Colonial maps erased native settlement to designate empty Lockean land

Evidence

Mapping is central to this imagined landscape. Maps not only enlarge some places over others; they name or don’t name places according to the perceived permanence of their settlement by human beings, as I illustrated in relation to the metamorphing of Palestine into Israel. The designated emptiness of places on the map otherwise known to be inhabited by natives thought simply to be passing through in their seasonal or whimsical migrations, these vast swathes of space are designated empty Lockean lands awaiting European enclosure and labored industriousness. — David Theo Goldberg, The Threat of Race, 1405

Categorization

• XREF: Directly echoes the Palestine-into-Israel renaming the reader already tracked in earlier chapters — a cross-context instance of erasure-by-mapping. — connects to: Colonial maps erased native presence by designating inhabited lands empty; Colonial historiography reproduced administrative maps that erased mixed-ethnic encampments; Colonial settlement justified itself by declaring the land empty of legitimate people — Edward W. Said, Orientalism, 727 (+5 more)
• ADDENDUM: Landscape erasure by designation of emptiness parallels the reader’s trees-as-infrastructure piece on how perceived emptiness justifies remaking land.

Broader Connections

• Colonial maps erased native presence by designating inhabited lands empty #corroborates (0.97)
• Colonial settlement justified itself by declaring the land empty of legitimate people #corroborates (0.90) — Edward W. Said, Orientalism, 727
• European maps ignored Native settlements in favor of colonial ones. #corroborates (0.90) — Neil MacGregor, A History of the World in 100 Objects, 1354
• Colonial historiography reproduced administrative maps that erased mixed-ethnic encampments #exemplifies (0.85)
• Cartographic naming or omitting names legitimizes colonial claims to inhabited land #corroborates (0.85) — David Theo Goldberg, The Threat of Race, 1405
• Claims about European identity rest on a Lockean theory of property and cultivation. #expands (0.80) — Talal Asad, Formations of the Secular, 811
• Racial occupation morphed from Lockean enclosure to neoliberal democracy promotion #expands (0.72)