That part isn't crazy -- for example, it doesn't make sense to say Europeans stole land from indigenous peoples unless the indigenous peoples owned it in some way.
I'd say it's more sensible than you give it credit for. To say that the land belongs to everyone and then have a group remove you from it and deprive you of access to it, you can absolutely say it was stolen from you even though you did not own it, because it went from belonging to everyone to being monopolized by a few.
If land belongs to everyone, then I (as part of everyone) have an ownership stake in it even if I do not own it exclusively. Or maybe my group has exclusive ownership of it, or at least over particularly lucrative fruits of it (e.g., hunting and fishing), and I have a stake as a member of the group that is not extended to everyone.
There were also non-Europeans that viewed land ownership much closer to how Europeans did than the usufructian model we're discussing (the empires of pre-colonial South America, Central America, China, Korea, and Japan come to mind). And we can't forget the colonial logic of erasing indigenous history and culture, in particular those aspects of history and culture that give indigenous people claims to land.
What are you saying? Obviously joe shmoe from outside should also be able to use the land so long as he doesn't deprive his fellows, what I am saying is that making it exclusive introduces stealing to a paradigm that otherwise doesn't have a very recognizable form of ownership.
I'm not saying all colonized people held this view, obviously they didn't (at least three groups you mention had slavery pre-colonially, i.e. several Native American nations and Korea), simply arguing for the coherence of a perspective that some aboriginal and Native American nations held.
I'm saying many indigenous people did have land ownership as part of their societies, even if the specifics of that concept differed from European ideas about land ownership. The idea that European settlers introduced the idea that one could have property rights in land is ahistorical, egregiously so depending on the indigenous society you're looking at.
simply arguing for the coherence of a perspective that some aboriginal and Native American nations held
I agree individual, exclusive ownership of land in the European sense was pretty foreign to plenty of aboriginal Australians and indigenous North Americans, but I think a lot of these societies had ideas of collective land overship (maybe extending only to using the land or taking its fruits) that Europeans could have recognized had they had any incentive to. We know there were conflicts between various indigenous societies, we know the Americas were much more densely populated before the initial wave of European diseases hit (I'd imagine Australia was the same), we know more people means less abundance for all, and we know groups fought over land all over the world, including the Western Hemisphere and East Asia. This all points to ideas about at least collective ownership of property being common, or at least not foreign.
It also strikes me as suspicious that the idea indigenous people had a "live and let live" approach to land is strongest in the places where the eradication of indigenous people was most thorough (North America, Australia, and Argentina come to mind). We know justifying the theft of indigenous land was a conscious part of colonial projects, and "they didn't really own it, they just lived there for a little" is one attempt at justification.
Europeans often had a different version of land ownership than the people they colonized, but Europeans were not the only ones to develop the idea that people could have rights to use land, or use the fruits of land, or destroy some of the wealth of the land -- all property rights that can be stolen in the sense we talk about stealing lands from indigenous people.
There were also huge differences in land ownership philosophies among the many distinct societies outside of Europe, and plenty of these had land ownership laws that were not radically different from European laws.
That part isn't crazy -- for example, it doesn't make sense to say Europeans stole land from indigenous peoples unless the indigenous peoples owned it in some way.
I'd say it's more sensible than you give it credit for. To say that the land belongs to everyone and then have a group remove you from it and deprive you of access to it, you can absolutely say it was stolen from you even though you did not own it, because it went from belonging to everyone to being monopolized by a few.
If land belongs to everyone, then I (as part of everyone) have an ownership stake in it even if I do not own it exclusively. Or maybe my group has exclusive ownership of it, or at least over particularly lucrative fruits of it (e.g., hunting and fishing), and I have a stake as a member of the group that is not extended to everyone.
There were also non-Europeans that viewed land ownership much closer to how Europeans did than the usufructian model we're discussing (the empires of pre-colonial South America, Central America, China, Korea, and Japan come to mind). And we can't forget the colonial logic of erasing indigenous history and culture, in particular those aspects of history and culture that give indigenous people claims to land.
What are you saying? Obviously joe shmoe from outside should also be able to use the land so long as he doesn't deprive his fellows, what I am saying is that making it exclusive introduces stealing to a paradigm that otherwise doesn't have a very recognizable form of ownership.
I'm not saying all colonized people held this view, obviously they didn't (at least three groups you mention had slavery pre-colonially, i.e. several Native American nations and Korea), simply arguing for the coherence of a perspective that some aboriginal and Native American nations held.
I'm saying many indigenous people did have land ownership as part of their societies, even if the specifics of that concept differed from European ideas about land ownership. The idea that European settlers introduced the idea that one could have property rights in land is ahistorical, egregiously so depending on the indigenous society you're looking at.
I agree individual, exclusive ownership of land in the European sense was pretty foreign to plenty of aboriginal Australians and indigenous North Americans, but I think a lot of these societies had ideas of collective land overship (maybe extending only to using the land or taking its fruits) that Europeans could have recognized had they had any incentive to. We know there were conflicts between various indigenous societies, we know the Americas were much more densely populated before the initial wave of European diseases hit (I'd imagine Australia was the same), we know more people means less abundance for all, and we know groups fought over land all over the world, including the Western Hemisphere and East Asia. This all points to ideas about at least collective ownership of property being common, or at least not foreign.
It also strikes me as suspicious that the idea indigenous people had a "live and let live" approach to land is strongest in the places where the eradication of indigenous people was most thorough (North America, Australia, and Argentina come to mind). We know justifying the theft of indigenous land was a conscious part of colonial projects, and "they didn't really own it, they just lived there for a little" is one attempt at justification.
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Europeans often had a different version of land ownership than the people they colonized, but Europeans were not the only ones to develop the idea that people could have rights to use land, or use the fruits of land, or destroy some of the wealth of the land -- all property rights that can be stolen in the sense we talk about stealing lands from indigenous people.
There were also huge differences in land ownership philosophies among the many distinct societies outside of Europe, and plenty of these had land ownership laws that were not radically different from European laws.
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"Colonized people knew they had rights to the land so everyone at the time knew it was stolen" is apologia for colonialism now? Really?
Beyond that, being accurate about history is inherently important.