John C.Weaver. The Great Land Rush and the Making of the Modern World, 1650-1900. Montreal: McGill-Queen's University Press, 2003. x + 497 pp. $55.00 (cloth), ISBN 978-0-7735-2527-6.

Reviewed by Robin Butlin (School of Geography, University of Leeds)
Published on H-HistGeog (September, 2005)

The appropriation of vast areas of land under the globalizing influences of market capitalism and imperialism during the early modern and modern periods of history is the powerful theme of this outstanding work of historical scholarship. Regionally the book focuses on the varied experiences of what were originally British settler colonies--the United States, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and South Africa--and also provides, in chapter 1 ("Concepts: Empires and Perspectives on Land"), short but helpful comparisons with the experiences of other colonizing states such as Spain, Portugal, France, Germany, the Netherlands, and Russia.

The book is organized topically, with each conceptual and theoretical construct informed by very detailed accounts of regional experience. Part 1 ("Scanning the Horizon") is a review, in three chapters, of the histories and components of property rights; the related economic and moral concepts of "improvement" in both state-led and private contexts of the areas studied; and the frontier conditions in which armies and settlers confronted indigenous peoples whose concepts of land use were wholly different. Thus, "dealings with indigenous peoples were accompanied everywhere by misunderstanding and duplicity, episodes of collaboration, selective borrowings by peoples on both sides of the frontier, ecological change, and violence" (p. 54).

Part 2 ("An Appetite for Land") covers in four chapters concepts and details of the acquisition of land by "uprooting native title," the various means of allocation of appropriated land by the agencies and criteria of social and military rank, allocation by market, and allocation by initiative, the latter including the experiences of landhunters, squatters and grazers. A frequently experienced process involved the taking and holding of indigenous land by force, but with frequent articulation through quasi-legal rights of occupation and use, and their inscription by survey, mapping, and allocation of land title. The process met with opposition, both physical confrontation in the locations of appropriation and moral/humanitarian opposition in the metropolitan hearts of empire and nearer to hand, but such opposition was often ineffective. The case of the offices of "Protectors of Aborigines," created in New South Wales in 1838, is illustrative, for, as Weaver asserts, "there was little that native protectors could do to rescue Aboriginal people from white murderers, disease, and loss of habitat" (p. 144).

Part 3 ("Reapportioning the Pieces") consists of one chapter and an epilogue, and articulates a range of ideas concerning the processes of land acquisition by settlers in the later phases of imperial appropriation and settlement, which more frequently involved the breaking up of larger estates and the squeezing of land-use and ownership rights at the margins of settlement in the second half of the nineteenth century, when the amount of fresh land had become limited. These processes included new farming techniques, such as dry farming and irrigation farming; the latter, in turn, required reappraisals of water-rights.

One of the great attractions of this major narrative and analysis of the historical taking of land-use rights is the author's detailed knowledge of different regional and imperial situations, and his ability to weave comparative histories within and around them. He is equally at home on the farming frontiers of the United States and Canada as he is on the very different frontiers of the British and Boer settlers moving out from the Cape Colony; the confrontations between Maori and European in New Zealand in the nineteenth century; and the confrontations involving the diminution of the rights to life and land of the Aboriginals in Australia. The style of writing and presentation, if at times rather dense in argument, produces a readable, consistently stimulating, and effective narrative.

This book evidences an astonishing breadth and depth of conceptual, legal, empirical, and regional knowledge and analysis, and is accompanied by a range of helpful maps, tables and photographs. It is informed by a comprehensive bibliographic base. The theory underpinning and engaging the work is appropriate and effective, including the concepts of modernity and of the changing cultural constructions of land rights and appropriations. It will undoubtedly form an essential point of reference for historical geographers, historians, lawyers and others researching and teaching the fascinating, challenging, and in many respects tragic histories of the struggles for land rights at imperial settlement frontiers from the mid-seventeenth to the late nineteenth century and beyond.

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Citation: Robin Butlin. Review of C.Weaver, John, The Great Land Rush and the Making of the Modern World, 1650-1900. H-HistGeog, H-Net Reviews. September, 2005.
URL: http://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.php?id=10897

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