INVENTION OF TERRA NULLIUS, THE: Historical and Legal Fictions on the Foundation of Australia

AUSTRALIANA History

 “Australian History will never be the same again.” Terra Nullius is defined as the doctrine in the foundation of Australia and the dispossession of the aborigines. In this book, Michael Connor overturns this myth and argues that the foundation of Australia was based on entirely different concepts and terminology.

A VERY FINE COPY OF A SCARCE BOOK

“History books, school curricula and legal texts all treat terra nullius as the defining doctrine in the foundation of Australia and the dispossession of the Aborigines. The High Court’s Mabo decision was supposed to have overturned it. Michael Connor reveals terra nullius to be a mythical notion. It was never a phrase used in Australia in the eighteenth or nineteenth centuries. It was only injected into Australian political and legal debate in the 1970s. Since then it has meant whatever its users want it to mean. The foundation of Australia was based on entirely different concepts and terminology”

First Edition

• 362 p. ; 23 cm.
• Bibliography: p. [331]-355.
• #040224
• Land tenure — Law and legislation — Australia
• Aboriginal Australians — Land tenure
• Native title – Cases – Mabo
• Law – Jurisprudence – Terra nullius
• Australia — History
• Australia — Historiography