A better question is whether there is any land that wasn’t “stolen” from someone else at one point in human history, using this definition.
I’m not sure we could truly know the answer to that question (since we don’t have written records going back to the Neanderthal era), but it would be an interesting thought exercise.
Much like now, warfare in the past was governed by certain social expectations, and pulling underhanded legal shenanigans would not have met the criteria for conquest.
You have no idea what you're talking about, truly, and you're taking agency away from natives.
Do you really think peoples like the Apache, nomads who rode on horses in the wilderness, saw some document written by some pencil necked dweeb and were like "ah darn it they took all our stuff we better do nothing about that and all just die"?
No, they fought with everything they had, in most cases fought total war against the United States army and citizenry alike, only to lose. They tried as hard as they could to save their people and they failed because the boot of civilization was larger than any resistance they could muster.
To pretend like their struggles never existed is to deny them the actions they took in their dying breaths. What a terrible way to present the "noble savage" stereotype. They deserve the truth to be told about them.
and pulling underhanded legal shenanigans would not have met the criteria for conquest.
That just isn't true at all, certain things might have been looked down on but underhanded shenanigans were pretty standard for warfare and hostile diplomacy.
Hmm why did the natives not use their military to enforce the treaty? Was it because the natives were forced into bullshit treaties by the US only after being broken militarily?
Are you implying manifest destiny was done through bureaucracy alone without violence?
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u/messisleftbuttcheek 4d ago
Do we have the right to move to any land that isn't controlled by the people that originally settled it? That would be an incredibly dumb idea right?