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.

"Although landed property is a foundation of our legal, political, and economic systems, too rarely has it been explored in its historically contingent and even kaleidoscopic nature. In a colossal feat of research and synthesis, Allan Greer looks across an entire continent to explore the varied forms of property formation in the early modern era - and the inextricably related processes of Native dispossession. From one of our most eminent historians at the height of his powers, this book will serve as the starting point for all future discussion on the subject." - Francois Furstenberg, The Johns Hopkins University