Settler Sovereignty: Jurisdiction and Indigenous People in America and Australia, 1788-1836

Settler Sovereignty: Jurisdiction and Indigenous People in America and Australia, 1788-1836. By Lisa Ford. (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2010. x, 313 pp. $49.95, isbn 9780-674-03565-2.)

In this provocative comparative history, Lisa Ford astutely examines the role of the common law in asserting settler sovereignty over native people. Behind the sweeping title lies a closer focus on the American state of Georgia and the British colony of New South Wales, primarily during the 1830s. Indeed, Ford dwells on two key cases. In 1830 Georgia prosecured George Tassel for killing a fellow Cherokee within the Cherokee reservation that the Georgians meant to destroy. In 1836 authorities in New South Wales prosecuted Jack Congo Murrell for killing a fellow Aborigine. Prior ro 1830 in both places, the settlers had accepted the persistence of indigenous customary law within a native orbit...