Pride: ditto, thus the Domesday Book. Once you occupy a place, you go and count everything in it.

Bob: I think it would be presumptuous, as Spaniards did in South America, and we in the North, that there are, were, or would ever be any places for which some previous governing/ownership structure did not exist before we got there. Much easier to work, and/or rebuild pre-existing systems thatn to try to invent and impose something from scratch.

Trouble is that, sometimes, we actually have to do our homework to help the remnant post-conflict survivors to re-connect to what was.

Steve