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Essay about European Expansion Moves to the New World

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Thus in the beginning all the World was America. Interestingly, the development of Lockes ideas of property and money came at a time when Europeans expansion into the New World was just beginning to take hold (source). The very definition of economic imperialism is that countries expand their territories to collect resources in order to garner economic profit. The more robust economies tend to become the most powerful nations, and so the control of resources is sought out in order to monopolize both wealth and power in the world (Lovelace, 2014). Nations that are at odds with this general philosophy are threatened with aggressive assimilation tactics that in the end tend to further reinforce the dominance of the imperialist nation. From …show more content…

Locke and Winthrop, another staunch defender of England's right to aboriginal land maintained that enclosure was a signature way to prove one's ownership of the land, and since the Amerindians had enclosed non of their land to farm on, they had no right to it (Arneil, 1996, p. 63). Winthrop goes on further to say, that these cultivation rights were sanctioned by God (Arneil, 1996, p. 65). To Locke, this justified the appropriation of land to European settlers, who would use the land in what he believed to be a productive manner. This theory was a way to create moral legitimacy for taking land away from the indigenous people (Arneil, 1996, p. 1). Locke notes that the source of all value comes from owning and labouring the land (Locke, 1956, par. 40), and this is the point where the notion of money rises in importance. The storage value of money allows one to transcend one from a simple labourer on the land to an international trade merchant. In Locke's view, this is more efficient and civilized practice as increasing one's wealth can effect more intense and efficient labour of the land and generate profit from all over the world. You can see the shift from the notion that physical labourers of the land deserve to own the land; rather, engaging in world commerce identifies people who are most efficient at using their land, with wealth being a mark of productivity (Arneil, 1996, p. 69). Accumulating land and enclosing

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