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Buying territory in tribez12/16/2023 Or South Korea’s Daewoo Logistics’ lease of 3.2 million acres of farmland in Madagascar, half the island’s arable land. The closest thing that happens like this today are deals like China’s state-run Heilongjiang Beidahuang Nongken Group’s purchase of 800,000 acres of Argentina to grow crops for export to China. But borders–sovereign territory, rather than property–do not seem to be for sale, especially domestically. ![]() To be sure, there is still an active market for proprietary interests in public land the federal government, after all, owns approximately 30% of the nation’s land. ![]() Somewhere along the way, the market for sovereign territory seems to have dried up, at least as far as I can tell. Occasionally such sales were tied up with military action, as with the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, which ended the Mexican-American War, transferred the Mexican Cession, and committed the United States to pay Mexico $15 million “n consideration of the extension acquired.” The United States, to take the easiest example, looks the way it does not just because of military conquest, but because of bold real estate deals, including most notably the Adams-Onis Treaty, the Louisiana Purchase, and the Alaska Purchase. Specifically, they purchased sovereign territory. Once upon a time, sovereigns bought and sold themselves to one another. ![]() Duke Law Professor Joseph Blocher poses an interesting question:
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