(Source: CUP)
Earlier this
year, Cambridge University Press published a book on 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.
ABOUT THE BOOK
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.
Provides a
comparative approach to the colonization of North America, including a study of
French, English, and Spanish colonies
Considers
colonization in an indigenous America, contrary to the prevailing Eurocentrism
of the history of early modern imperialism
Focuses on
property formation as a central dimension of colonization
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Allan Greer,
McGill University, Montréal
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).
TABLE 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.
More information
here
