on private-property rights. Microbes to which native inhabitants had no immunity led to death everywhere Europeans settled.

Along the New England coast between and , epidemics claimed the lives of 75 percent of the native people. In the s, half the Huron and Iroquois around the Great Lakes died of smallpox. As is often the case with disease, the very young and the very old were the most vulnerable and had the highest mortality rates.

The loss of the older generation meant the loss of knowledge and tradition, while the death of children only compounded the trauma, creating devastating implications for future generations. Some native peoples perceived disease as a weapon used by hostile spiritual forces, and they went to war to exorcise the disease from their midst.