IF
ANY SCHOLAR has written anything worthwhile
on Australia’s early colonial
history, it is unlikely to be mentioned
in this book. In Michael Connor’s
depiction, things have become so bad
that all the historians, lawyers,
anthropologists, sociologists and
health experts, and everyone else
who has written or spoken publicly
about our history over the last thirty
years, should be sacked immediately.
So too should staff in the departments
of education, in the Australian Research
Council, and all their national and
international academic peer reviewers.
Recent PhD graduates should be asked
to give back their degrees, as they
have not been properly trained. Many
historical research assistants should
never be given jobs again. The appellations
‘associate professor’ or
‘professor’ should be removed
from office doors. Historians of the
Australian academy do not deserve
them. The first targets should be
the most prolific and popular historians.
And finally, tenure and
terra nullius should be banned.
Within
these pages, the rubbishing and ridiculing
of ‘old historians’ —
the term Connor uses for virtually
all other historians —
takes on the character of a new blood
sport. While The Invention of Terra
Nullius: Historical and Legal Fictions
on the Foundation of Australia
contains flashes of potentially convincing,
even pithy, arguments, the author
is seriously prone to distraction.
One minute he is studiously reflecting
upon turgid quotes from eighteenth-
and nineteenth-century sources; the
next minute there’s static, and
it is as though he has tuned into
the Alan Jones show. It sounds something
like this: ‘Let’s get the
boot into those Café Latte
academics! Those snobs are making
their careers out of obscure Latin
words! Did you know that one professor
travels Business Class? No wonder
they won’t admit that Aborigines
were cannibals!’ Compared with
the noxious cult-members of the Dr
Frankenstein School of History, Latin-speaking
gladiators and cannibals are actually
looking like an amiable lot. Think
I’m exaggerating? Connor expands:
Land,
for modern political reasons, came
to dominate the old historians’
interpretation of the colonial period
and, as they performed painful operations
on Australia’s living body, these
magician’s apprentices dragged
from its copious guts a miscellaneously
assembled selection of government
papers, lawyers’ pleadings, judges’
decisions, individuals’ letters
and diaries, sermons, newspaper letters
and editorials. These willing but
inept surgical experimenters were
unable to successfully assemble the
bloody parts into a new creature for
the patched and recycled organs they
used functioned quite differently
in the body of their original owner.
Their attempt to bring the monster
to life by torturing terra nullius
to pump dark blood along its plastic
veins led to confusion, pain, and
deadliness.
Indigenous
oral histories are omitted from the
gut-contents cited above. Yet earlier,
Connor aims some vicarious digs at
anthropologist and historian Deborah
Bird Rose, asserting that Hobbles
Danaiyarri, an indigenous elder of
the Victoria River district, was mocking
her. Although Connor is keen to castigate
historians who have not twice inspected
every relevant historical primary
source around the country for commas,
he makes no mention of cross-checking
the relevant original recordings.
As well as spuriously inventing Danaiyarri’s
thoughts, he mocks Rose’s supposed
‘tone of superiority ... typical
of many of the younger old historians’,
and goes on to lampoon some massacre
stories.
A
child of history who trained at James
Cook University and the University
of Tasmania, the mature Connor has
divorced virtually his entire ‘history
family’. He rejects much significant
and prize-winning scholarship in the
country, jokily jettisoning Alan Atkinson’s
two-volume The Europeans in Australia
(1997, 2004) as an ‘erudite fish
and chip history’. So what are
we left with? If all the other efforts
in this country are so untrustworthy,
surely the reader will find it difficult
to place their faith in any scholar,
Connor included.
The
main arguments that I gleaned from
The Invention of Terra Nullius
are as follows: many authors have
been confused about what the term
terra nullius means; they are confused
about the Latin via French translation;
they are confused about when the term
commenced usage, and about how it
came to be used at all. Unfortunately,
Connor’s Invention creates
many new levels of confusion. While
the whole book concerns connections
between law and history, Connor earlier
opposes the two fields getting mixed
up with each other at all. He discourages
other scholars from joining in his
enthusiasm to scrutinise terra nullius;
the topic is declared unsafe in the
hands of ARC-funded scholar Andrew
Fitzmaurice.
Towards
the end of the book, Connor comes
up with some constructive, albeit
not unfamiliar, suggestions: ‘Invasion
and settlement’ should
be used rather than ‘invasion
or settlement’. ‘Discovery’
of Australia should be used without
its unpatriotic inverted commas. ‘Annexation’
should be used to describe the legal
basis of Australian settlement, not
‘terra nullius’.
This
beautifully produced and attractive-looking
book, with its intriguing painting
of the spearing of Governor Phillip
(though possibly at the wrong beach)
on the cover, would have benefited
from more editorial power and attention.
A good editor might have checked the
several reader-baffling paragraphs
where quotes did not match the preceding
argument. A strong editorial hand
would have removed the hyperbolic
diatribe. This paragon might also
have recommended against personal
and professional abuse that smacks
of vindictiveness or at least sour
grapes. If only Connor had omitted
some of his vituperations on the miscellaneous
sins and omissions of his former family,
he would have found plenty of room
for some good, old-fashioned historical
narrative.
In
my view, the book could have done
some useful history telling about
‘the use and abuse of terra nullius’
or, alternatively, about the possibility
of ‘sovereignty and occupation’
as the basis of British colonisation.
In the additional space, Connor could
have paid more attention to the ‘big
questions’ about Australia’s
occupation. For example, the linchpin
question pertaining to British ‘beginnings’
remains: when, in claiming parts of
the continent, Captain Cook was specifically
instructed to obtain the consent
of the natives, why did
he not do so? And why were his actions
considered acceptable back home? Cook
generally followed his instructions
carefully, down to the ritually and
legally significant erection of flags
on what we now call Australian soil.
If, as Connor recommends, terra nullius
should be dumped along with the ‘old
historians’, Australians will
be left wondering what were
the other justifications the British
used to explain the matter? And why
was Australia so different
from other British colonies?
Pre-Mabo,
and pre-Alan Frost, one of the enigmas
of terra nullius was its legal and
historical invisibility. In dedicating
a whole book to the topic, and providing
innumerable examples of discussions
relating to its conceptual underpinnings
for several centuries, Connor has
successfully raised the terra nullius
flag for all to see.
For
those who entertain a historical conspiracy
by bleeding hearts, tell them to have
another look at two articles published
in 1981 by Historical Studies
(Vol.19, No.77), under the editorial
hand of Dr J.B. Hirst: Alan Frost’s
‘New South Wales as Terra
Nullius: The British denial of
Aboriginal Land Rights’ and ‘“Far
more happier than we Europeans”:
Reactions to the Australian Aborigines
on Cook’s voyage’. Humanist
in tone, neither is particularly preachy
or conspiratorial. Frost was at pains
to try to understand the thinking
of Cook and Joseph Banks, whom he
described as ‘percipient, tolerant
of racial and cultural difference,
and empathetic to a remarkable degree,
far beyond the generality of their
contemporaries … Rather than
evil intent or callous disregard,
however, this failure shows most the
limitations that even a diverse culture
can place on the most flexible of
its members’. He is talking of
‘the British failure to negotiate
with the Aborigines’, and it
is clearly this late-eighteenth-century
logic that he describes as terra nullius.
In
a sense, the historians’ early
encounters with terra nullius were
a charitable way to understand the
British philosophical and legal thinking
and the European cultural context
and traditions that underpinned this
particular imperial takeover. Historians’
continuing willingness to take terra
nullius on board their many ships
is part of their ongoing effort to
deal with that phrase, ‘the consent
of the natives’. ‘Consent’
is a more troublesome passenger than
terra nullius could ever be.
If,
as Connor asserts, terra nullius has
been ‘a plastic vein pumping
dark blood’ and causing ‘pain,
and deadliness’, we should be
worried, but I am not sure what we
should be most worried about. History
is not a blood sport. While constructive
critique is to be cherished, we need
to get away from endless slanging-match
adversarialism, and instead get onto
writing more nuanced, well-researched,
innovative and informative historical
narratives. Best to start something
new, like the significant stories
of profound importance that the nation
hardly knows.
Prime
Minister John Howard’s calls
for more history, and more chronological
narrative content and indigenous history
in school education, sound good. So
too do the governor-general’s
calls for Australia’s ancient
human history to be taught in Australian
schools. To heighten the content standards,
and to encourage more students to
study history, I suggest that national
prizes to recognise excellence in
history writing are long overdue.
In the phasing-in period, perhaps
some flight upgrades might be offered
to improve morale? Deadly! I hope
the historians haven’t all been
sacked yet.
