The nullius ideal: on "terra nullius reborn" by Henry Reynolds.(History)

THE WORDS terra nullius were probably never spoken on the Endeavour by Captain Cook in 1770, nor written by the quill pen of Governor Arthur Phillip in 1788, nor heard anywhere in Botany Bay during the eighteenth century. In fact according to Tasmanian writer and historian Dr Michael Connor, the phrase was probably never used in relation to the colonisation of Australia until the second half o the twentieth century.

In an article rifled "Error Nullius", in the Bulletin, August 26, 2003, Dr Connor explains that nobody except a handful of historians and international lawyers had ever heard of terra nullius until it was adopted and adapted by "the best-known and most trusted historian on Aboriginal and White conflict", Professor Henry Reynolds. In The Law of the Land, published in 1987, Professor Reynolds redefined terra nullius. He took a 1938 passage, which defined terra nullius as "land not under any sovereignty", and a 1910 passage with the term res nullius, which he replaced with terra nullius in square brackets. He then commandeered the ms nullius definition, "a thing which has no owner", and attached it to terra nullius.

This hybridised term, says Connor, replaced clarity with confusion by muddling the historical/political concept terra nullius, with the legal concept ms nullius, and to further muddy the waters, with the geographical concept (meaning uninhabited). The result, says Connor, was "a mutating linguistic virus":

 
   After fixing it in place, Reynolds' career was based 
   on disproving its validity. The work of the mirrors 
   was done. His mangling of international law, 
   common law, and translation produced a late-twentieth-century 
   superstition. Once introduced, the 
   Latin tag was quickly loved by historians, social scientists, 
   lawyers, clergy, journalists, and racial 
   activists. It meant whatever its users wanted it to 
   mean. Impressive sounding, it was ridiculously easy 
   to mock. 

It was just what the "1969-style" radicals who had taken over Australia's humanities faculties needed for their latest campaign. Terra nullius sounded scholarly and high-status and was ripe for equivocation. It was propagated through ideologically primed schools, manoeuvred skilfully through the media, and when it arrived on the bench of the High Court in 1992 it was "the only explanation for the British settlement of Australia" the court was to consider.

"Historians more interested in politics than archives," argues Connor, "misled the legal profession into believing that a phrase no one had heard of a few years before was the very basis of our statehood, and Reynolds' version of our history, especially The Law of the Land, underpinned the Mabo judges' decision-making."

Its job at the High Court done, terra nullius was placed behind museum glass as a permanent reminder that our nation was founded on an "idiotic" iniquity. Imagine then the reaction of the breeder of this ideological weapon, at the thought that it might escape in a form mutated beyond his control; and this may go some way to explain the undercurrent of paranoia that runs through Henry Reynolds' chapter in Whitewash, which he titled "Terra Nullius Reborn".