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Thesis ID: CBB001567382

Imaginary Lines, Real Power: Surveyors and Land Speculation in the Mid-Atlantic Borderlands, 1681--1800 (2012)

University of California, Davis
Taylor, Alan
Cadden, Joan
Smolenski, John
Cadden, Joan
Smolenski, John
Publication date: 2012
Language: English

ISBN: 9781267758866

Publication Date: 2012
Edition Details: Advisor: Taylor, Alan; Committee Members: Smolenski, John, Cadden, Joan.
Physical Details: 261 pp.

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Land use surveys Surveying Indigenous peoples; indigeneity Colonialism Land settlement Science and politics 18th century 17th century Ohio (U.S.) Pennsylvania (U.S.)

This study examines the interplay between surveying and land speculation in early Pennsylvania and the Ohio Valley. Early American governments adopted surveying techniques developed in the British Isles that promised to impose order by erasing native land claims and overwriting a geometric grid on the landscape. Because courts recognized surveys as evidence of permanent land ownership, settlers owed their allegiance to the governments who issued their surveys. In areas where the government could exercise a monopoly on violence, surveys could establish clear borders and regulate land distribution. The Pennsylvania government tasked surveyors with allocating frontier land thickly and evenly, so that no gaps in settlement occurred. In return, surveyors received modest fees paid by the settlers. Although governments used surveys to enhance their power, establishing a corps of surveyors to oversee land sales also had unintended consequences. As Pennsylvania extended its control deep into the backcountry, it became increasingly reliant on the integrity of deputy surveyors who operated almost without oversight. By contracting themselves to speculators, these men could undermine the province's orderly land sales. After the American Revolution, when Pennsylvania's state government placed millions of acres of frontier land on the market at one time, many surveyors chose to hire themselves out to wealthy patrons as land agents and stewards. In this way, men from humble origins made fortunes for themselves by helping to direct much of the state's landed property into the hands of a privileged few. These men served as models for later surveyor-speculators who dominated land sales and politics across the Midwest.

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Description Cited in Dissertation Abstracts International-A 74/03(E), Sep 2013. Proquest Document ID: 1234550675.

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