Property Rights, Land and Territory in the European Overseas Empires

Lisbon, 26-27 June 2014

The occupation of territories, the rule over land and the definition of property rights, either de jure or de facto, were major concerns in the making and long-term development of almost every European overseas empire. They were also deeply interrelated with other key aspects of the empire-building process, including sovereignty claims, territorial expansion, settlement, taxation, power relations, social mobility, economic development, and the relationship with indigenous peoples. Therefore, those issues were of interest to all parts involved in the colonial venture – imperial governments, colonial authorities, first and later generations of settlers, native peoples and their elites – who dealt with them through complex and dynamic processes of negotiation and conflict. The solutions adopted to regulate property rights and other territorial and land-related issues had their roots in legal norms, political concepts, institutions, ideologies and social practices transposed from each European metropole, then reframed and accommodated to each colonial context. Developing from different backgrounds in Europe, these theories and practices combined in a variety of ways with different conditions in the colonies, producing both contrasting and similar outcomes across time and space. The research on these topics has already achieved a huge body of results, but, for the most part, it has been pursued in a piecemeal fashion, either by disciplinary fields, empires or regions of the world, thus overlooking their interconnections. How can we compare the way issues of land, territory and property rights were dealt with across a variety of empires (e.g. Portuguese, Spanish, British, Dutch, French) and their different geographies? What can different branches of scholarship (from legal, economic, political, social and cultural history) offer each other? This conference aims to provide answers to these questions, by bringing these previously separate studies together into a common forum and setting them in comparative perspective. Deadline for proposals submission: 20 April 2014.

Visit: http://landsoverseas.wordpress.com/conference/ 

Marjo Lindroth & Heidi Sinevaara-Niskanen, ‘Adapt or Die? The Biopolitics of Indigeneity—From the Civilising Mission to the Need for Adaptation’, Global Society 28, 2 (2014).

Indigenous peoples and indigenous lives have historically been the targets of colonial practices. In current politics, the brutal actions these entailed have changed into more subtle forms of governing. Drawing on the context of international politics (the Arctic Council and the United Nations Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues), we argue that the demand/need for adaptation is one of the rationalities by which power is exercised over indigenous peoples and indigeneity today. We view this as a form of biopower that fosters and steers indigenous life. The paper highlights three concurrent and overlapping strands of the vocabulary of adaptation: a call for agency, a sustaining of authenticity and a politics of placation. Together, these signal what the adaptive indigenous subject should be like, an unceasing demand for adaptation that is subtler but no less colonial than exercises of power past.

Heather Sykes, ‘Un-settling sex: researcher self-reflexivity, queer theory and settler colonial studies’, Qualitative Research in Sport, Exercise and Health (2014).

This paper uses self-reflexive personal narratives to examine how queer research about sexuality in sport studies is implicated in both historical and ongoing processes of settler colonialism. Like feminist research, queer research has to be critically self-reflexive about how genders and sexualities are formed through transnational flows across global and local contexts, and within geopolitical relations of power. I start with a critique of research about gays and lesbians ‘coming out’ in sport that continues to be aligned with the rationality of Western Enlightenment and the politics of US exceptionalism. Feminist-queer-trans poststructural research into sexuality and gender categories is gradually exposing the scientific racism and Western theoretical imperialism underpinning the very categories ‘lesbian’ and ‘gay’. It is within this context that my own research has shifted to examine ‘whiteness’ in terms of my specific colonial locations and histories. I include self-reflexive narratives about doing research as a critical white queer settler in Canada, coming out of my ‘colonial closet’ and my anti-colonial research relationships in Amman and Sochi. My purpose is to ‘un-settle’ assumptions about theories and methodologies used to research sexuality, gender and sex in sport studies.
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Alex Alvarez, Native America and the Question of Genocide (Rowman, 2014).

Did Native Americans suffer genocide? This controversial question lies at the heart of Native America and the Question of Genocide. After reviewing the various meanings of the word genocide, author Alex Alvarez examines a range of well-known examples, such as the Sand Creek Massacre and the Long Walk of the Navajo, to determine where genocide occurred and where it did not. The book explores the destructive beliefs of the European settlers, and then looks at topics including disease, war, and education through the lens of genocide.

Native America and the Question of Genocide shows the diversity of Native American experiences post-contact, and illustrates how tribes relied on ever-evolving and changing strategies of confrontation and accommodation depending on their location, the time period, and individuals involved, and these often resulted in very different experiences. Alvarez treats this difficult subject with sensitivity and uncovers the complex realities of this troubling period in American history.

Yogi Hale Hendlin, ‘From Terra Nullius to Terra Communis: Reconsidering Wild Land in an Era of Conservation and Indigenous Rights’, Environmental Philosophy (early view, 2014).

This article argues that understanding “wild” land as terra nullius (“land belonging to no one”) emerged during historical colonialism, entered international law, and became entrenched in national constitutions and cultural mores around the world. This has perpetuated an unsustainable and unjust human relationship to land no longer tenable in the post-Lockean era of land scarcity and ecological degradation. Environmental conservation, by valuing wild lands, challenges the terra nullius assumption of the vulnerability of unused lands to encroachment, while indigenous groups reasserting their rights to communal territories likewise contest individual property rights. South American case studies illustrate routinized terra nullius prejudices.

Dawn Hoogeveen, ‘Sub-surface Property, Free-entry Mineral Staking and Settler Colonialism in Canada’, Antipode (early view, 2014).

This article examines mineral rights and claim staking in northern Canada, with a focus on settler colonialism and how liberal understandings of property are embedded in the legal geography of the right to explore for minerals. The history of these legal systems is explained through the “free-entry” principle understood as the right to stake a mineral claim without consulting with private landholders or Indigenous peoples. Free-entry debate highlights how ideologies of property are assumed neutral through staking regulations. Based on an analysis of interviews with key informants involved in mining regulation, I analyze the geographic stratification of land into two categories, above and below the surface, as an avenue to understand how dominant ideologies of property reveal a critical site of contestation.

Karen Fox, ‘Ornamentalism, Empire and Race: Indigenous Leaders and Honours in Australia and New Zealand’, Journal of Imperialism and Commonwealth History ifirst (2014).

The imperial honours system, David Cannadine has argued, was a means for binding together ‘the British proconsular elite’ and ‘indigenous colonial elites’ throughout the settler colonies and dominions of the British Empire (Cannadine, David. Ornamentalism: How the British Saw Their Empire. London: Penguin, 2002). Yet in settler colonies like Australia and New Zealand indigenous populations were marginalised and often disregarded, and it was local white elites who became knights of St Michael and St George, the Bath and the British Empire. Focusing on Australia and New Zealand, this article explores the complex relationships Aboriginal and Māori leaders have had with honours during the twentieth century. Building upon Cannadine’s analysis, I examine the ways in which indigenous leaders navigated the political complexities involved in the offer of an honour, and how their acceptance of awards was received by others, shedding light on how honours systems intersected with post-war struggles for indigenous rights in the former dominions.

Settler Colonial Studies, Vol. 4, No. 2 (2014) 

is now available on Taylor & Francis Online. 

Henry Heller, ‘Marx’s Capital as History’, International Critical Thought 4, 1 (2014).

David Harvey asserts that Marx’s Capital is devoted to a rigorous examination of capitalism as an economic system. According to Harvey, history as such is for the most part absent. The following analysis acknowledges that the economics of capitalism is fundamental to Marx’s great work. But in Capital Marx shows that capital’s development itself is based on the evolving relationship of capitalists and workers over the long term. Therefore its workings cannot be understood unless viewed historically. Capital—its origins, development and eventual demise—is accordingly the historical protagonist of this great opus. The one chapter of Capital which Marx explicitly designated as historical—chapter 10 “On the Limits of the Working Day”—was meant to demonstrate that the growth of the working class—the emergence of its consciousness and capacity for political struggle—was itself the result of the evolution of capitalism from manufacture into large-scale industry.

Singapore Journal of Tropical Geography 35, 1 (2014). SPECIAL ISSUE ON ADVANCING POSTCOLONIAL GEOGRAPHIES