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carpenter would earn in a day. When new communities of<br />
invaders were started on the edges of conquered areas, the<br />
settlers simply divided up the land. For example, when<br />
Wallington, Conn. was founded in 1670 each settler family<br />
got between 238-476 acres. This amount was not unusual,<br />
since colonial Amerika was an orgy of land-grabbing. In<br />
fact, much of the land at first wasn't even purchased or<br />
rented-it was simply taken over and settled. As much as<br />
two-thirds of the tilled land in Pennsylvania during the<br />
1700s was occupied by white squatters, protected by settler<br />
solidarity .(6)<br />
So central was the possession of land in the personal<br />
plans of the English settlers that throughout the colonial<br />
period there was a shortage of skilled labor. Richard<br />
Morris' study of labor in colonial Amerika concluded: "In<br />
the main, the ultimate economic objective of colonial<br />
workmen was security through agriculture rather than industry..<br />
.As soon as a workman had accumulated a small<br />
amount of money he could, and in many cases did, take up<br />
a tract of land and settle on it as a farmer."(7)<br />
Where land was not available, settlers refused to<br />
come. Period. This is why the British West Indies, with<br />
their favorable climate, were less attractive to these settlers<br />
than wintry New England. As early as 1665 a member of<br />
the Barbados Assembly complained, noting that the<br />
limited space of that island had already been divided up:<br />
"Now we can get few English servants, having no lands to<br />
give them at the end of their time, which formerly was their<br />
main allurement." And British servants, their terms up,<br />
would leave the Indies by the thousands for Amerika.(8)<br />
It was this alone that drew so many Europeans to<br />
colonial North Amerika: the dream in the settler mind of<br />
each man becoming a petty lord of his own land. Thus, the<br />
tradition of individualism and egalitarianism in Amerika<br />
was rooted in the poisoned concept of equal privileges for<br />
a new nation of European conquerors.<br />
2. The Foundations of Settler Life<br />
The life of European settlers-and the class structure<br />
of their society-was abnormal because it was dependent<br />
upon a foundation of conquest, genocide, and<br />
enslavement. The myth of the self-sufficient, white settler<br />
family "clearing the wilderness" and supporting<br />
themselves through their own initiative and hard labor, is a<br />
propaganda fabrication. It is the absolute characteristic of<br />
settler society to be parasitic, dependent upon the superexploitation<br />
of oppressed peoples for its style of life. Never<br />
has Euro-Amerikan society completely supported itself.<br />
This is the decisive factor in the consciousness of all classes<br />
and strata of white society from 1600 to now.<br />
Settler society was raised up, above the level of<br />
backward Old Europe, by a foundation of conquest. This<br />
conquest was a miracle drug for a Europe convulsed with<br />
the reaction of decaying feudalism and deadly capitalism.<br />
Shot into the veins of the Spanish feudal nation, for instance,<br />
the miracle drug of "New World" conquest gave<br />
Spain the momentary power to overrun North Africa,<br />
Holland, and Italy before her historical instant waned. For<br />
the English settlers, this conquest made real the bourgeois<br />
vision of building a whole new European society. Like<br />
many such "fixes", for Euro-Amerikans this conquest was<br />
addicting; it was habit-forming and rapidly indispensable,<br />
not only culturally, but in the mechanism of an oppressor<br />
society whose lifeblood was new conquest. We will examine<br />
this later, in the relationship of settlerism to imperialism.<br />
For now, it is enough to see that this conquest is<br />
a material fact of great magnitude, an economic and social<br />
event as important as the emergence of the factory system<br />
or the exploitation of petroleum in the Middle East.<br />
We stress the obvious here, because the Euro-<br />
Amerikan settlers have always made light of their invasion<br />
and occupation (although the conquered territory is the<br />
precondition for their whole society). Traditionally, Euro-<br />
pean settler societies throw off the propaganda<br />
smokescreen that they didn't really conquer and dispossess<br />
other nations-they claim with false modesty that they<br />
merely moved into vacant territory! So the early English<br />
settlers depicted Amerika as empty-"a howling<br />
wilderness", "unsettled", "sparsely populated H -just<br />
waiting with a "VACANT" sign on the door for the first<br />
lucky civilization to walk in and claim it. Theodore<br />
Roosevelt wrote defensively in 1900: " ... the settler and<br />
pioneer have at bottom had justice on their side; this great<br />
continent could not have been kept as nothing but a game<br />
preserve for squalid savages. "(9)<br />
It is telling that this lie is precisely the same lie put<br />
forward by the white "Afrikaner" settlers, who claim that<br />
South Africa was literally totally uninhabited by any<br />
Afrikans when they arrived from Europe. To universal<br />
derision, these European settlers claim to be the only<br />
rightful, historic inhabitants of South Afrika. Or we can<br />
hear similar defenses out forward by the European settlers<br />
of Israel, who claim that much of the Palestinian land<br />
and buildings they occupy are rightfully theirs, since the<br />
Arabs allegedly decided to voluntarily abandon it all during<br />
the 1948-49 war. Are these kind of tales any less<br />
preposterous when put forward by Euro-Amerikan settlers?<br />
Amerika was "spacious" and "sparsely<br />
6 populated" only because the European invaders destroyed