Was it morally justified to colonise America?

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I’m sitting here watching a TV show about the true story behind Pocahontas and wondering about something I’ve thought about many times before: Was it morally justified for Europeans to settle in/colonise America? This is a question which is becoming relevant again with the protests and so forth.
Obviously from a Catholic point of view, travelling to other countries to evangelise is good and necessary. I’m talking about colonisation - large groups of people coming from European countries to America to settle.
As someone who lives in a country devastated by English imperialism and colonialism, I don’t know where I stand on this but can’t easily argue for it’s being justified.
I’d be interested to hear thoughts from a Catholic perspective or even clear church teaching/documents on this issue.

Thanks!
 
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Evangelizing with the sword can never be justified. And the Americas were indeed evangelized with the sword. Making piles of money were, as far as I know, the primary reason to go there.

Edit: This behavioral pattern has been seen in all cultures though, to the best of my knowledge. So one should not view this as a problem for a particular group of people.
 
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sealabeag said:
Was it morally justified for Europeans to settle in/colonise America?
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I think we need to distinguish between the right of people to migrate and colonization, which are not the same thing.

It is not wrong to emigrate, to seek opportunity, to explore, to establish trade.

It is wrong to conquer, to enslave, to make war, to subjugate.

See the Church teaching on the universal destination of goods and the entire section of the Catechism on the seventh commandment, Gaudium et Spes, and the teachings related to social justice.

Across thousands of years, people have been guilty of these things, in Europe, Asia, and in the New World. The approach varied greatly in different periods between 1492 and the present, varied greatly by European country involved, and by locality.

We can’t paint what happened in the Americas all with one broad brushstroke. But a majority of it was definitely morally problematic.
 
1ke said:
But a majority of it was definitely morally problematic.
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Was it?

In what is now the U.S. and Canada, the settlers had little prospect of riches and a very hard life. It was getting hard to live in Europe, and this continent seemed relatively empty. At the time early settlers came here, the U.S. really was relatively empty, as disease had virtually wiped out the Indians beginning about 200 years previously when DeSoto and his men planted European diseases in the Southeast. Worse, hogs escaped their herds, which made the Indian style of farming (plant, abandon, return and harvest) extremely difficult.

If a handful of Japanese had established a sealing station on the West Coast, or if Indians had traveled to Africa and returned, the result would have been the same. It was only a matter of time.
 
Ridgerunner said:
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1ke:
But a majority of it was definitely morally problematic.
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Was it?
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Yes it was. Not in the intent, but in the execution. American (and virtually every example modern European world colonization) was a text book lesson in the bad side of the Judgment of Nations as told by Christ and recorded in Matthew’s Gospel (chapter 25); where colonizers were the goats rather than the sheep.
 
Since the whole world was given by God for the sustenance of all men, there is a natural right to migrate and colonize. Of course, migrants and colonists must treat those already in a place with true justice and charity and vice versa.

On the other hand, it is wrong to forcibly displace a people from their home land.

Pope Pius XII addressed a lot of this in his radio messages, etc. as summed up in his Apostolic Constitution on immigration, Exsul Familia Nazarethana:
In these addresses and in our radio talks, we have condemned severely the ideas of the totalitarian and the imperialistic state, as well as that of exaggerated nationalism. On one hand, in fact they arbitrarily restrict the natural rights of people to migrate or to colonize while on the other hand, they compel entire populations to migrate into other lands, deporting inhabitants against their wills, disgracefully tearing individuals from their families, their homes and their countries.
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It should also be pointed out there is a supernatural right and duty for the Church to enter new lands and establish missions seeking the natural and supernatural good of all peoples.
 
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Thanks this is the kind of perspective I’m looking for! But take an (made up) example from today - what if hundreds of thousands of Chinese people tried to move to let’s say Africa because they were running out of room in China, or because Africa had natural resources they wanted. Obviously any African nation would have the right not to allow them to enter their country. So what is the difference between this example and what happened in America? Is it something to do with the fact that America was not technically a “nation”?
 
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dscath said:
Yes it was. Not in the intent, but in the execution. American (and virtually every example modern European world colonization)
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Just European? The history of the world is one of people migrating and oftentimes absorbing or supplanting other peoples. God, we understand, gave the Israelites the Promised Land notwithstanding that it was already populated. Some historians say the Israelities’ moving in was relatively peaceful. Some say otherwise.

And if there is no intent, there’s no moral culpability.
 
Settlers moved into another land and claimed it as English/French/Spanish etc… territory when it was already inhabited. The native people didn’t have as clearly delineated borders to the extent that sovereign nations in Europe did and this led to a series of loosely-defined treaties that were frequently broken.

For a random peasant from Europe settling into a new land - or even fleeing from their land - I would say their culpability was greatly diminished, but no, objectively speaking, I don’t see how a person could make a salient argument that it was morally justified. It was not. The territory was taken at the end of a barrel or through the crafty guile of treaties.
 
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Public authority (and the various indigenous groups certainly had persons in authority) could rightfully regulate immigration/colonization for a just cause within its service to the common good of said society. Much of the land was unclaimed or open anyway. From my limited understanding, many did not oppose the coming of the colonists. Some opposed it or aspects of it for just reasons. Some for unjust reasons. Some of the colonists respected the indigenous populations. Some didn’t. As usual with human affairs, virtue and sin were both present.
 
Different people colonized for different reasons and using different methods. I wouldn’t say colonizing is immoral in itself. People have moved and migrated throughout the history of mankind. But the some of the methods used by Europeans in the Americas were obviously immoral.
 
Allegra said:
But the some of the methods used by Europeans in the Americas were obviously immoral.
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Undoubtedly, but I think they’re very much overblown. Probably the greatest death toll was in Mexico. Nearly all of that was from disease. But there were native “winners” too. Some of the leaders of the Spaniards’ Indian allies became “Spanish” grandees with large haciendas and vast wealth.
 
Native people were literally enslaved and forced off their lands. Both Britain and the United States made countless bad faith treaties. When Missouri became a territory through the Louisianna Purchase, the United States government came in a force an entire tribe of Catholic Native Americans to walk at gunpoint to the middle of nowhere in the western wilderness and were then left there in the snow to die. I don’t think the immorality is “overblown” at all.
 
Very good. In other words, it’s complicated? But generally speaking, it was justified in theory as the Americas were such huge expanses of land without clear national boundaries etc? And then of course a mixture of human motives, sin and virtue got all mixed up.
How would one respond to someone who would argue that “it was the native Americans’ land”?
Also, another hypothetical: Mongolia is a huge, vastly unoccupied nation. Would it be morally justified for groups of 100s or 1000s of… let’s say Palestinians in search of a new land to go there and set up towns?
 
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