Agricultural History Review, Volume 66 Part 2 (2018), p. 302

Zoe Laidlaw and Alan Lester have compiled an impressive and international collection of case studies on a neglected aspect of one the most significant spatial shifts in agricultural production, namely the expansion of settler colonialism to large expanses of the Americas, Australasia and Africa. As was the case with Henry Reynolds’ classic The other side of the frontier (2006) the authors’ focus is on the ‘other side’, namely the impacts on and the responses by the indigenous inhabitants of these lands, rather than on the experiences of the settler colonists.

In their insightful introduction, the editors consider how the spaces of settler colonialism were ‘co-created by uneven indigenous and settler capacities’ (p. 7) and how this imbalance of power characteristically obliged the indigenous inhabitants to adopt a ‘Christian, agricultural indigeneity’ (p. 4) as a survival strategy. Both in the introduction and in the case study chapters, therefore, this volume is a study of ‘indigenous dispossession and resilience’ (p. 5) at, collectively, a global scale. Although the spatial coverage is restricted to the Anglosphere, with four chapters on Australia, three on Canada, two on South Africa and one each on New Zealand and the USA, the case study chapters cover a diverse range of environments and issues and the contributions by historians are complemented by those of political scientists, lawyers and criminologists and of two indigenous authors.

One of the strengths of this collection is its provision of overlapping perspectives on the processes of dispossession and resistance. In the Canadian case, this is achieved in scalar terms. Adele Perry considers how vast expanses of the Hudson’s Bay Company’s territory were made available for agricultural settlement, while Sarah Carter describes how, within this area, a single Indian Reserve in Manitoba was increasingly threatened before being finally opened up for agricultural settlement. In the Australian case, the Aboriginal reserve and mission of Coranderrk in Victoria is considered in Julie Evan and Giordano Nanni’s chapter through the lens of indigenous submissions to an 1881 parliamentary inquiry and, in Joanna Cruikshank and Patricia Grimshaw’s contribution, through that of the life and writings of the settler woman and Aboriginal advocate, Ann Bon. The development of the Spanish Benedictine community at New Norcia in Western Australia is described by Tiffany Shellam.

The role of sympathetic, and generally religious, sections of the settler communities is an almost ubiquitous component of these case studies. Most describe the fates of indigenous reserves that were also missions for a range of Christian denominations. Equally ubiquitous is the related theme of the ‘coming together of white humanitarian and indigenous agency’ (p.12) with, in most cases, negative longer-term results for the original inhabitants. By adding Christian and agricultural components to their indigenous identities, the subjects of the case studies frequently came to be seen as less ‘pure’ by the settlers and therefore they and their lands were deemed to be less deserving of special protection by the colonial and state authorities. Carter aptly cites Homi Bhabha’s observation in his The location of culture (1990, p. 190) that ‘colonized subjects who mimicked the colonizer were the most menacing’ and the examples from Canada, Australia and South Africa all demonstrate how settler authorities could use ‘divide and rule’ tactics to distinguish and discriminate between those indigenous inhabitants who sought to assimilate (doctrinally, agriculturally and/or sexually) and those who did not. These issues are developed in the chapter by Mark McMillan and Cosima McRae on the 1886 Half Caste Act in Victoria and the wider implications of the many legal definitions of Aboriginality.

Nevertheless, the collection also acknowledges local complexities. Both of the South African case studies, by Robert Ross and Kate Vernal, address the extra layer of difficulty provided by the ethnic diversities of the native and settler populations. The chapters by Cecilia Morgan, on the Haudenosaunee in Ontario, and Kelli Mosteller, on the Potawatomi in Kansas, consider the difficulties experienced by indigenous groups seeking to retain both land and identity following forced removals from their original territories. Angela Wanhalla traces the sequence of Maori dispossession of their wetland reserve, not for direct settler agricultural purposes, but for the wider ends of river management and flood control.

Overall, this collection offers a thought-provoking and – at least to this reviewer – a depressing account of a process of largely successful indigenous dispossession and of often determined, but ultimately unequal, indigenous resistance. Much of the material in this volume relates to the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, but the impacts of the events described therein endure. On the one hand, the Peguis First Nation received $C126 million in 2008 in compensation for the illegal transfer of St Peters Reserve from the ownership of their ancestors. On the other, disparaging settler testimony from the 1881 inquiry on Coranderrk was used by an Australian court to dismiss a Native Title claim in 2002. This book contains very occasional editorial errors (an inconsistent reference date between the text and the bibliography; a chapter cross-reference to the wrong map), but it thoroughly and carefully addresses important and complex issues that are relevant not only to agricultural but also to imperial, colonial and indigenous histories.