On Balance, the British Conquest of Native American Lands was Justified

Thanks thett.Framework I'm not sure why Con thinks my case solely lies upon the results of conquest, implied by the line, "Pro wants us to look at the results of the conquest so that we can invoke our status quo bias". The outcome of what happened is only a part of my arguments, and although it is an important point it is not the only thing I'm using to show why the conquest was justified. Ethics should be taken into consideration as well.Con's CaseI. Cultural Superiority(a) Con mistakenly equates conquest with cultural merging, and seems to assume that if conquest happens, then Indians must live with whites and whites with Indians. The U.S. government has since granted them several large, specific reservations[1] to live on and practice their own ways as they wish without being forced to mingle with the colonist society. Indians did not have to integrate with Western society, and that is fine.(b) It is quite assertive to say that there is a ton of evidence to show that Native American culture was superior to European society simply because of the opinion of some of the natives and whites. How does this make culture superior? If I lived in town X and visited town Y to conclude that Y was better, does that make town Y superior to X? Moreover, this point ignores the full picture and doesn't consider the many Indians who have merged into Western life, married settlers, and inbred to have mixed race children (known as mestizos with Spanish settlers)(c) Con has yet to prove how native culture was legitimately superior to colonist culture. I seriously doubt this claim, since the Indians were way behind Europe in terms of technology, advancement, and life expectancy rates.II. ActionsAll of these are isolated allegations done by individuals and not British society as a whole. Many of these are miniscule and have been exaggerated by Con.To repeat, it is not my job to defend every action the British did, but to show the justice of conquest overall.The Scots-Irish settlements were repeatedly attacked and destroyed by Lenape, Shawnee, and other Pennsylvania tribes which resulted in the deaths, captures, and fleeing of the settlers there[2]. The Irish response to these attacks have been outlined by Con already. It is improper to judge history from a one-sided view rather than considering the situations of both peoples.The natives captured and enslaved opponents of war[3], who probably could have been Europeans as well as other tribes. The British didn't do anything that the Indians were already doing to themselves.There is only one instance in which a British man considered using biological warfare on the Indians, but there is no evidence that it was actually carried out[4].Con talks of cultural genocide, but gives no evidence of this. Genocide is the deliberate and systematic extermination of a national, racial, political, or cultural social group[5]. The only things that fit into this category are the massacres that happened, but those were instigated by both sides and cannot be used to blame the Europeans only, since the Natives did many without good reason which sparked retaliation on the British side to do some of the things they did. The Trail of Tears is not even eligible because the deaths that happened were a result of relocation and not directly caused by the British themselves, but rather a consequence of the event. A proper historian knows that the natives were no victims when it came to wars, raids, and deaths.Pro's CaseC1) Theft and Property RightsMost of my opponent's points in this section come from the assumption that Locke's theory of property rights is invalid and that the casual view of it is correct. If I can successfully show why Con's view of land ownership is less valid than Locke's view, then I can easily take out many of her points. I will compare and contrast the two views below.The casual view. Under this belief, property ownership is nothing more than a first-serve system. Land is legitimately owned by someone "claiming" it as their own, or simply living on it, regardless of whether or not the land itself was being used. Ownership is constituted by subjective thought about what each person's land was rightfully his or hers. If an individual or group arrives to an uninhabited place first, they can claim the amount they wish for them to belong to them as theirs.Locke's view. Instead of bare claims, land is legitimately owned when labor is put into it and the area is cultivated, exploited, made better, etc. Land becomes valuable and can be earned, bought, and sold. People can have as much land as they themselves can acquire and cultivate.When comparing the two, we notice that the former view has multiple problems. Ownership becomes nothing more than what one person believes they own, and there is no way to measure their property besides their own conscious thought. People can live on tons of land and not use it at all. For example, if I got on a ship with my crew and sailed to an undiscovered island of 100 square miles in size, my crew and I could "claim" all of the land as properly ours, since that is all the constitutes ownership. We wouldn't have to cultivate or work the land at all but rather have the vast landscape all to ourselves. Anyone who landed on the island from then on were trespassers and any land they took was blatant theft. Thus, despite us not using any of the land or working it, it was all ours, because we got their first.Locke's view is much more logical because it provides this measurement and accurately depicts what a person can call his property. Con does not define ownership and does not give an accurate base for how much land a person or group can have. I will now address my opponent's remarks.(a) The Dutch example does not work against me because the Europeans were the ones who originally brought the concept of property rights to the Native Americans. Prior to the Dutch, the ideas of buying and selling land were unheard of in Indian culture.Another thing to point out is how Locke's theory works with the island of Manhattan. When the Dutch came the island was bare and arguably had no value, but over the centuries the product of labor and cultivation turned the island into a magnificent city, of which value has increased dramatically. No sane person could say that Manhattan is still worth $700, because the product of work has increased the worth of the island by staggering proportions.(b) Asserting that the Natives collectively "owned" land is made without evidence. How was it legitimately theirs? Property rights apply equally to private land as well as communal tribal territory.(c) If there is no concept of property rights, and no land was owned, then there is no land to inherit. All that happens is that the offspring replace their parent's occupation of the ground that they lived on.(d) Conquest of Indian tribes by other Indian tribes is merely an example of how property rights didn't exist with the natives. This doesn't necessarily mean that conquest has to happen, but rather the fact that it did and could was a demonstration of how land was treated then. Whether the Hopi Indians stayed around the same place is irrelevant because they never legitimately owned the land they stood on, they just occupied it.(e) My opponent argues that the Indians legitimately owned land, with no logic provided. Cross-apply my earlier points here.(f) "Land" in this context means all of America as a whole. Some tribes lived near each other and were upset with the other for various reasons, which led to war and eventually conquest. Territorial occupation was a result of these events.(g/h) Con accuses me of name-dropping Locke, but I have explained in detail in both rounds that Locke's view is more logical than the casual view. The premise that a person's belief X was invalidated by belief Y is absurd. I can be a great philosopher yet think that the earth is flat. Con then states, "the Natives did farm and utilize their land." For one, Native Americans did farm but this was quite rare[6]. The Indians were primarily hunter gatherers, who some of which moved around and found better places to get their food. Second, hunting does not add that much value to land besides making the soil a little richer, but other than that the quality of land remained the same. Farming does not come close to competing with the added labor that the British brought, such as machinery and resource exploitation that the natives would have likely never discovered or invented since they remained practically the same throughout their existence. Whether a foreign nation invades the U.S. is irrelevant because the U.S. now has a concept of property rights that include buying/selling land. Con needs to show how such a nation could outdo the technological machinery of the U.S. C2. Warfare This point is pretty much conceded. I knew Con would likely bring it up, so I was ready.The one instance of the Scots-Irish warfare doesn't prove much as it doesn't reflect all of conquest as a whole.Disease transmission was not intentional, and pretty much inevitable either way. I would argue that simple contact with Europeans would have occurred in the future even if the British hadn't conquered American lands. C3. AftermathI'm low on characters, so I'll make this short. The European arrival brought so many benefits I elaborated on earlier, such as tech and medicine, which the natives severely lacked. We can compare the two since they were in the same time frame, and although we can't know for sure the future, the slow advancement of the native cultures didn't show much promise for a modernized society. [1] http://www.infoplease.com...[2] http://philadelphiaencyclopedia.org...[3] http://tinyurl.com...[4] Con's source 3[5] http://dictionary.reference.com...;[6] http://tinyurl.com...