Table of Contents

Contributors
Introduction
Part One: Colonialism’s legality
1. Terminal legality: Imperialism and the (de) composition of law - Peter Fitzpatrick
2. Colonization and the legal cartography of authority: English intrusions on the American mainland in the seventeenth century - Christopher Tomlins
3. Reflections on the rule of law: the Georgian colonies of New south Wales and Upper Canada 1788-1837 - John McLaren
Part TwoI: Imperialism and citizenship
4. Race definition run amuck: ‘Slaying the dragon of Eskimo status’ before the supreme court of Canada, 1939 - Constance Backhouse
5. The paradox of ‘Ultra Democratic’ governments: Indigenous peoples’ civil rights in nineteenth-century New Zealand, Canada and Australia - Patricia Grimshaw, Robert Reynolds and Shurlee Swain
6. ‘When There’s No Safety in Numbers’: Fear and the franchise in the Union of South Africa, the case of Natal - Julie Evans and David Philips
7. Making ‘Mad’ populations in settler colonies: the work of law and medicine in the creation of the colonial asylum - Catharine Coleborne
Part ThreeI: Justice, custom and the common law
8. Towards a “taxonomy” for the common law: Legal history and the recognition of Aboriginal customary law - Mark Walters
9. The problem of Aboriginal evidence in early colonial NSW - Nancy Wright
10. Assuming judicial control: George Brown’s narrative defence of the ‘New Britain Raid’ - Helen Gardner
PartFour: Land, sovereignty and imperial frontiers
11. The early fate of Maori land rights in Aotearoa/New Zealand - Ann Parsonson
12. ‘Because it does not make any sense’: Sovereignty’s power in the case of Delgamuukw v. The Queen, 1997 - John Borrows
13. Land, conveyancing reform and the problem of the married woman in colonial Australia - Hilary Golder & Diane Kirkby
14. The construction of property rights on imperial frontiers: The case of the New Zealand ‘Native Land Purchase Ordinance’ of 1846 - John Weaver
Part Five: Colonialism's legacy
15. International law – Recolonising the Third World?: Law and conflicts over water in the Krishna Basin - Radha D’Souza
16. Historians and native title: The question of evidence - Christine Choo
17. Race, gender, and history in three societies: Canada, New Zealand and Australia - Constance Backhouse, Ann Curthoys, and Ann Parsonson
Index

About the Author

Diane Kirkby is Reader in History at La Trobe University, Melbourne, Australia; Catharine Coleborne is an Associate Professor of History at the University of Waikato, New Zealand