Despotic Dominion: Property Rights in British Settler Societies (review)

The editors of this fine collection of articles remind us early in their introduction that 'the use and regulation of property are central to an understanding of the history and culture of the settler colonies of the British Empire.' Despotic Dominion explores the history of property laws and rights in British settler society, and particularly in Canada and Australia from the time of William Blackstone (whose evocative description of property provides the title for the volume) to the present. The volume began as an international colloquium at which scholars from Canada and Australia explored an eclectic range of subjects – from Gitxsan history and culture, as it was and is practised in northwestern British Columbia, to the emergence of what Robert Foster terms 'colonized labour' in South Australia after the state granted pastoral rights to Europeans and continued to recognize Aboriginal rights to access to the same lands. The subject matter is diverse, to say the least. But it is all brought together with a carefully crafted introduction that places the articles within a broad intellectual context. The editors have also very effectively incorporated some of the commentary from the original colloquium and the reader is thus drawn into a number of quite intriguing conversations.

As John Weaver notes in the conclusion to his piece on the English idea of 'improvement,' 'property rights ... were not formed in a world of abstractions.' In one way or another, each article explores the debates and often conflicts that arose between competing uses of and assumptions about the right to own and control property. Sometimes, such contests were rooted in incompatible and culturally specific assumptions about tenure. At other times, property law evolved in response to particular colonial circumstances, and as Andrew Buck illustrates in his study of the law of primogeniture in New South Wales and Upper Canada, the terms of the debates and the results differed significantly from one colony to another. The first two case studies are particularly intriguing, and, for those interested in historical and contemporary issues of Aboriginal title, a somewhat jolting corrective to popular understandings. Richard Overstall's 'Studying the Spirit in the Land: "Property" in a Kinship-Based Legal Order' explains that to the Gitxsan, 'the idea of "property" arises only out of reciprocal interaction.' The Gitxsan House 'owns' and is 'owned by' a particular territory, and this relationship is embedded in the Gitxsan world view and stands 'in sharp contrast' of the monolithic property regimes of Canada. In 'Paper Empires: The Legal Dimensions of French and English Ventures in North America' Brian Slattery persuasively illustrates that in the early years of contact and conquest, neither the French nor the English assumed that the continent was terra nullis. Their initial claims to exclusive jurisdiction were directed to other competing European powers, not to the Aboriginal population.

Space precludes a review of each article. What is impressive is their range and diversity. Most of the chapters offer detailed case studies. A few, including John Weaver's discussion of the idea of 'improvement,' are wide ranging in time and space, and encourage the reader to consider the questions in their broader, imperial context. It is unfortunate that the volume does not include comparable work on settler societies other than Canada and Australia. It would have been fascinating to explore how first peoples, colonists, administrators, and imperial authorities co-operated and clashed over property in South Africa or New Zealand. There is more than enough here, however, to illustrate the complexity of the issue. And it is fascinating to see how many of the debates that raged in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries resonate today. The editors are careful to note in their brief but evocative afterword that their purpose was not to 'provide a set of panaceas for resolving unfinished business' of land claims in Canada or Australia. Many of the articles nonetheless highlight that the history of property, and how Aboriginal peoples, colonists, and...