Empire and the Making of Native Title: Sovereignty, Property and Indigenous People by Bain Attwood

Book Description

Secondhand. As new condition.

In 1981 a novel question was addressed by an Australian historian, more or less for the first time. Why had the British Crown denied - or failed to recognise - the Aboriginal people's sovereignty and rights in land?

Alan Frost argued that this occurred because the British government acted in accordance with the international legal conventions of the mid-eighteenth century, or more specifically, a legal doctrine called terra nullius, a Latin word meaning land without a sovereign or land belonging to no one.

This book provides a new approach to the historical treatment of Indigenous peoples' sovereignty and property rights in Australia and New Zealand. By shifting attention from original European claims of possession to a comparison of how British actors later treated these matters, Bain Attwood not only reveals startling similarities between Australian and New Zealand cases but also revises long-held explanations for their differences.