John Locke
Other English-speaking writers developed similar ideas. In particular, John Locke explained the priority to be accorded to agriculture in these terms:
'Whatsoever, then, he removes out of the state that nature hath provided and left it in, he hath mixed his labour with, and joined to it something of his own, and thereby makes it his property.'
'To which let me add, that he who appropriates land to himself by his labour, does not lessen but increase the common stock of mankind. For the provisions serving to support human life, produced by one acre of inclosed and cultivated land, are (to speak much within compasse) ten times more, than those, which are yielded by an acre of land, of an equal richnesse, lyeing waste in common. And therefor he, that incloses land and has a greater plenty of the conveniences of life from ten acres, thus he could have from a hundred left to nature, may truly be said, to give ninety acres to mankind. For this labour now supplys him with provisions out of ten acres, which were but the product of an hundred lying in common.'
'Whatsoever, then, he removes out of the state that nature hath provided and left it in, he hath mixed his labour with, and joined to it something of his own, and thereby makes it his property.'
'To which let me add, that he who appropriates land to himself by his labour, does not lessen but increase the common stock of mankind. For the provisions serving to support human life, produced by one acre of inclosed and cultivated land, are (to speak much within compasse) ten times more, than those, which are yielded by an acre of land, of an equal richnesse, lyeing waste in common. And therefor he, that incloses land and has a greater plenty of the conveniences of life from ten acres, thus he could have from a hundred left to nature, may truly be said, to give ninety acres to mankind. For this labour now supplys him with provisions out of ten acres, which were but the product of an hundred lying in common.'
Keywords: colonialism, colonisation, land use, property, property law, terra nullius
'Two Treatises on Government', 4th ed., London, 1713.
Author: Nettheim, Garth
Source: Locke, John
Author: Nettheim, Garth
Source: Locke, John