Quarantines may be justified

[Bill Frantz]

At 10:48 AM -0700 4/21/03, Bill Stewart wrote:
>It's a difficult problem - claiming that land is your private property
>implies a willingness to initiate force to enforce your rights,
>which is different for something like land that you didn't create
>than for objects that you did create.
>
>But if you can't collect "stuff", you can't insure yourself against
>starving to death in the short term or the more distant future,
>and governments in during the last century made a habit of
>declaring that all the land and stuff in a given area was theirs,
>and either starving the local population to death (if they were totalitarians)
>or forcing them to leave (if they were merely greedy) or just killing them.
>If you're looking at the world as a whole, as opposed to just the US and
>Canada and
>parts of Western Europe that aren't near Germany, insecurity about such things
>unfortunately demonstrates a realistic maturity.

The Scottish land clearances are an interesting case study here.  For
generations before 1745, the scots lived in clans where the clan leaders
depended on landless peasants for agricultural labor and private armies.
After the Jacobite revolution, with Bonnie Prince Charlie's claim to the
throne, the government tried to suppress the highland clans, banned the
private armies, the playing of bagpipes, and the wearing of highland dress.

Clan leaders no longer needed the peasants for private armies, and their
tenancy became a financial burden.  At the same time, the introduction of
the potato allowed the population of peasants depending on the clans for
support to almost double.

These changes, along with increased economic value of wool and mutton,
caused the land owners to shift their lands to sheep production.  The
peasants were either moved to small holdings on the poorest land (called
crofts), or shipped abroad.  Modern historians estimate that between 50,000
and 100,000 people were removed from the land during the 19th century.

The clearances did not proceed without protest, and there were frequent
tenant uprisings.  However, nothing in Scottish law prevented land lords
from clearing their land.  In 1886, the government passed the Crofter's
Holding Act which provided for security of tenure, fair rents, and the
crofter's right to pass the croft through inheritance.  On May 3, 2000, the
Scottish parliament abolished feudal tenure, ending 900 years of feudalism.

[Source: The Lonely Planet, Scotland's Highlands & Islands guidebook]

Now for the questions:

Who owned the land?  The lords?  The peasants?  Someone else?

What does it mean to own land?

Are land owners justified in evicting people who have lived on, and worked
the land for generations?

Cheers - Bill


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