2016/01/01 by K-Sue Park · 1 citation
Economics, Econometrics and Finance · Social Sciences · #Historical Economic and Social Studies #Colonialism, slavery, and trade #Alienation #Indigenous #Real estate #Colonialism #Commodity #Debt #CONQUEST #Foreclosure #Property (philosophy) #Market liquidity #Economics #Market economy #Business #Economy #Law #History #Monetary economics #Finance #Political science #Ecology
paper · doi:10.1111/lsi.12222
openalex publication_date 2016/01/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/12
In colonial America, land acquired new liquidity when it became liable for debts. Though English property law maintained a firm distinction between land and chattel for centuries, in the American colonies, the boundary between the categories of real and personal property began to disintegrate. There, the novelty of easy foreclosure and consequent easy alienation of land made it possible for colonists to obtain credit, using land as a security. However, scholars have neglected the first instances in which a newly unconstrained practice of mortgage foreclosure appeared—the transactions through which colonists acquired land from indigenous people in the first place. In this article, I explore these early transactions for land, which took place across fundamental differences between colonists' and native communities' conceptions of money, land, and exchange itself. I describe how difference and dependence propelled the growth of the early American contact economy to make land into real estate, or the fungible commodity on the speculative market that it remains today.