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Early American Places
Properties of Empire: Indians, Colonists, and Land Speculators on the New England Frontier
A fascinating history of a contested frontier, where struggles over landownership brought Native Americans and English colonists together
Properties of Empire shows the dynamic relationship between Native and English systems of property on the turbulent edge of Britain's empire, and how so many colonists came to believe their prosperity depended on acknowledging Indigenous land rights.
As absentee land speculators and hardscrabble colonists squabbled over conflicting visions for the frontier, Wabanaki Indians' unity allowed them to forcefully project their own interpretations of often poorly remembered old land deeds and treaties. The result was the creation of a system of property in Maine that defied English law, and preserved Native power and territory. Eventually, ordinary colonists, dissident speculators, and grasping officials succeeded in undermining and finally destroying this arrangement, a process that took place in councils and courtrooms, in taverns and treaties, and on battlefields.
Properties of Empire challenges assumptions about the relationship between Indigenous and imperial property creation in early America, as well as the fixed nature of Indian "sales" of land, revealing the existence of a prolonged struggle to re-interpret seventeenth-century land transactions and treaties well into the eighteenth century. The ongoing struggle to construct a commonly agreed-upon culture of landownership shaped diplomacy, imperial administration, and matters of colonial law in powerful ways, and its legacy remains with us today.
Properties of Empire shows the dynamic relationship between Native and English systems of property on the turbulent edge of Britain's empire, and how so many colonists came to believe their prosperity depended on acknowledging Indigenous land rights.
As absentee land speculators and hardscrabble colonists squabbled over conflicting visions for the frontier, Wabanaki Indians' unity allowed them to forcefully project their own interpretations of often poorly remembered old land deeds and treaties. The result was the creation of a system of property in Maine that defied English law, and preserved Native power and territory. Eventually, ordinary colonists, dissident speculators, and grasping officials succeeded in undermining and finally destroying this arrangement, a process that took place in councils and courtrooms, in taverns and treaties, and on battlefields.
Properties of Empire challenges assumptions about the relationship between Indigenous and imperial property creation in early America, as well as the fixed nature of Indian "sales" of land, revealing the existence of a prolonged struggle to re-interpret seventeenth-century land transactions and treaties well into the eighteenth century. The ongoing struggle to construct a commonly agreed-upon culture of landownership shaped diplomacy, imperial administration, and matters of colonial law in powerful ways, and its legacy remains with us today.
320 pages, Hardcover
Published April 23, 2019
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
April 29, 2019
Properties of Empire examines how Wabanaki power in Maine forced colonial land speculators to acknowledge Native conceptions of property. Saxine does a good job disentangling the litigious, complicated story of land transactions on the New England Frontier. Since these settler colonial narratives are largely a story of land deeds, Properties of Empire is the best narrative of the Anglo-Wabanaki frontier produced in at least 3 decades. Must read for anyone interested in Maine history, and is an important prequel to Alan Taylor's Liberty Men and Great Proprietors.
July 13, 2021
This book was pretty good but not great. I will say that this historian brings a new light to the history of Maine and an area Native Americans in the region called the Dawnland. Interesting to see how early English settlers based their claims to land upon deeds knowingly signed by Native Americans in the 1600s while speculators looked to grants from the king or land grants from colonies and even townships.
Professor Saxine's argument also asserts that, from the 1600s into the later 1700s, there was a new idea of land ownership which melded, even imperfectly, English ideas of deeds which Native expectations of the newcomers becoming part of the Common Pot, incorporated into Native social relationships and the view that the land sales were part of a diplomacy that assumed a continuing relationship between seller and buyer.
Ultimately, as European power in North America grew, and especially once the English defeated the French decisively in the Seven Years War, English colonization and then American claims to the area pressed back defeated and much less numerous Native Americans.
One interesting aspect was a brief snippet at the end which briefly addressed modern Native America legal struggles to regain control over some of their ancestral land, partly on the basis of Europeans having intentionally misinterpreted early deeds and treaties.
Professor Saxine's argument also asserts that, from the 1600s into the later 1700s, there was a new idea of land ownership which melded, even imperfectly, English ideas of deeds which Native expectations of the newcomers becoming part of the Common Pot, incorporated into Native social relationships and the view that the land sales were part of a diplomacy that assumed a continuing relationship between seller and buyer.
Ultimately, as European power in North America grew, and especially once the English defeated the French decisively in the Seven Years War, English colonization and then American claims to the area pressed back defeated and much less numerous Native Americans.
One interesting aspect was a brief snippet at the end which briefly addressed modern Native America legal struggles to regain control over some of their ancestral land, partly on the basis of Europeans having intentionally misinterpreted early deeds and treaties.
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews