# Countries purchasing land **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [August 16, 2019, 4:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/countries-purchasing-land/838750 "2019-08-16T16:03:10Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 15\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![dtilque](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/d6d6ee/32.png) [@dtilque](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dtilque)\ **Post date:** [August 17, 2019, 4:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/countries-purchasing-land/838750/21 "2019-08-17T16:51:21Z")
Usually a treaty transfering sovereignty will have provisions for existing private land ownership to be honored by the new country. In the case of the transfer of the US southwest, they eventually set up the [United States Court of Private Land Claims](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Court_of_Private_Land_Claims) to review and approve such claims. There were a lot of them in California, many of them bogus (based on forged documents). ---
**Author:** ![Northern\_Piper](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/northern_piper/32/5304_2.png) [@Northern\_Piper](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Northern_Piper)\ **Post date:** [August 18, 2019, 5:10am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/countries-purchasing-land/838750/22 "2019-08-18T05:10:12Z")
IN the case of the Hudson Bay purchase, Canada and the HBC agreed on certain points in their agreement for the transfer of the land: > [@Rupert's Land and North-Western Territory Order](#): > > 1. The Company are to retain the posts they actually occupy in the North-Western Territory, and may, within twelve months of the surrender, select a block of land adjoining each of its posts within any part of British North America not comprised in Canada and British Columbia, in conformity, except as regards the Red River Territory, with a list made out by the Company and communicated to the Canadian Ministers, being the list in the Schedule of the aforesaid Deed of Surrender. The actual survey is to be proceeded with, with all convenient speed. > > 2. The size of each block is not to exceed [10] acres round Upper Fort Garry, [300] acres round Lower Fort Garry; in the rest of the Red River Territory a number of acres to be settled at once between the Governor in Council and the Company, but so that the aggregate extent of the blocks is not to exceed 50,000 acres. > > 3. The Company may, for fifty years after the surrender, claim in any township or district within the Fertile Belt, in which land is set out for settlement, grants of land not exceeding one twentieth part of the land so set out. The blocks so granted to be determined by lot, and the Company to pay a rateable share of the survey expenses, not exceeding 8 cents Canadian an acre. The Company may defer the exercise of their right of claiming the proportion of each township for not more than ten years after it is set out; but their claim must be limited to an allotment from the lands remaining unsold at the time they declare their intention to make it. > > 4. All titles to land up to the eight day of March, one thousand eight hundred and sixty-nine, conferred by the Company are to be confirmed. > > 5. Any claims of Indians to compensation for lands required for purposes of settlement shall be disposed of by the Canadian Government in communication with the Imperial Government; and the Company shall be relieved of all responsibility in respect of them. It was point 10, the confirmation of titles, which was one of the flashpoints for the Red River Rebellion. Even though Canada had agreed to respect the titles of settlers and Métis in the territory, it didn’t bother telling them, leading to great unhappiness and suspicion when Canadian survey crews came through. ---
**Author:** ![Northern\_Piper](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/northern_piper/32/5304_2.png) [@Northern\_Piper](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Northern_Piper)\ **Post date:** [August 18, 2019, 5:14am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/countries-purchasing-land/838750/23 "2019-08-18T05:14:51Z")
> [@dtilque](#): > > Par for the course with colonial powers. I’d be surprised if anyone consulted the inhabitants of the US purchases before those sales. John A. Macdonald admitted as much: > [@](#): > > “All that those poor people know,” Macdonald said to Cartier on 27 November, “is that Canada has bought the country . . . & that they are handed over like a flock of sheep to us; and they are told that they lose their lands . . . . Under these circumstances it is not to be wondered at that they should be dissatisfied, and should show their discontent.” ---
**Author:** ![Aspidistra](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/aspidistra/32/3894_2.png) [@Aspidistra](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Aspidistra)\ **Post date:** [August 18, 2019, 6:25am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/countries-purchasing-land/838750/24 "2019-08-18T06:25:31Z")
[Orkney](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orkney#Annexation_by_Scotland) was a kind of foreclosed mortgage > [@](#): > > In 1468 Orkney was pledged by Christian I, in his capacity as King of Norway, as security against the payment of the dowry of his daughter Margaret, betrothed to James III of Scotland. However the money was never paid, and Orkney was annexed by the Kingdom of Scotland in 1472. Same goes for Shetland ---
**Author:** ![Francis\_Vaughan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/francis_vaughan/32/3093_2.png) [@Francis\_Vaughan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Francis_Vaughan)\ **Post date:** [August 18, 2019, 7:44am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/countries-purchasing-land/838750/25 "2019-08-18T07:44:09Z")
One thing about these purchases and transfers comes down to the basic root of ownership. Just why does anybody have the right to say that that control of the land passes on? Why does anyone think that the monarch of Great Britain has the the right to say that some large portion of a landmass, one only recently discovered and settled, is theirs to sell or transfer or provide control over? This leads to an embarrassing problem. Basically it comes down to the divine right of kings. God gave the British monarch the right over the land. By tacit agreement, God gave other monarchs similar rights. So when land transferred from the sovereignty on one country to another, it was due to the God given right of the sovereigns involved that the transfer came about. Otherwise the only thing that transferred was title to a parcel of land, but the rights to make laws, bestow citizenship, and the like didn’t change. Not all countries have human monarchs, and so sovereignty become vested in different forms. It is interesting that the USA government bases, in part, its sovereignty over the land by assuming the sovereignty that was initially vested in King George. That sovereignty was never quashed, merely assumed. The Hudson Bay Company may have been granted near unfettered rights to the land, but what it never had was the right provided by God over the land. That only ever came to the reigning monarch. In principle, the monarch could, at any time, rescind the charter given to the HBC. Whether this would be politically wise is another matter. But the HBC’s rights were always subject to royal assent, they never had sovereign rights, basically because they were not a sovereign. The rights of any native inhabitants is of course another matter. A legal fiction based upon treaties has their individual sovereigns transfer their rights to the invader’s monarch. So it still maintains a view of some God’s bestowed rights to land transferring between monarchs. There is a view that a big part of the success of early Christianity making its way across the world was the manner in which existing monarchies were presented with a new religion that explicitly promised to provide divine recognition of their sovereignty. Avoiding all the tiresome problems with God Kings, or constant maintenance of power by force. ---
**Author:** ![Alessan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/alessan/32/465_2.png) [@Alessan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Alessan)\ **Post date:** [August 18, 2019, 9:02am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/countries-purchasing-land/838750/26 "2019-08-18T09:02:51Z")
It has nothing to do with the divine rights of kings and everything to do with who has all the guns. The person who commands the army commands the land. ---
**Author:** ![russian\_heel](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/f05b48/32.png) [@russian\_heel](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/russian_heel)\ **Post date:** [August 22, 2019, 2:02am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/countries-purchasing-land/838750/27 "2019-08-22T02:02:28Z")
> [@dtilque](#): > > OK, they’re not individuals, but the purchases are not a transfer of sovereignty. That was my point. > > I’m interested in outright purchase that transfers sovereignty. Has any country ever done it other than the US? > > Generally, only the head of government, usually with the approval of the legislature, can do it. And even if they did, I doubt such a transfer would take place without a LOT of input from the UN or even the EU. Greenland in a self-governing dependency of Denmark in effect making it a quasi-country. I’m getting the vibe Greenlanders want nothing to do with this transaction, and would demand a referendum. Many of them are native Inuuit making the optics of the US just buying their land from a European country look even worse. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk ---
**Author:** ![Wrenching\_Spanners](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/ecb155/32.png) [@Wrenching\_Spanners](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Wrenching_Spanners)\ **Post date:** [August 22, 2019, 6:45am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/countries-purchasing-land/838750/28 "2019-08-22T06:45:12Z")
The Netherlands and Belgium recently did a land swap: > **[Belgium and the Netherlands just changed their borders](https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/belgium-netherlands-national-border-change-meuse-vise-eijsden-maastricht-a8141166.html)** > > The change was prompted after a headless body was found in the area ---
**Author:** ![AK84](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/85e7bf/32.png) [@AK84](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AK84)\ **Post date:** [August 22, 2019, 7:51am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/countries-purchasing-land/838750/29 "2019-08-22T07:51:32Z")
> [@Alessan](#): > > It has nothing to do with the divine rights of kings and everything to do with who has all the guns. The person who commands the army commands the land. Yes. In mosyt cases, the “sale” was a sop to assuage the “buyers” conscience. ---
**Author:** ![Melbourne](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/b5e925/32.png) [@Melbourne](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Melbourne)\ **Post date:** [August 22, 2019, 9:11am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/countries-purchasing-land/838750/30 "2019-08-22T09:11:34Z")
> [@Francis\_Vaughan](#): > > It is interesting that the USA government bases, in part, its sovereignty over the land by assuming the sovereignty that was initially vested in King George. That sovereignty was never quashed, merely assumed. Not all of the USA vsted from King George. Which leads us neatly bacl to the Louisiana land titele joke: “Louisiana was purchased by the United States from France in 1803, the year of origin identified in our application. The title to the land prior to U.S. ownership was obtained from France, which had acquired it by Right of Conquest from Spain. The land came into the possession of Spain by Right of Discovery made in the year 1492 by a sea captain named Christopher Columbus, who had been granted the privilege of seeking a new route to India by the Spanish monarch, Queen Isabella. She got title from the Pope. The Pope, represents Jesus Christ, and he got it from his Dad.” ---
**Author:** ![md2000](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/73ab20/32.png) [@md2000](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/md2000)\ **Post date:** [August 22, 2019, 2:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/countries-purchasing-land/838750/31 "2019-08-22T14:01:27Z")
Well, somehow the crown and gave away parts of Rupertsland when they settled on the 49th parallel. Technically, Fargo should be part of Rupertsland. That happened in 1818 and 1846, I think. The problem is that hunter-gatherers don’t use land in a way that agricultural communities or animal herding cultures can identify. They hunt on it and go away, and may not go over that land again for a while. So when they ceded small areas - “OK, you can set up your huts here and grow a few plants, we’ve go lots of land”… they didn’t realize what they were getting into. Plus, not having commensurate weapons was a distinct disadvantage when they felt the agreements were being violated. ---
**Author:** ![pieceoftheuniverse](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/7993a0/32.png) [@pieceoftheuniverse](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pieceoftheuniverse)\ **Post date:** [August 22, 2019, 7:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/countries-purchasing-land/838750/32 "2019-08-22T19:17:16Z")
> [@md2000](#): > > The problem is that hunter-gatherers don’t use land in a way that agricultural communities or animal herding cultures can identify. They hunt on it and go away, and may not go over that land again for a while. So when they ceded small areas - “OK, you can set up your huts here and grow a few plants, we’ve go lots of land”… they didn’t realize what they were getting into. Plus, not having commensurate weapons was a distinct disadvantage when they felt the agreements were being violated. This is a common misconception of the indigenous people of the Americas, for some reason. The pre-Columbian civilizations had somewhere between [9 - 112 million people](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Population_history_of_indigenous_peoples_of_the_Americas#Population_overview) (no census data has been found, hence the hell of a margin of error). A civilization that large can in no way subsist completely on a nomadic existence. Many tribes were sedentary, like the Europeans; they had agriculture - probably about 70% of their diet came from corn, potatoes, beans, and other crops, while the other 30% were from animals. Depending on the nation we’re talking about, that could either be wild game or domesticated animals. The [Wampanoag](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wampanoag), who made contact with the first European settlers, absolutely knew what farming was. To the Wampanoag, agriculture was the responsibility of each family. Those who had a surplus shared with those who had little; it was this philosophy that saved the colonists at Pilgrim Rock. What the Wampanoag (and other tribes) did not expect was that the colonists would view them as anything less than human. Without mutual respect, any future discussions about land use or, well, anything, was pretty much a non-starter. ---
**Author:** ![thelurkinghorror](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/7c8e57/32.png) [@thelurkinghorror](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/thelurkinghorror)\ **Post date:** [August 22, 2019, 7:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/countries-purchasing-land/838750/33 "2019-08-22T19:27:11Z")
Sure, but the most famous Wampanoag, Squanto, had already been enslaved and went to Europe and back by the time the Pilgrims came. So it’s not like they were living in a bubble. ---
**Author:** ![md2000](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/73ab20/32.png) [@md2000](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/md2000)\ **Post date:** [August 24, 2019, 2:26am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/countries-purchasing-land/838750/34 "2019-08-24T02:26:24Z")
The indigenous peoples in the northeast had a mixed farming/hunting culture using slash-and-burn agriculture as they wore out the land. They were still very sparsely settled compared to the settlers. There is some debate how the mound-builders died - some say climate change screwed up their agricultural economy, some claim de Soto’s men (and his pigs) brought the unfamiliar diseases which ravaged the population to collapse. Regardless, what the settlers from the pilgrims to the New France settlers to the Virginians found was a huge wilderness with a number of small semi-agricultural villages dotted here and there. There was not a continuous carpet of agricultural land with no place for the newcomers to clear and farm. Effectively, the land they took (or bought, like Manhattan) was land the locals did not consider “occupied”. Of course, like camel in the tent, the settlers got pushier and pushier. And we can see what happened when they reached much more settled lands like the Cherokee - “already occupied” meant less and less to the newcomers. However, in the far more populous regions with fewer newcomers from Europe, we see less of a “replacement strategy” and more of a “welcome your new overlords” strategy. In places like India and Indonesia, where the population was very dense and well established, the overlord strategy worked best. But, to get back to the OP, quite often the initial North American occupancy (or at least, squatting permission) was “bought” from locals who did not have a tradition of being personally tied to a demarcated agricultural plot for generations. ---
**Author:** ![md2000](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/73ab20/32.png) [@md2000](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/md2000)\ **Post date:** [August 24, 2019, 2:37am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/countries-purchasing-land/838750/35 "2019-08-24T02:37:24Z")
I should add too - a piece of information I ran across in Scientific American, they were reviewing a book about smallpox epidemics in the Pacific Northwest from Washington to Alaska. Often the disease wiped out entire villages in one swell foop. The author pointed out, the locals were no more susceptible to the disease than Europeans, and typically the mortality rate was the same (about 10%) _if the patients were cared for_. The problem was that nobody had immunity to a new disease, and most of these villages were subsistence lifestyles, where water needed to be fetched and food prepared every day. Where a native had been exposed previously, or there was an immune missionary, they could tend to the sick and survival rates were over 50% and usually 90%. Where none such was available, the entire village took sick almost as soon as someone brought home the disease and most died from the stress of the disease exacerbated by dehydration, starvation, and exposure over several days untended. In some cases, as the museum in Victoria recounts, they died in the forest on the way home from the trading post; the canoe crew felt unwell, put ashore, and all died in the forest. OTOH, I have not heard of any account of the Aztecs or Incas suffering massive decimating losses so in more established societies, perhaps the diseases struck gradually and exposure was less of an issue. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/countries-purchasing-land/838750.md?page=1)