Anti-Climacus

GAH (LIT REVIEW EDITION): Political theorists with an interest in Hugo Grotius have a very peculiar relationship to Richard Tuck (who's probably written more about Grotius than anyone else in the recent past). Any attention paid to Grotius is good, but, well...

Tuck quotes the following from Grotius (in The Rights of War and Peace104-105):

"And if there be any waste or barren land within our dominions, that also is to be given to strangers, at their request, or may be lawfully possessed by them, because whatever remains uncultivated, is not to be esteemed a property, only so far as concerns jurisdiction, which always continues the right of the antient people. And Servius remarks, that seven hundred acres of bad, unmanured land were granted to the Trojans, by the original Latins: So we read Dion Prusaeensis, that they commit no crime who cultivate and manure the untilled part of a country. Thus the Ansibarians formerly cried, that as the Gods have Heaven, so the earth was given to mankind, and what is possessed by none, belongs to every one. And then looking up to the sun and stars as if present, and within hearing, they asked them, whether they could bear to look on those uninhabited lands, and whether they would not rather pour in the sea upon those who hindered others to settle on them." (JBP II.II.XVII)

Which makes it look as though Locke gets his principles straight from Grotius: if no one is cultivating a piece of land, just anyone can come along and start doing so. A more perfect pretext for colonization could hardly be imagined.

But, uh, the rest of that section:

"But these general maxims were ill applied by them to the present case; for those lands were not waste and desolate, but were employed in the feeding of their soldiers cattle; which was a just reason that the Romans should refuse them. Neither was it less just what the Romans formerly inquired of the Galli Senones, what right any one had to demand a country from the lawful owners, and, in case of refusal, to threaten them with war?"

So even if land appears to be unused, there may still be a valid claim to have property in it; and, moreover, one can't just go around demanding whatever territory one wants; hence the line at the beginning of the passage Tuck cites about giving land to strangers at their request. It's not a straightforward repudiation of colonization (Grotius likes the idea of custom generated from interaction too much to insist people just stay where they are), but it's not a simple apology for whatever Dutch behavior at the time was, either.