Doctrine of Discovery and Arctic seabed

The struggle to claim the gas and oil assets estimated to lie under the Arctic seabed continues.  News services continue to follow the efforts governments are pursuing to claim ownership of this spot of the globe and these assets.

Read the Reuters article of Oct 16 – Canada to map Arctic seabed to boost sovereignty

Read the Oct. 30 International Herald Tribune article –  Global warming opens Arctic seabed to the search for oil and gas

Read the Oct. 30 Reuters article - Russia seen to file Arctic claim to U.N. this year

Oct 30 Reuters article - Northern pebbles new pawns in Arctic chess game (about claims being made to newly emerging “rocks,” new lands emerging due to global warming).

This conduct parallels exactly the use of the Doctrine of Discovery against the native peoples in the New World, as I detail in my book Native America, Discovered and Conquered: Thomas Jefferson, Lewis & Clark, and Manifest Destiny and as I have written about frequently on this blog, see for example, The race for the New World – just as I predicted.

The mapping Canada is planning of the Arctic floor and the planting of flags there by the U.S. and Russia duplicate exactly the rituals of Discovery that Europeans used for centuries in claiming the world.  Native America, Discovered and Conquered, at 15-16; Patricia Seed, Ceremonies of Possession in Europe’s Conquest of the New World, 1492-1640 (Cambridge Univ. Press 1995). 

This entry was posted on Wednesday, October 31st, 2007 at 10:59 am and is filed under Doctrine of Discovery. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.