Patrick Chura
- Published in print:
- 2010
- Published Online:
- September 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780813034935
- eISBN:
- 9780813038278
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University Press of Florida
- DOI:
- 10.5744/florida/9780813034935.003.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, 19th-century and Victorian Literature
Land surveying has long been a tool of empire, linked not coincidentally with the development and hegemony of white European society over Native peoples in the New World. Once land was formally ...
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Land surveying has long been a tool of empire, linked not coincidentally with the development and hegemony of white European society over Native peoples in the New World. Once land was formally located and officially acquired, the multiple purposes of establishing individual ownership, taxable value, and legal jurisdiction were embodied in the person of the land surveyor. The surveyor not only carried considerable state-invested power but swore an oath that affirmed his honesty, the accuracy of his measures, and his loyalty to the state's protocols of property definition and distribution.Less
Land surveying has long been a tool of empire, linked not coincidentally with the development and hegemony of white European society over Native peoples in the New World. Once land was formally located and officially acquired, the multiple purposes of establishing individual ownership, taxable value, and legal jurisdiction were embodied in the person of the land surveyor. The surveyor not only carried considerable state-invested power but swore an oath that affirmed his honesty, the accuracy of his measures, and his loyalty to the state's protocols of property definition and distribution.
