Settlement

Settlement

BIBLIOGRAPHY

The term settlement has a number of meanings attributed respectively to the areas of law, finance, archaeology, and history. The legal definition generally refers to the act of settling a dispute or disagreement and reaching an agreement on the case, which then settles the claim. Often both sides of a lawsuit have a strong incentive to settle, chiefly to avoid costs. Courts can enforce settlements, and the party in default can be sued for breach of contract. In modern litigation, most suits are either withdrawn or settled, and settlements have become an important feature of the legal process. In rarer instances, the process of giving real estate, land, or some other heritage to someone is called a settlement, as is the respective document.

In finance the term generally describes the settling or payment of an account. More specifically, a settlement delivers securities or interests in securities to fulfill contractual obligations. This is usually preceded by trading and involves a purchase price. Before the introduction of the electronic settlement system in the 1990s, securities settlement was associated with a certain financial risk because it involved the physical movement of paper instruments, which were relatively easy to steal or forge. The transition from paper-based to electronic settlement is accomplished by immobilization, which means that securities are held by depositaries that are electronically linked to a settlement system. The ultimate goal is to dispense with paper instruments entirely (dematerialization).

The term settlement is also used to describe a specific human habitat that may include all sizes of human settlements, from hamlets to cities. More specifically, a settlement is the most rudimentary form of human habitation in a formerly uninhabited area. The term also refers to archaeological sites of human habitation. Settlement patterns and landscape approaches, which record material traces of human habitation, have become central for contemporary archaeology because they help explain long-term cultural and behavioral change. Thus archaeologists believe that the first European settlement in North America occurred around 1000 CE, when Viking explorers made their way to Vinland, which is probably modern Newfoundland.

For reasons unknown, European contact with the North American continent was interrupted until the sixteenth century, when the Spaniards reached Florida. In 1565 the Spaniards established the first permanent European settlement at Saint Augustine, a base for missionaries and (slave) traders. A few decades later rival European powers founded settlements along the east coast of the continent. Around 1600 the French assumed control over the Saint Lawrence Valley, founded the settlements of Quebec (1608) and Montreal (1642), and during the century succeeded in bringing a few hundred settlers to Louisiana. While the Dutch controlled the Hudson River valley for much of the seventeenth century, the major settlements of the English Crown were established in Jamestown (1607) and Plymouth (1620). At the same time the Spanish also started to settle in the Southwest of the continent; however, it took them over 150 years to establish outposts on the coast of the Pacific.

In the Southwest and West the Spanish eventually yielded to American settlers who claimed the territory during the nineteenth century, a claim that not only involved land but also expressed a belief in individual liberty and economic opportunity. The settlement of the West was hastened by the Homestead Act of 1862, which granted 160 acres to any family that lived on the land for five years. In the American West a small village or collection of houses was called a settlement.

In the antebellum South, the term settlement sometimes referred to the living quarters of the slaves on a plantation. In urban areas of the United States, the word settlement acquired a different meaning. The term social settlement originated in London’s East End, where Samuel Barnett and a group of Oxford students founded Toynbee Hall in 1884 by “settling” in a working-class area, not only to help their neighbors but to learn firsthand about the mounting problems of urbanization. Only two years later the first settlement house was founded in the United States, and the settlement movement grew rapidly, with Hull-House in Chicago, College Settlement in New York, and South End House in Boston becoming the most famous social settlements. Because settlements mainly worked for and among ethnically diverse urban populations, they became central to the reform efforts of the Progressive Era. The settlement idea also spread to western Europe, South Asia, and Japan; and the International Federation of Settlements and Neighborhood Centres was founded in 1926 as a worldwide association of national, regional, and local organizations working to strengthen communities in society.

SEE ALSO Agricultural Industry; Cities; Colonialism; Finance; Law; Peasantry; Plantation; Settlement, Negotiated; Settlement, Tobacco; Settlements; Slavery

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Billman, Brian R., and Gary M. Feinman, eds. 1999. Settlement Pattern Studies in the Americas: Fifty Years since Virú. Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution Press.

Carson, Mina. 1990. Settlement Folk: Social Thought and the American Settlement Movement, 1885-1930. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Middleton, Richard. 2002. Colonial America: A History 1565-1776. Oxford: Blackwell.

Milner, Clyde A., Carol A. O’Connor, and Martha A. Sandweiss, eds. 1994. The Oxford History of the American West. New York: Oxford University Press.

Wahlgren, Erik. 1986. The Vikings and America. New York: Thames and Hudson.

Weber, David J. 1992. The Spanish Frontier in North America. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.

Anja Schüler