Possessing the Pacific: Land, Settlers, and Indigenous People from Australia to Alaska

401 Pages·2007·1.39 MB·English

by  Stuart Banner

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Possessing the Pacific

Possessing the Pacific
Land, Settlers, and Indigenous People
from Australia to Alaska
R
Stuart Banner
HarvardUniversityPress
Cambridge,Massachusetts
andLondon,England
2007
Copyright©2007bythePresidentandFellows
ofHarvardCollege
Allrightsreserved
PrintedintheUnitedStatesofAmerica
MapbyPhilipSchwartzberg,MeridianMapping
LibraryofCongressCataloging-in-PublicationData
Banner,Stuart,1963–
PossessingthePacific : land,settlers,andindigenouspeople
fromAustraliatoAlaska / StuartBanner.
p. cm.
Includesbibliographicalreferencesandindex.
ISBN-13:978-0-674-02612-4(hardcover : alk.paper)
ISBN-10:0-674-02612-8(hardcover : alk.paper)
1.Oceania—Colonization—History.
2.Northwest,Pacific—Colonization—History.
3.Landsettlement—Oceania—History.
4.Landsettlement—Northwest,Pacific—History.
5.Indigenouspeoples—Landtenure—Oceania—History.
6.Indigenouspeoples—Landtenure—Northwest,Pacific—History.
7.Indigenouspeoples—Legalstatus,laws,etc.—Oceania—History.
8.Indigenouspeoples—Legalstatus,laws,etc.—Northwest,Pacific—History.
9.Oceania—Racerelations.
10.Northwest,Pacific—Racerelations.
I.Title
DU29.B24 2007
325′.3091823—dc22 2007011902
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Acknowledgments
The research for this book required travel to some very nice places. I re-
ceived an enormous amount of help from librarians and archivists at the
Mitchell Library in Sydney, State Records New South Wales in Sydney,
the Alexander Turnbull Library in Wellington, Archives New Zealand in
Wellington, the University of Auckland Library, the Hawaii State Ar-
chives in Honolulu, the Hawaiian Historical Society in Honolulu, the
Huntington Library in San Marino, the British Columbia Archives in
Victoria,theOregonHistoricalSocietyinPortland,theKnightLibraryat
theUniversityofOregoninEugene,theBeineckeRareBookandManu-
script Library at Yale University in New Haven, the Alaska State Library
in Juneau, the Alaska State Archives in Juneau, the British Library in
London, the U.K. National Archives (formerly called the Public Record
Office) in Kew, Washington University in St. Louis, the UCLA law li-
brary, and the Department of Special Collections at UCLA’s Young Re-
search Library. For financial support I am grateful to Dan Ellis, Dan
Keating, and Joel Seligman at Washington University; Jon Varat, Norm
Abrams, and Mike Schill at UCLA; the University of California Pacific
RimResearchProgram;theUCLAAcademicSenate;andtheJohnSimon
GuggenheimMemorialFoundation.
vi Acknowledgments
Many friends have offered helpful suggestions on one chapter or an-
other over the years. No doubt I am forgetting people, but I’d like to
thank Cliff Ando, John Bowen, Andrew Buck, Ariela Gross, Bruce
Kercher, Dan Klerman, Russell Korobkin, Bert Kritzer, Henry Reynolds,
Carol Rose, Hilary Schor, Clyde Spillenger, Nomi Stolzenberg, Chris
Tomlins,AdamWinkler,andSteveYeazell;participantsatmeetingsofthe
American Law and Economics Association, the American Society for Le-
galHistory,theAustraliaandNewZealandLawandHistorySociety,and
the British Legal History Conference; and participants in workshops at
theAlexanderTurnbullLibrary,ArizonaStateUniversity,CornellUniver-
sity, the University of Chicago, Washington University, UCLA, and Yale
University. Earlier versions of parts of this book have been published as
“TwoProperties,OneLand:LawandSpaceinNineteenth-CenturyNew
Zealand,”LawandSocialInquiry24(1999):807–852;“ConquestbyCon-
tract: Wealth Transfer and Land Market Structure in Colonial New Zea-
land,”LawandSocietyReview34(2000):47–96;“WhyTerraNullius?An-
thropologyandPropertyLawinEarlyAustralia,”LawandHistoryReview
23(2005):95–131;and“PreparingtobeColonized:LandTenureandLegal
Strategy in Nineteenth-Century Hawaii,” Law and Society Review 39
(2005): 273–314. I am grateful to these journals’ anonymous referees for
their helpful comments and to the editors of the journals for permission
to reproduce this material. And thanks again to Joyce Seltzer and Wendy
Nelsonfortheirusualgoodadvice.
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Contents
Introduction:ThePacificWorldandItsAtlanticAntecedents 1
1 Australia:TerraNulliusbyDesign 13
2 NewZealand:ConquestbyContract 47
3 NewZealand:ConquestbyLandTenureReform 84
4 Hawaii:PreparingToBeColonized 128
5 California:TerraNulliusbyDefault 163
6 BritishColumbia:TerraNulliusasKindness 195
7 OregonandWashington:CompulsoryTreaties 231
8 FijiandTonga:TheImportanceofIndigenousPoliticalOrganization 260
9 Alaska:OccupancyandNeglect 287
Conclusion:WhatProducedColonialLandPolicy? 315
Abbreviations 322
Notes 323
Index 381

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Illustrations
MapofthePacificcoloniesinthenineteenthcentury x
1 ThomasMedland,ViewofaHutinNewSouthWales(1789) 25
2 DonaldMcLeanwithMaorilandowners(1865) 66
3 CrowdoutsideNativeLandCourt,Ahipara,NewZealand(late
nineteenthcentury) 101
4 KingKamehamehaIIIofHawaii(mid-nineteenthcentury) 145
5 PaulEmmert,ViewofHonolulufromtheHarbor(ca.1854) 159
6 Anonymous,drawingsof“Digger”Indiandwellings(ca.1850) 170
7 Songheeswoman,inaphotobyFrederickDally(ca.1860) 207
8 JamesDouglas,firstgovernorofBritishColumbia(ca.1860) 215
9 IsaacStevens,firstgovernoroftheWashingtonTerritory
(mid-nineteenthcentury) 255
10 TwowhitemenoverseeingaFijianworkforce(ca.1875) 276
11 WilliamHodges,Afia-too-ca:AburyingplaceintheIsle
ofAmsterdam(1777) 285
12 ChilkatTlingitwomenandgirls(1890s) 311