Property and Dispossession - Natives, Empires and Land in Early Modern North America

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.

List of contents

1. Introduction: property and colonization; Part I. Three Zones Of Colonization: 2. Indigenous forms of property; 3. Early contacts; 4. New Spain; 5. New France; 6. New England; Part II. Aspects of Property Formation: 7. The colonial commons; 8. Spaces of property; 9. A survey of surveying; 10. Empires and colonies; Part III. Conclusion and Epilogue: 11. Property and dispossession in an age of revolution.

About the author

Allan Greer is a professor in the Department of History and Classical Studies at McGill University in Montreal, Canada. He holds the Canada Research Chair in Colonial North America at McGill University, Montréal. He has published seven books, including Mohawk Saint: Catherine Tekakwitha and the Jesuits (2005) and La Nouvelle-France et le monde (2009).

Summary

Allan Greer examines the processes by which forms of land tenure emerged and natives were dispossessed from the sixteenth to the eighteenth centuries in Mexico, New England, and French Canada. 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 in the Americas.

Product details

• Authors: Allan Greer, Allan (Mcgill University Greer
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press Academic
• Languages: English
• Product format: Hardback
• Released: 31.12.2017
• EAN: 9781107160644
• ISBN: 978-1-107-16064-4
• Dimensions: 160 mm x 236 mm x 33 mm
• Series: Studies in North American Indian History; Studies in North American Indi; Print on Demand; Studies in North American Indian History
• Subjects: Education and learning > Teaching preparation > Vocational needs; Non-fiction book > History > Miscellaneous; North America, Anthropology, Colonialism & imperialism, Indigenous Peoples, c 1500 onwards to present day, Social and cultural history, Colonialism and imperialism, Early modern history: c 1450/1500 to c 1700, History of the Americas, North America (USA and Canada), History and Archaeology, Relating to Native American people, HISTORY / Indigenous / General