Oh Thomas More....

I read Utopia when I was a teenager, it is probably something I need to go back and re-read with a more sophisticated mind... but who has time??  While reading a passage from my current assigned text for my Seminar in Southern History, American Slavery, American Freedom, he uses a passage from Utopia to illustrate some common ideas amongst the English during the early years of the idea of colonizing outside of England (don't forget they kept trying Ireland)...

"The inhabitants who refuse to live according to their laws, they drive from the territory which they carve out for themselves.  If they resist, they wage war against them.  They consider it a most just cause for war when a people which does not use its soil but keeps it idle and waste nevertheless forbids the use and possession of it to others who by the rule of nature ought to be maintained by it."


First...Thomas... you cheeky fellow you....

Behind this icy stare and large nose is a hard headed war lover who gets beheaded when Henry VIII got annoyed with him

 First, you were supposed to be a HUMANIST... do you know what a HUMANIST is???

While Humanism was the predecessor of the Enlightenment on some levels and did a lot with reason (within religious bounds mind you, Sir Thomas here was a devout Catholic x 1000000)... There was apparently a weak spot for busting up anyone who did not agree with you...

psst... you should read this guy's stuff on Martin Luther, can we say noooot happy.

Anyway...

Apparently in Utopia you can attack and kill people who don't use the land in a way you find appropriate... the English will use this later a great deal, but I just thought it was funny that THAT was in Utopia, which I always thought of as a happy shiny bears dancing sort of place....

How did that whole Utopia feel here #dontloseyourhead