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Property, territory, and colonialism: an international legal history of enclosure

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  06 February 2019

Henry Jones
Henry Jones*
Affiliation:
Durham Law School, Durham University, Durham, UK
*
*Author email: [email protected]
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Abstract

This paper is concerned with how law organises and controls space. It offers a new history of enclosure in the context of early English colonialism. By drawing this connection, the paper opens up new lines of enquiry into how law organises and produces space at both the domestic and international scale.

Keywords

legal historypropertyenclosure
Type
Research Article
Information
Legal Studies , Volume 39 , Issue 2 , June 2019 , pp. 187 - 203
Copyright
Copyright © The Society of Legal Scholars 2019 

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Footnotes

†

Versions of this article were presented at the Association of American Geographers Annual Meeting 2015; Law and the Resources of Critique, Kent 2015; the IGLP Workshop, Madrid 2016; Bristol Law School Law and Regulation Primary Unit 2016; and at Melbourne Law School Institute for International Law and the Humanities 2017. I would like to thank all participants on those occasions, as well as Jane Rooney, Aoife O'Donoghue and Sean Thomas for reading later drafts, and several anonymous reviewers along the way. All errors remain my own.

References

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36 Blomley, above n 32, at 4.

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48 Ibid, at 86.

49 In theory, because the practice leading up to the conceptual shifting of land into property is filled with examples which don't fit the theory.

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51 Ibid. See more generally MacFarlane, A The Origins of English Individualism: The Family, Property and Social Transition (Oxford: Blackwell, 1978)Google Scholar.

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53 Seipp, above n 47.

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55 Ibid, at 84–85.

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60 Ibid, p 49.

61 Ibid.

62 MacMillan, above n 56, p 63.

63 See Oxford Dictionary of National Biography entry for Humphrey Gilbert.

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70 Ibid.

71 Ibid, p 164.

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77 The classic account of Cromwell in Ireland is Pendergast, JP The Cromwellian Settlement of Ireland (London: PM Haverty, 1868)Google Scholar, whose estimate is as high as 80%; a more recent account, Siochrú, M Ó God's Executioner: Oliver Cromwell and the Conquest of Ireland (London: Faber & Faber, 2008)Google Scholar estimates at between 30–40%. The Down Survey itself gave a figure of 25% (see http://downsurvey.tcd.ie/index.html). This figure is debated in recent revisionist histories such as Reilly, T Cromwell: An Honourable Enemy – The Untold Story of the Cromwellian Invasion of Ireland (W&N, 2000)Google Scholar.

78 For example Wood gives him this title, Wood, above n 5, p 113.

79 For an account of Petty's life, see Linklater, A Owning the Earth (London: Bloomsbury, 2013) ch 4Google Scholar. For Petty's works, see Hutchinson, T (ed) The Collected Works of Sir William Petty (London: Routledge, 1997)Google Scholar. The Down Survey can be viewed, with much commentary and interactivity, at the Trinity College Dublin Down Survey website: see http://downsurvey.tcd.ie/index.html.

80 For a brief account of the life of William Petty see his entry in the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. For a more detailed account see Fitzmaurice, E The Life of Sir William Petty (London: J Murray, 1895)Google Scholar.

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83 Wood cites the work of Petty and Locke as the most obvious place to see the connection between English colonialism and English capitalism: Wood, above n 5, p 162.

84 A digital version of the charter can be found at http://avalon.law.yale.edu/17th_century/nc01.asp (Yale Law Library).

85 MacMillan above n 56, p 97. The Prince-Bishops of Durham ruled the County Palatinate of Durham with local powers equivalent to that of the King, including taxation and separate courts. Durham did not send representatives to parliament until 1654, and retained its Palatinate status until the 1836 Durham (County Palatinate) Act.

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97 Ibid, p 294, referring to ‘wild Fruit, killed, caught, or tamed … beasts’.

98 Ibid, p 296. Locke finds European cultivation 1000 times more valuable than the wilds of America, at p 298; and at p 299 explains that Europe no has no natural and common land, due to industriousness and money, whereas American common land lays waste. At p 301 he explains that 100-thousand acres in inland America cannot be owned as there is no money to be drawn to it, and so it would return to nature.

99 Tully, above n 93, p 156.

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101 Tully calls this a mistake: Tully, above n 93, pp 160–162, continuing his challenge to Macpherson and others.

102 Locke above n 92, p 301.

103 Ibid, p 289.

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105 Ibid, p 113.

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112 Ibid, p 60.

113 Thomas More Utopia (Stephen Duncombe ed, Minor Compositions 2012) pp 43–44.

114 Polanyi, above n 7, p 37.

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122 Ibid, p 98.

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124 Bentham, J Theory of Legislation (London: Kegan Paul, 1931) p 113Google Scholar.