American Indian Law Journal

Volume 10 Issue 1 Article 4

1-25-2022

John Locke's Theory of Property, and the Dispossession of

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Murray, Calum (2022) "John Locke's Theory of Property, and the Dispossession of Indigenous Peoples in
the Settler-Colony," American Indian Law Journal: Vol. 10: Iss. 1, Article 4.
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 JOHN LOCKE’S THEORY OF PROPERTY, AND THE DISPOSSESSION OF
INDIGENOUS PEOPLES IN THE SETTLER-COLONY
By Calum Murray
I. ABSTRACT ................................................................................................2
II. INTRODUCTION .........................................................................................2
III. “THUS IN THE BEGINNING ALL THE WORLD WAS AMERICA” ....................3
IV. “THE IMPROVEMENT OF LABOUR MAKES THE FAR GREATER OF [LAND’S] VALUE
..................................................................................................................6
V. LOCKE’S AGRICULTURAL IMPROVEMENT ARGUMENT AND THE ENCLOSURE
MOVEMENT ..............................................................................................10
VI. CONCLUSION.............................................................................................11

1
 I. ABSTRACT
This paper explores how John Locke’s theory of property, elaborated in chapter five of his
Second Treatise of Government, provided a compelling conceptual and practical justification
for the appropriation of Indigenous peoples’ territories in America by the early English settler-
colonists of the 17th century. It examines how his property theory facilitated the nullification
of Native American conceptions of land through the superimposition of European private
property regimes in the settler colony. It further highlights briefly how indistinguishable
dynamics also characterize the contemporary Israeli/Palestinian settler-colonial context, where
the reverberations of Locke’s thought on property are pervasive. To do so, this paper examines
two of the key components of Locke’s conceptualization of property (namely, human beings’
transition from a state of nature to political society, and the agricultural improvement
argument) specifically in the context of their application in settler-colonial settings. Ultimately,
this paper hopes to generate a more exhaustive appreciation of Locke’s theory of property by
underlining its implications in settler-colonial enterprises and its function in abetting the
expropriation of autochthonous lands.
II. INTRODUCTION
“The buffalo followed the stars, and the people followed the buffalo”.1 While this
evocative phrase encapsulates the essence of Native American conceptions of land, it has also
become emblematic of indigenous peoples’ ongoing resistance to the increasing
commodification of their sacred and ancestral lands, most notably through the ongoing
construction of the Dakota Access and Keystone XL oil pipelines in the United States and
Canada.2 The controversy surrounding the legitimacy of these construction projects results
predominantly from conflicting understandings of land, its purpose, and its meaning. Whereas
some proponents of the pipelines herald a vision of land as an asset with pecuniary potential
and as a resource that exists solely to satisfy human needs in an oil-driven market economy,
Native American communities continually reassert their conceptualization of land as
constitutive of their traditional modus vivendi, and as an integral and inseparable element of
their “identity […] as a distinct people”.3 This essay underscores the continuities between this
setting and the clashes of conceptions of land that occurred, and continue to occur, in the settler-
colonial context.
Specifically, this paper examines how John Locke’s theory of private property, elaborated
in Chapter V of his Second Treatise of Government, provided a compelling conceptual and
practical justification for the appropriation of Native American lands by European settler-
colonists in the 17th century, and facilitated the nullification of Native American conceptions
of land through the superimposition of European private property regimes in the settler-

1
Nick Estes, Our History is the Future: Standing Rock Versus the Dakota Access Pipeline, and the Long
Tradition of Indigenous Resistance, 8 (Verso 2019).
2
Id.
3
JAMES TULLY, Locke in Contexts: An Approach to Political Philosophy, 153 (Quentin Skinner, ed., Cambridge
University Press 1993).

2
colony.4 In addition, this paper highlights how indistinguishable dynamics also characterise the
contemporary Israeli/Palestinian settler-colonial context, where the reverberations of Locke’s
thoughts on property are remarkably pervasive.
Accordingly, this paper first demonstrates how Locke’s conceptualization of the “New
World” and its indigenous inhabitants as being in a state of nature rationalized the European
settler-colonial encounter in America and the dispossession of its aboriginal peoples. Second,
this piece delineates how Locke’s improvement argument fortified the justification for
appropriating Indigenous territories by invalidating Indigenous peoples’ understandings of
land because of their failure to place ideas of enclosure and improvement through sedentary
agricultural labor at their nucleus. It also demonstrates how this reasoning continues to sustain
the ongoing dispossession of aboriginals in Palestine by the Israeli settler-colonial enterprise.
Finally, this essay briefly considers how the appropriation of communally owned land during
the Enclosure Movement in England was also characterized by “discourse[s] of
improvement”.5
III. “THUS IN THE BEGINNING ALL THE WORLD WAS AMERICA”
While the influence of Locke’s thought in cultivating liberal political theory and informing
contemporary understandings of private property is undisputed,6 the impact his thinking has
had in assisting the European colonial encounter is “passed over in silence”.7 By signalling that
“in the Beginning all the World was America”, Locke inadvertently made this “vast […]
continent an integral part of Western political philosophy”.8 Locke’s chapter on property is
emblematic of the intertwinement between liberal notions of political society and property on
one hand, and the European colonial project on the other.9
Indeed, it is hardly a coincidence that many of the examples Locke uses to illustrate his
notion of the “state of nature” are derived from observations of Native American modus
vivendi.10 According to Locke, human beings existed first in a state of nature before entering
political society.11 In the state of nature, private property in the “Earth” can be acquired through
‘mixing’ one’s “Labour with” a resource. This is because “every Man has Property in his own
Person”, a position he illustrates by noting how “The Fruit, or Venison, which nourishes the
wild Indian, […] in common, must be his, and so his, i.e. a part of him”.12 Locke exemplifies
his ‘labor theory’ by noting how natural law enables “the Deer that Indian’s who hath killed it;
’tis allowed to be his Goods, who hath bestowed Labour upon it”.13 Further, in the state of

4
JOHN LOCKE, Second Treatise of Government and A Letter Concerning Toleration (first published 1689/1690,
Oxford University Press, 2016).
5
MARGARET DAVIES, PROPERTY: MEANINGS, HISTORIES, THEORIES (Routledge Cavendish 2007) 93.
6
GREGORY ALEXANDER AND EDUARDO PENALVER, AN INTRODUCTION TO PROPERTY THEORY (CUP 2012) 35.
7
TULLY supra note 3 at 146.
8
Herman Lebovics, The Uses of America in Locke’s Second Treatise of Government, 47 J. HIST. OF IDEAS 567
(1986)
9
Andrew Fitzmaurice, Liberalism and Empire in Nineteenth Century International Law, 117 THE AMERICAN
HISTORICAL REVIEW 122 (2012).
10
TULLY supra note 3 at 141-42.
11
ALEXANDER AND PEÑALVER, supra note 6, at 37.
12
LOCKE, supra note 4, at 15.
13
Id. at 16-17.

3
nature, individuals can reap the “spontaneous products”14 of their labor for elementary
sustenance,15 providing this appropriation leaves “enough, and as good left in common for
others”16 (Locke’s “proviso”)17 and providing it does not “spoil” the original resource.18 Locke
also stipulates that private property can be acquired without the “Consent of all the
Commoners”.19 In contrast to this “natural mode of labor-based property”,20 Locke identifies
political society as a later stage of human development (“the civiliz’d part of Mankind”),21
where individuals have established state-centred political institutions and “positive Laws to
determine Property” and resolve property disputes which become pervasive after the creation
of money,22 which generates a situation where individuals can accumulate more property than
is required for mere sustenance.23
Locke’s political society is hence construed in contrast to his state of nature. However,
upon closer examination, this distinction is revealed to be a flagrant contrast between European
understandings of legitimate political organization and property on one hand,24 and Indigenous
American conceptions on the other, one that resultantly warrants the right to appropriate Native
American lands without the consent of its inhabitants.25 Indeed, Locke initially indicates that
European colonists’ interactions with Natives occurred “perfectly in a state of Nature”.26 Locke
interprets Natives’ practices which involved “hunting, gathering, trapping, fishing, and non-
sedentary agriculture” as labor necessary to ensure primitive subsistence, thereby reinforcing
his contention that these peoples lived and operated within a setting regulated by natural law.27
Moreover, Locke takes Native American legal systems, which indeed lacked a state-
centered, sovereign and authoritative entity (at least in the European sense of the term) to
regulate the use of property as evidence that Native American forms of political organization
fall below his threshold for establishing political society. This is despite his acknowledgment
of the existence of “Kings”, which he dismisses as mere “Generals of the Armies” as opposed
to rightful state officials.28 The disputes over property that occurred among Natives are said to
be resolved without the recourse to “positive Laws”,29 but rather are resolved on an ad hoc
basis by individuals performing the function of adjudicator only temporarily: the hallmark,
according to Locke, of conflict resolution in the state of nature.30 Needless to say, the obvious
consequence of Locke’s categorization is that the consent of the Natives it not required to seize

14
Barbara Arneil, The Wild Indian’s Venison: Locke’s Theory of Property and English Colonialism in America
44 POLITICAL STUDIES 60 (1996).
15
LOCKE, supra note 4, at 15.
16
Id. at 16.
17
ROBERT NOZICK, ANARCHY, STATE AND UTOPIA, 175 (Basic Books, 1974).
18
LOCKE, supra note 4, at 17.
19
Id. at 16.
20
TULLY supra note 3 at 142.
21
LOCKE, supra note 4, at 17.
22
Id.
23
ALEXANDER AND PEÑALVER, supra note 6, at 42.
24
TULLY, supra note 3 at 141.
25
Id. at 145.
26
LOCKE, supra note 4, at 9.
27
TULLY, supra note 3 at 156.
28
LOCKE, supra note 4, at 55.
29
Id. at 17.
30
Barbara Arneil, John Locke, Natural Law and Colonialism, 13 HISTORY OF POLITICAL THOUGHT 587 (1992).

4
their lands, thereby inadvertently denying indigenous people a sense of agency which is,
ironically, a fundamental tenet of liberal political theory.31 In this light, Locke’s
characterization can also be understood as a pragmatic effort to bypass processes of treaty
making with the indigenous populations, which colonists often deemed to be illegitimate.32
Indeed, many of the prominent English settlers in the American settler-colonies, such as
Samuel Parchas and John Winthrop (founder of the Massachusetts Bay Colony), argued that
treaties with First Nations were invalid since treaties could only be enacted by legitimate state
institutions, which the Natives were deemed to lack.33 Crucially, these colonists attributed the
absence of legitimate institutions to the fact that Natives still lived in a state of nature, which,
they argued, curtailed the need to acquire their consent to confiscate their lands.
Another implication of Locke’s characterization of Natives as exiting in a state of nature is
that European understandings of property are treated as unquestionably superior to Native
American conceptions. This belief in superiority can initially be identified in Locke’s
contention that Native Americans have neither the need nor the desire to exit the state of nature
and enter political society. For Locke, the hunting and gathering undertaken by Indigenous
communities indicates their indifference towards enlarging “their Possessions of Land” or
widening their “Ground[s]” which in turn abridges the need for establishing political society.34
These peoples are relegated to a state of nature by virtue of their limited desires for
accumulation as compared to the European settlers who, ostensibly, desired indigenous lands
more than the Natives themselves.35 Arguably Locke’s categorization is premised on an
arbitrary and Eurocentric vision of what constitutes a legitimate property right. In an
“unimaginative” way,36 Locke universalizes specifically European ideas of property and
superimposes them over Native American ideas, thereby placing his theory within the larger
colonial narrative of universalism.37 In his characterization of Native American land use as
being based solely on “individual labor”,38 Locke evidently overlooks the rationales, beliefs,
and cultures that underlie aboriginals’ land conceptions. He disregards the fact that ancient
indigenous custom determined property rights not according to the products of labor, but rather
according to the territories in which “hunting, trapping [and] gathering” would be undertaken
by particular clans and tribes pursuant to the belief that land cannot be owned and divided for
private ownership, but rather it is the land that owns its inhabitants.39 Through Locke’s theory,
Native Americans are thus “assimilated to an [inferior] stage of European development” and

31
ELLEN WOOD & NEAL WOOD, A TRUMPET OF SEDITION: POLITICAL THEORY AND THE RISE OF CAPITALISM –
1509-1688, 135 (NY University Press 1997).
32
Joseph Singer, Original Acquisition of Property: From Conquest and Possession to Democracy and Equal
Opportunity, 86 IND. L. J. 763 (2011).
33
BARBARA ARNEIL, JOHN LOCKE AND AMERICA: THE DEFENCE OF ENGLISH COLONIALISM, 132 (OUP 1996).
34
LOCKE, supra note 4, at 55.
35
TULLY, supra note 3, at 152.
36
DAVIES, supra note 5, at 95.
37
Emmanuelle Jouannet, Universalism and Imperialism: The True-False Paradox in International Law? 18
EUR. J. INT’L L. 379 (2007).
38
TULLY, supra note 3, at 139.
39
TULLY, supra note 3, at 154.

5
are not treated according to their own understandings of land.40 Native American notions of
property are thus “downgraded” and subsumed under European notions of property.41
This examination uncovers the justification for appropriating Natives’ lands that is
dissimulated within Locke’s theory.42 While his theory defines Amerindians “by the
specifically European institutions they lack”,43 Arneil indicates how the only way they could
have avoided Locke’s categorization and consequently the expropriation of their lands would
have been for them to become European “in all significant ways”.44 Locke’s implicit
prescription echoes the civilizing mission that was the dominant feature of European
colonization until the 20th century, and exposes the inherently imperial character of his theory.
While Rose treats “force and violence [as] the nemesis of property”, this particular reading of
Locke reveals how these attributes are implicitly built into his approach to property.45
IV. “THE IMPROVEMENT OF LABOUR MAKES THE FAR GREATER PART OF [LAND’S] VALUE”
In his account of the foundations of imperialism, Edward Said developed the concept of
“imaginative geographies” to represent how imperial powers ‘imagine’ particular meanings of
land to vindicate their self-proclaimed sovereignty over foreign territories.46 “Imagined
geographies” are accompanied by “rationales” aimed at justifying the appropriation of these
territories and eradicating the meanings accorded to land by these territories’ indigenous
inhabitants.47 Locke’s agricultural improvement argument constitutes one such rationale.
According to Locke, it is “Labour […] which puts the greatest part of Value upon Land,
without which it would scarcely be worth anything”.48 He claims that it is the “improvement
of labour [which] makes the far greater part of the Value of land”,49 and posits that “Land that
is left wholly to Nature, that hath no improvement of Pasturage, Tillage, or Planting, is [indeed]
Waste”. Locke again refers explicitly to Native Americans by asserting that “for want of
improving [their fertile land] by Labour, [Natives] have not one hundredth part of the
Conveniences” that European agrarian practices generate;50 thus, their failure to improve their
lands following Locke’s prescription means that “[Native] Americans” are “poor in all the
Comforts of Life”.51

40
TULLY, supra note 3, at 139. Emphasis added.
41
Id. at 147.
42
Id. at 149.
43
Id. at 155.
44
Arneil, supra note 14.
45
CAROL ROSE, PROPERTY AND PERSUASION: ESSAYS ON THE HISTORY, THEORY, AND RHETORIC OF OWNERSHIP
269 (Westview Press 1994).
46
Edward Said, Invention, Memory, and Place 26 CRITICAL INQUIRY 175 (2000). See also, Orientalism
(Penguin Modern Classics 2003), pp.49-73, in which Said also comprehensively discusses the concept of
“imaginative geographies”
47
GARY FIELDS, IMAGINED GEOGRAPHIES: PROPERTY RIGHTS, LAND IMPROVEMENT AND THE ORIGINS OF STATE
TERROR IN PALESTINE, in TERROR AND ITS REPRESENTATIONS 234 (Larry Portis ed., Presses Universitaires de la
Mediterranée 2008).
48
LOCKE, supra note 4, at 23.
49
Id. at 22.
50
Id.
51
Id.

6
 The deployment of Locke’s improvement “ideology” to justify appropriating aboriginals’
lands constitutes the common thread linking the European colonists’ dealings with Native
Americans to the ongoing settler-colonization of Palestine,52 despite the differences between
these two contexts.53 Indeed, while the European settler-colonial administrators in America
viewed the lands principally as repositories of potential economic wealth, the Zionist settler-
colonization of Palestine is defined by a more profound “theological” motivation.54 Zionist
thought presents the settlement of Palestine as a “biblical burden” and as the precondition for
re-establishing a long lost connection with the ancient land of Israel.55 Nevertheless, although
the territories in America and Palestine are ‘imagined’ differently by those seeking to
appropriate them, Locke’s improvement rationale remained pervasive in justifying the
acquisition of lands in both contexts, which demonstrates the extensive practical potency of
Locke’s ideas in facilitating settler-colonial activities.56 Accordingly, the geographies in both
settings were ‘imagined’ as unimproved, under-productive, wasted and vacant lands, thereby
activating the settlers’ right to appropriate them.57
Arguably the most important aspect of Locke’s argument and this ‘imagined geography’ is
the characterization of indigenous inhabitants as being neither ‘industrious’ nor ‘rational’
which is used to explain their inability to “cultivate [their] lands in the proper fashion”, leaving
them “open for use by” settler-colonists.58 For Locke, although “God gave the World to Men
in common”, he really only gave it to the “industrious and rational” – those individuals deemed
capable of improving land and drawing from it “the greatest conveniences of Life” through
their labor. Indeed, “it cannot be supposed that [God] meant [land] should always remain
common and uncultivated”.59 According to Locke, the “earth is there to be made [as]
productive” as possible, thereby condemning Native American conceptions and uses of land
which did not prioritize commodification and the generation of conveniences.60 In Locke’s
vision, improvement is synonymous “with civilisation itself”,61 and European agrarian
practices are correspondingly quantifiably more productive and ‘sophisticated’ than
autochthonous hunting and gathering.62 Locke’s universalisation of productivity and
convenience-generation means that land which is not cultivated industriously and rationally
(i.e. with the goal of producing conveniences) is ‘imagined’ as squandered terra nullius.63
Locke’s contention legitimizes claims that Native Americans are neither industrious nor

52
BRENNA BHANDAR, COLONIAL LIVES OF PROPERTY: LAW, LAND, AND RACIAL REGIMES OF OWNERSHIP, 8
(Duke University Press 2018).
53
Gary Fields, “This is Our Land”: Collective Violence, Property Law, and Imagining the Geography of
Palestine, 29 J. CULTURAL GEOGRAPHY 267 (2012).
54
BHANDAR, supra note 52, at 130.
55
Id.
56
Fields, supra note 53, at 234.
57
See generally, Karl Widequist, Lockean Theories of Appropriation: Justifications for Unilateral
Appropriation, 2 PUBLIC REASON 3 (2010).
58
TULLY, supra note 3 at 157.
59
LOCKE, supra note 4, at 18.
60
WOOD & WOOD, supra note 31, at 131.
61
TULLY, supra note 3 at 164.
62
LOCKE, supra note 4, at 17.
63
TULLY, supra note 3 at 163.

7
rational because of their failure to use their land in a specifically European manner based on
“Pasturage, Tillage, or Planting”.64
Echoing Locke’s argument, an English colonist in New Plymouth, Robert Cushman,
presented a justification for dispossessing the area’s aboriginal communities by arguing that
they “are not industrious” because they lack the intellectual faculties required for making
appropriate use of the land by commodifying it.65 Also, John Cotton (a Massachusetts Bay
Colony minister) argued that Native Americans’ title to the land could not reasonably be
recognized because “they make no […] improvement” to the land.66 Not only do these
arguments legitimate the appropriation of Native Americans’ lands by presenting them as
unacceptably under-exploited, “barren” and therefore “destined to be improved” by industrious
European cultivation,67 they also discriminate against Native Americans due to their nomadic
culture, which necessarily prioritized non-sedentary, subsistence living over commodification
and improvement.68 Additionally, such arguments discriminate against Native Americans on
the fact that they lacked the specifically European technology necessary to make continue
improvements to their lands.69
There are continuities between these characterizations of Native Americans and those
attributed to the indigenous populations of Palestine by Israeli settlers. Theodor Herzl
underscored the unimproved and visibly barren nature of Palestinians’ lands as a justification
for establishing a Jewish homeland in Palestine.70 Moreover, Arthur Ruppin contended that
Europeans’ agricultural systems based on sedentary cultivation and land improvement
generated superior standards of living to those enjoyed by Palestine’s Arab populations, who,
to their demise, appeared indifferent to their land’s significant economic potential.71 The flavor
of Ruppin’s argument is ineluctably Lockean. It essentially presents Palestinians as “poor in
[…] Comforts of Life” because of their failure to adopt European practices.72 Further, Ruppin
contended that “Jews [were] a product of the twentieth century” contrary to Palestinians who
had not entered the modern age.73
Bhandar observes how Zionist settlements in Palestine are premised on “Enlightenment
perspectives” and discourses of superiority which place “Jews on the side of modernity” while
relegating the indigenous peoples to an inferior, pre-modern state.74 As one Palestinian
explained, “I planted [olive] trees to become rooted to the land”.75 To many Palestinians, olive
trees symbolize a profound cultural and historical anchorage to the land rather than a means of

64
LOCKE, supra note 4, at 23.
65
Quoted in TULLY, supra note 3, at 156.
66
TULLY, supra note 3, at 150.
67
Fields, supra note 53
68
BHANDAR, supra note 52, at 118.
69
See generally, John Bishop, Locke’s Theory of Original Appropriation and the Right of Settlement in Iroquois
Territory, 3 CAN. J. PHIL. 311 (1997).
70
Fields, supra note 53.
71
ARTHUR RUPPIN, THE AGRICULTURAL COLONISATION OF THE ZIONIST ORGANISATION IN PALESTINE, 2
(Hopkinson & Co 1926).
72
Widequist, supra note 57.
73
RUPPIN, supra note 71, at 3.
74
BHANDAR, supra note 52, at 130.
75
Fields, supra note 53.

8
improving it and increasing its productivity.76 While Palestinians see the trees in this way,
Zionist settlers interpret them as evidence of an illegitimate and ultimately inferior form of land
usage. They consider such land usage to be the mark of an inferior and unindustrious people, a
narrative whose Lockean character is difficult to avoid.77
Israeli settlers accordingly characterize the “Palestinian geography” as an empty space, and
actively present this perceived vacancy as a valid reason for appropriation. 78 For example, in
his vindication of the construction of Israeli settlements on Palestinian land, the former mayor
of Ariel decried Palestinians’ ‘unproductivity’ and ‘idleness’. He stressed that Palestinians
“don’t plant!” and “don’t cultivate”, while settlers, on the other hand, “made something [in
Ariel]”.79 This statement reveals the embeddedness of Locke’s agricultural improvement
argument in contemporary narratives and its continuing practical relevance in justifying the
appropriation of Palestinian territories.
Another significant aspect of Locke’s improvement argument is the requirement that land
be enclosed. According to Locke, enclosure is both the mark and the consequence of
industrious labor. He notes how “As much Land as a Man […] Improves […] so much is his
Property” and thus “inclose[s] it from the Common”.80 In America, the Natives’ failure to
enclose their territories for sedentary agricultural purposes was often presented as “part and
parcel of [their] unproductive use of the earth”,81 and as a justification for appropriation.82 For
example, Winthrop argued that English settlers can seize Native Americans’ territories because
“they inclose noe Land”.83 Similarly, Francis Higginson asserted that, unlike English settlers,
Native Americans “have no right to their […] lands” because they haven’t “any settled places”
and entertain a nomadic lifestyle which precludes enclosure.84
Interestingly, Winthrop and Higginson presented these arguments in favor of appropriation
before Locke published his Second Treatise of Government.85 Therefore, it may be argued that
Locke’s ideas were symptomatic of an extensive discourse of ‘advancement’, discovery, and
expansion at the time rather than the undisputed and identifiable justification for the European
settler-colonization of America – and, subsequently, the Zionist enterprise in Palestine.
Because Lockean ideas were already being actively implemented in America before he
composed his theory, this appraisal seems initially plausible. Nonetheless, although Locke was
indeed operating from within a specific tradition of thought and became, during the course of
his career, engulfed in scientific discussions that emphasized the agricultural benefits of
enclosure and improvement, Locke’s reality was arguably not so benign.86 Given especially his

76
Anne Meneley, Time in a Bottle: The Uneasy Circulation of Palestinian Olive Oil, 38 MIDDLE E. REP. 18
(2008).
77
BHANDAR, supra note 52, at 29.
78
Fields, supra note 53.
79
Quoted in Fields, supra note 53
80
LOCKE, supra note 4, at 17.
81
ROSE, supra note 45, at 19.
82
Allan Greer, Commons and Enclosure in the Colonisation of North America, 117 AM. HIST. REV. 365 (2012).
83
Quoted in TULLY, supra note 3 at 150.
84
TULLY, supra note 3, at 150.
85
See generally, David Armitage, John Locke, Carolina, and the Two Treatises of Government, 32 POL.
THEORY 602 (2004).
86
WOOD & WOOD, supra note 31, at 133.

9
personal and professional involvement in the English colonial venture, Locke was well aware
of the implications of his argument.87 Also, the lingering presence of improvement narratives
in the Israeli-Palestinian context showcases how Locke’s theory, although perhaps not
invariably referred to explicitly, nonetheless continues informing settler-colonial processes of
dispossession.
V. LOCKE’S AGRICULTURAL IMPROVEMENT ARGUMENT AND THE ENCLOSURE
MOVEMENT
These processes also have antecedents in the “landscapes of enclosure and dispossession”
that took shape in England during the Enclosure Movement.88 The Enclosure Movement
progressively transformed communally owned land into private allotments, and “replaced the
[perceived] chaos of open fields and common lands with a neat patchwork of hedged fields”.89
The Enclosure Movement is relevant to studies of settler-colonial appropriation because the
Lockean discourses that underpin settler-colonial ventures explored in this paper were not
conceptualized, developed and applied in a vacuum. Rather, as Bhandar suggests, many of the
property regimes used by European settler-colonizers to appropriate indigenous peoples’ lands
were first and foremost practiced, refined, and perfected in the European context, before being
exported and adapted in the settler-colonial context90
Just as in the settler-colonies, Lockean notions of land improvement were pivotal in
facilitating the appropriation of the English commons, and were “cited systematically as the
basis” for justifying the enclosure of these lands.91 For the purposes of materializing this radical
‘re-imagination’ of England’s geography, enclosure advocates often characterized, in a
Lockean manner, common lands as wasted and derelict resources, which could only be put to
good use through enclosure and improvement.92 Communal lands were said to generate
“unemployment, idleness, vagrancy and crime”, and enclosed and improved lands were
presented as antidotes to what were perceived to be unproductive and consequently illegitimate
modes of communal ownership.93
While the proponents of enclosure referred to private property holders as “virtuous”
individuals, they also persistently stigmatized communal ownership as being the product of the
uneducated and “misdirected” of society, in a way that echoes the routine characterization of
aboriginals in America and Palestine as being unindustrious and irrational because they failed
to enclose and improve their lands agriculturally.94 Through the emergence of class discourses
in the ceaseless debates concerning the Enclosure Movement arose a narrative whereby in order
to enhance the quality of life of the poor and bolster the economic productivity of the English

87
Armitage, supra note 85.
88
Fields, supra note 53.
89
LAURA BRACE, HUSBANDING THE EARTH AND HEDGING OUT THE POOR in LAND AND FREEDOM: LAW,
PROPERTY RIGHTS AND THE BRITISH DIASPORA, 9 (A.R. Buck, John McLaren and Nancy Wright, eds., Ashgate
Publishing 2001).
90
BHANDAR, supra note 52, at 23-28.
91
ELLEN WOOD, ORIGINS OF CAPITALISM, 89 (Monthly Review Press 1999).
92
Id. at 9.
93
Id.
94
Id.

10
commons, these wasted lands needed to be improved to their fullest potential, a process which
necessarily involved “molding” the lower classes into industrious and productive labor.95
Needless to say, such descriptions echo the European settler-colonial experience in which
Native Americans’ title to land was deemed legitimate only insofar as it was “molded” to
conform to European requirements. There are also striking similarities between the disdain for
communal conceptions of land exhibited by improvers in England, and that which
foregrounded the invalidation of Native American and Palestinian land conceptions.
VI. CONCLUSION
Locke might well be regarded as an “apologist for the expropriation of indigenous lands
through [settler-] colonial expansion” by drafting a property theory that both justified the
appropriation of Native American lands by European settlers, and continues to Israeli
settlements in Palestine.96 Locke’s view of Native Americans as living in a state of nature
provided the groundwork upon which settler-colonial aspirations and the nullification of Native
American property conceptions could be materialized. Further, Locke’s notion of agricultural
improvement further fortified the case for the “unilateral appropriation” of indigenous lands
both in America and Palestine.97 Finally, ideas of improvement were also prevalent in
vindicating the expropriation of communally held lands during the Enclosure Movement.
This conceptualization of Locke’s property theory is vital for acknowledging how an
appraisal of private property regimes is incomplete without considering how these regimes
developed alongside “colonial [and domestic] modes of appropriation”, which destroyed
livelihoods and obliterated alternative understandings of land, all for the sake of productivity.98
It is also conceptually relevant for understanding how the hegemonic and seemingly benign
idea of private ownership – and its associated discourses of improvement – is tainted by a
history of dispossession that persists into the present. Indeed, property laws based on Lockean
notions of improvement and economic output that were instituted by the British Empire in India
continue to facilitate the socially and environmentally harmful activities undertaken by multi-
national corporations there.99 Also, the idea of bolstering economic ‘development’ in the
Global South can be interpreted conceptually as a poignant manifestation of Locke’s
improvement argument that closely resembles the imperial rationales for appropriation put
forth by European and Zionist settlers, as well as improvers in England.100 Importantly,
however, in the context Israel’s unwavering and fervently expansionist claims, and in light of
the persisting disregard for Native Americans’ concerns over the construction of oil pipelines
through their traditional territories,101 it is helpful to uncover the inherently Lockean ideas that
belie these recent developments as a viable starting point for both vindicating the increasingly

95
BRACE, supra note 89, at 13.
96
DAVIES, supra note 5, at 7.
97
Bishop, supra note 69.
98
BHANDAR, supra note 52, at 3.
99
See generally, David Arnold, Agriculture and “Improvement” in Early Colonial India: A Pre-History of
Development, 5 J. AGRARIAN CHANGE 505 (2005).
100
See generally, Shiraz Dossa, Slicing Up Development: Colonialism, Political Theory, Ethics, 5 THIRD
WORLD QUARTERLY 887 (2007).
101
Estes, supra note 1.

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precarious rights of indigenous communities worldwide and resisting the persistent
superimposition of private property conceptions over all others.

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