August 06, 2007

How Europeans claimed the world

Finders keepers in the Arctic?

The Doctrine of Discovery is still alive in the modern world.The Lewis and Clark expedition marked and branded trees and rocks in the Pacific Northwest to prove the American presence and claim to the region. It also left a document at Ft. Clatsop, at the mouth of the Columbia River, in March 1806, and gave copies to Indians to deliver to whites who might arrive later to prove the U.S. claim to the Northwest. As the document stated, it was posted and circulated so that "through the medium of some civilized person . . . it may be made known to the informed world" that Lewis and Clark had secured land rights all the way to the Pacific Ocean on behalf of the U.S. government.

A decade later, as the U.S. and England argued about dueling discovery claims to the Pacific Northwest, Secretary of State John Quincy Adams and President James Monroe ordered American officials back to the Columbia "to reassert the title of the United States." In August 1818, Capt. James Biddle performed a textbook discovery ritual: In the presence of Chinook Indians on the north side of the Columbia River, he raised the U.S. flag, turned the soil with a shovel and nailed up a lead plate inscribed: "Taken possession of, in the name and on the behalf of the United States by Captain James Biddle." He repeated the performance on the south shore of the Columbia, with a wooden sign declaring American ownership of the region.
at

5 comments:

  1. writerfella4:01 PM

    Writerfella here --
    In the Declaration of Independence, the phrase "..all men are created equal..." meant just men, not women, and European men, period, to boot. Also in that document or perhaps in the US Constitution, Indians are reduced to a formula that a given number of Indian males in a state or territory shall equal one man for purposes of the census and determining Congressional representation. And that was for the benefit of the state or territory, not for the Indians themselves.
    Therefore, with a long history of such colonialism rampant, one is given to wonder just exactly what is meant by the phrase "...for all mankind.." carven into that plaque left on the moon by US astronauts in 1969...
    All Best
    Russ Bates
    'writerfella'

    ReplyDelete
  2. The Local Crank9:52 PM

    The Doctrine of Discovery, invented out of whole cloth by Chief Justice John Marshall in the M'Intosh case, is the remarkable proposition that white people gain fee simple title to land (superior to that of any non-white people who happen to have lived there for tens of thousands of years) just by looking at it, or, in the case of a king, just by looking at a map of it. Those white folk have vision powers that would put Superman to shame.

    ReplyDelete
  3. writerfella1:08 AM

    Writerfella here --
    O-o-o-o-o-o-kay. Since everyone looks at the moon, including white people, what does that really mean? OMIGOD, the Hubble!! Wow, there goes the stellar and galactic neighborhood!
    All Best
    Russ Bates
    'writerfella'

    ReplyDelete
  4. Rob10:39 AM

    I think a white man has to be somewhere physically before he can claim it. Looking at it isn't enough.

    ReplyDelete
  5. writerfella2:09 PM

    Writerfella here --
    Oh, writerfella is not so sure. Okay, the Russians plan to base their Arctic Ocean claims by physically traveling by submarine to the bottom of the sea and leaving an encapsulated Soviet flag. But Russia also claimed the portion of the planet Venus where their space probe landed if only because the probe's camera worked for all of 18 minutes. EuroMan still is as sly and crafty and clever and swarthy and ratlike as was his ancestor, Thuringen Man...
    All Best
    Russ Bates
    'writerfella'

    ReplyDelete

Note: Only a member of this blog may post a comment.