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.Grotiusnever denied that indigenous authorities retained their general juris­diction over the land - something that Dutch trading companieseffectively accepted by seeking the approval o f these local authoritiesand even paying them for taking land out o f their jurisdiction.Butthe basic principle remained: land left waste or barren - i.e.unculti­vated - was not property and could be occupied by those able andwilling to cultivate it.Grotius s argument had clear affinities with theRoman law principle of res nullius, which decreed that any  emptything such as unoccupied land was common property until it wasput to use - in the case o f land, especially agricultural use.Thiswould become a common justification o f European colonization.13Grotius laid out a theory o f politics, property and war that amplyserved the purposes o f the world s most thoroughly commercialempire.But it would not suffice for a new kind o f imperialism thatwas already emerging elsewhere.In the following chapters, we shalltrace the development o f a uniquely capitalist mode of imperialism,which demanded different practices and theories, such as even themost aggressive justifications o f empire did not yet embrace.4A NEW KIND OF EMPI REAll the major European empires made use of settler colonies to someextent, but white settler colonies were the essence of British imperi­alism in a way that was true o f no other.The British, and particularlythe English in the early days of the Empire, self-consciously regardedthemselves as the first empire since Rome to succeed in enhancingimperial power by means of colonization.In the other Europeancases we have canvassed so far, empire was a matter o f dominatingtrade, or a means of extracting precious resources, in large part bymeans of indigenous labour.While both these forms o f imperialism,needless to say, required substantial degrees o f colonial settlement,for the English colonization became an end in itself, and no otherimperial power depended on white settler colonies to the samedegree.It was also England that first saw the emergence o f a capitalistsystem, and it was England that first created a form o f imperialismdriven by the logic o f capitalism.The combination o f capitalist social7 4 Empi re of Capi talproperty relations and the forceful expropriation of colonial territorymay seem to contradict the proposition that capitalism is characterizedby economic modes o f appropriation, in contrast to the extra-economic forms that dominated non-capitalist societies.Colonizationmay seem a more ancient, less capitalist form of imperial power thanis a commercial imperialism whose principle object is not the appro­priation o f territory but simply supremacy in trade.Yet it was Englishcolonization, in contrast to Venetian or Dutch commercial imperial­ism, that was responding to the imperatives o f capitalism.ColoniaIn 1516, Thomas More became, in his classic Utopia, the first majorEnglish writer to revive the ancient Roman concept o f colonia todesignate the settlement of foreign lands.The inhabitants of hisUtopia would, he proposed, send out their surplus population toestablish colonies in other territories.In Book II, More suggests that,ideally, occupying colonial land and making it fruitful would be tothe advantage o f both settlers and indigenous populations.But insome cases the colonists would, he argued, be justified in seizingterritory by force, even if it required the coercive displacement ofindigenous peoples.If local people were unwilling to join in thecolonists productive way of life, land not fruitfully used couldrightfully be seized by those who would render it fruitful.In suchcases, the colonists were entitled by natural law to appropriate land,without the permission (and here he goes further than Grotius wouldmore than a century later) of any local authority:if there is any increase over the whole island, then they draw outa number of their citizens out of the several towns, and send themA New Ki nd of Empi re 75over to the neighboring continent; where, if they find that theinhabitants have more soil than they can well cultivate, they fix acolony [colonia], taking the inhabitants into their society, if theyare willing to live with them; and where they do that of their ownaccord, they quickly enter into their method of life, and conformto their rules, and this proves a happiness to both nations; foraccording to their constitution, such care is taken of the soil thatit becomes fruitful enough for both, though it might be otherwisetoo narrow and barren for any one of them.But if the nativesrefuse to conform themselves to their laws, they drive them outof those bounds which they mark out for themselves, and useforce if they resist.For they account it a very just cause of war,for a nation to hinder others from possessing a part of that soil ofwhich they make no use, but which is suffered to lie idle anduncultivated; since every man has by the law of nature a right tosuch a waste portion of the earth as is necessary for his subsistence.Later in the sixteenth century, England would embark upon a brutalcolonial enterprise, justifying the forceful expropriation o f localpopulations in much the same terms as M ore s utopian project [ Pobierz caÅ‚ość w formacie PDF ]