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Comment by VictorPath | Hacker News Reader

> confiscation of their property and land

Observe the colonial/imperial mindset - gun-trotting French sail to the Caribbean and steal land from Taino Indians, and kidnap and enslave Africans to do the work. Then back home, the king is guillotined and eventually even Danton is guillotined. The enslaved Africans eventually rebel against the slave masters, and they get into a sanctimonious huff about how "their land" was confiscated.

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As you mention, it is also not the slaves land either as they came from Africa. So why is it more slaves land than french land?

Ignoring the evidence that the enslaved Taino to some extent integrated with the imported slaves, the slaves made up 90% of the population and likely an even higher percentage of the workforce. That should give them the best claim to the land

So once we reach 90% of the population we can rightfully claim the land? That's how it works? Let me take note for the future then.

I mean yeah? If your people spend a century integrating with the locals and working the land to the point where you make up the overwhelming majority of the population, it's pretty fair to say you have some right to it.

Well that is one way of achieving it, the other being killing the local population and get more settlers.

Doesn't every modern nation have the land owned by a tiny minority?

Stealing land from Taino people is as much unacceptable as confiscation of land of french citizens, and i am sure if there were some large Taino empire then it could protect property rights of Taino people against colonialists, but that is centuries before Haiti revolution, and since that property rights were clearly established.

If you look on individual level, then it is clear that person A cannot just stole property from person B and defend that by the fact that great-grandfather of person B stole it from person C.

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