Empire and the Making of Native Title
Sovereignty, Property and Indigenous People

This book provides a strikingly original explanation of the Britain's treatment of sovereignty and native title in its Australasian colonies.

Bain Attwood (Author)

9781108745703, Cambridge University Press

Paperback / softback, published 11 August 2022

456 pages
22.9 x 15.2 x 2.4 cm, 0.61 kg

'This probing work by one of Australia's most distinguished historians delivers a richly textured account of imperial claims in the Australasian colonies. Meticulously researched, it traces how British sovereignty in the settler world proceeded less from firm policy than from fluctuating circumstances that served to recognise or deny the existence of native title.' Amanda Nettelbeck, author of Indigenous Rights and Colonial Subjecthood

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 the original European claims of possession to a comparison of the ways in which British players treated these matters later, Bain Attwood not only reveals some startling similarities between the Australian and New Zealand cases but revises the long-held explanations of the differences. He argues that the treatment of the sovereignty and property rights of First Nations was seldom determined by the workings of moral principle, legal doctrine, political thought or government policy. Instead, it was the highly particular historical circumstances in which the first encounters between natives and Europeans occurred and colonisation began that largely dictated whether treaties of cession were negotiated, just as a bitter political struggle determined the significance of the Treaty of Waitangi and ensured that native title was made in New Zealand.

Acknowledgements
List of Abbreviations
Principal Players
Maps
Introduction
1. Claiming Possession in New Holland and New Zealand, 1770s–1820s
2. Batman's Treaty and the Rise and Fall of Native Title, 1835–1836
3. The South Australian Colonisation Commission, the Colonial Office, and Aboriginal Rights in Land, 1834–1837
4. Protection Claims and Sovereignty in the Islands of New Zealand, 1800–1839
5. Making Agreements and a Struggle for Authority, 1839–1840
6. The Land Claims Commission and the Return of the Treaty, 1840–1843
7. A Colony in Crisis and a Select Committee, 1843–1844
8. The Retreat of the Government and the Rise of the Treaty, 1844–1845
9. The Making of Native Title, 1845–1850
Conclusion
Appendix (The English Text of the Treaty of Waitangi)
Bibliography
Index

Subject Areas: Indigenous peoples [JFSL9], Australasian & Pacific history [HBJM], General & world history [HBG]