In Thomas More's classic Utopia, 1516, he argued that colonists would be justified in seizing territory by force if local people were unwilling to join in the colonists' productive way of life. Land not fruitfully used could rightfully he seized by those who would render it fruitful. In such cases, the colonists were entitled by natural law to appropriate land without the permission of any local authority.
The English would go even further, extending the principles outlined by More to encompass not just land unused or uncultivated altogether, but land not used fruitfully enough, and not in the right way, by the standards of English commercial agriculture.
to complicate the matter further that principle was orginally developed in England as a criticism of private ownership of land and advocacy of collective farms owned by the working class and then reapplied to justify theft from natives
In Thomas More's classic Utopia, 1516, he argued that colonists would be justified in seizing territory by force if local people were unwilling to join in the colonists' productive way of life. Land not fruitfully used could rightfully he seized by those who would render it fruitful. In such cases, the colonists were entitled by natural law to appropriate land without the permission of any local authority.
The English would go even further, extending the principles outlined by More to encompass not just land unused or uncultivated altogether, but land not used fruitfully enough, and not in the right way, by the standards of English commercial agriculture.
to complicate the matter further that principle was orginally developed in England as a criticism of private ownership of land and advocacy of collective farms owned by the working class and then reapplied to justify theft from natives