> given that said continent was already occupied and settling it meant exterminating the current residents
This is a false historical picture. Most of the continent was not settled at all, most of it was empty. Most of it is still empty space today. You'd have to claim there were billions of Native Americans to pretend it was entirely settled.
The average settler never killed a single Native American. Up to 90% of the Native American population was killed off by Europeans through the spread of germs prior to the formation of the United States.
The infamous Trail of Tears involved 4,000 Native Americans being killed. Napoleon's wars murdered millions of Europeans by comparison.
This is such a weird, pedantic definition of 'empty'. When people say a place is settled, they don't mean there is no room for another human being.
Europe was also mostly empty in this sense in the 1930s. Why was there this big war, the Germans could have just walked into those big empty spaces in the Ukraine and built some farms.
Wait; your own logic was "the continent wasn't empty, therefore, the only way to settle it was genocide". So, in your own logic, there wasn't any possible place left to the settlers.
This is a false historical picture. Most of the continent was not settled at all, most of it was empty. Most of it is still empty space today. You'd have to claim there were billions of Native Americans to pretend it was entirely settled.
The average settler never killed a single Native American. Up to 90% of the Native American population was killed off by Europeans through the spread of germs prior to the formation of the United States.
The infamous Trail of Tears involved 4,000 Native Americans being killed. Napoleon's wars murdered millions of Europeans by comparison.