[dpc050505]

Most first nations at first contact had 0 conception of ownership, rather seeing it as some sort of stewardship (or if you put it in modern terms you could use the marxist notion of personal property where it's 'use it or lose it') as well as low enough populations that they figured there was enough to go around to share the land with settlers.

[James_K]

Even if the land was "shared", settlers still stole it for themselves.

[dgfitz]

Isn’t this the definition of a settler?

[giantg2]

Source?

Some of the nations were large, such as the Aztec. And at least a few of them understood right by conquest. They also had extensive trade routes across the continent, seeming to disprove the lack of ownership.

[int_19h]

You seem to be confusing the concept of "ownership" with that of "private property" (on immovables, especially). The "Marxist notion" of personal property still requires the concept of ownership.

[FireBeyond]

And if there happened to be people on the land they “wanted” well then there’s guns and smallpox blankets to take care of those pesky details.

“The people there didn’t have the concept of ownership” but some pioneers sure as hell made sure to enlighten them by laying claim to that same land and then threatening anyone for encroaching on it.

[watwut]

Except it was not shared, it was almost a genocide.

[stanleykm]

Nothing almost about it. This and the smallpox thing the sibling brought up are what we tell ourselves to feel better about what the truth is.

[scarby2]

genocide is an intentional act. Smallpox did 90% of the work and nobody lifted a finger, at the time nobody could have forseen the effect of smallpox on the native population.

After smallpox when the population of the Americas had been reduced by something like 90% they most certainly didn't need all the land.

[ConspiracyFact]

If the settlers had done what the first thousand or so invading cultures did and just exterminated the natives, they would have been able to cast them in whatever light they chose. Instead they gave them rather a lot of autonomous territory relative to their population, along with legal monopolies designed to prevent them from being forced into wage slavery.

Oops!

[fc417fc802]

> at the time nobody could have forseen the effect of smallpox on the native population

Are you really unaware that the colonials intentionally spread smallpox to the natives? This is not some obscure detail - it's in approximately all of the history textbooks in a fair bit of detail.

[IncreasePosts]

Sure, some tried, but smallpox and other diseases were doing a great job on their own. It didn't need a few blankets to make it a real pandemic.

[Aloisius]

The few references to potentially intentionally spreading disease, all well after they were spreading in the Americas, are unlikely to be the cause of more than a tiny sliver of deaths due to disease. The timelines simply do not match.

[fc417fc802]

I can't say I fully agree with the premise, but suppose we run with it.

If someone acted with clear intent to commit genocide, but the mass deaths would have happened anyway, does that clear them of the charge?

Put another way, if I stab someone, the knife goes in and all, but as I'm doing it a car also runs over him, am I no longer guilty of murder? Seems pretty questionable to me.

[Aloisius]

The people who committed genocide (or simply murder without cause) are clearly to blame for those they killed, directly and in many cases, indirectly.

As for your example, that's a bit convoluted. Perhaps clearer would be if you intend to genocide say, a town and meteor hits killing everyone before you get there as well as the neighboring town, it would be difficult to argue you're to blame for their deaths. That doesn't mean you're a nice person and we'd generally still lock you up for attempted genocide of the town you attempted to murder, but not of the town you didn't.

The meteor in real life was disease. By some estimates, 90% of the population in the Americas died from diseases the Spanish accidentally introduced by 1600, most the Spanish did not know existed.

[watwut]

It was an intentional act. They wrote about it being an intentional act. The violence was not an accidental nor rare event either, it was an intentional act too.

The east expansion took a lot of time, involved quite a few massacres and invonluntary relocations.

[jfengel]

And yet we took 100% of it, and forcibly relocated the survivors.