Synopses & Reviews
Long before the word “genocide” was coined, the British invasion of Australia had annihilated approximately nine-tenths of the continent’s original population of Aborigines. The creation of white Australia depended upon the legal fiction of “terra nullius”—no man’s land—the claim that Aboriginal lands were inhabited by people who would soon die out and who could be helped on the way to extinction if they lingered.
Sven Lindqvist, the widely acclaimed and internationally renowned author of “Exterminate All the Brutes” and A History of Bombing, brings his original sensibility to bear as he travels 7,000 miles through Australia in search of places where belief in the rights of the white man and the annihilation of the “lower races” were put into practice. While Australia continues to reckon with its violent past—echoed in the United States’ treatment of Native Americans and Europe’s colonization of other continents—Lindqvist evokes a shocking history in which young boys were kidnapped to dive for pearls, then whipped and abandoned when the bends ruined them for work; “half-caste” children were taken from their mothers; and natives were misdiagnosed with STDs, put in neck irons, and sent to internment camps on remote islands. Lindqvist also recalls the work of ethnologists who brought their own prejudices to bear in studying Aborigines as primitives close to the origins of civilization, later inspiring Freud and Durkheim. At the same time he describes a beautiful and strange land, sacred to the native people who had inhabited it for centuries and celebrated in a long tradition of richly symbolic art.
A movingly idiosyncratic travelogue and a powerful act of historical excavation, Terra Nullius is the illuminating and disturbing story of how “no man’s land” became the province of the white man.
Review
"Readers of his earlier masterpieces,
A History of Bombing and
‘Exterminate All the Brutes’, will know that Sven Lindqvist is a brilliant and original writer as well as a fierce polemicist. With
Terra Nullius he has undertaken another devastating journey of historical exploration." —Geoff Dyer
"The most original work on Australia and its treatment of Aboriginals I have ever read . . . a marvelous book." —Phillip Knightley, author of Australia: A Biography of a Nation
"Lindqvist is a provocative guide through the intractable shame of the past." —The Guardian
Synopsis
"At some future period, not very distant as measured by centuries, the civilized races of man will almost certainly exterminate and replace throughout the world the savage races."Charles Darwin, The Descent of Man
"Terra nullius"no man's landwas the legal fiction employed to justify the white invasion of Australia. Aboriginal lands were declared "terra nullius" because, it was claimed, they were inhabited by people who would soon die outand who could be helped on the way to extinction if they lingered.
Author of the acclaimed "Exterminate All the Brutes" and A History of Bombing, Sven Lindqvist is one of the most innovative writers and historians at work today. He brings his original sensibility to bear as he travels 12,000 kilometers through so-called no man's land in search of places where belief in the rights of the white man and the inevitable extinction of the "lower races" were put into practice. The world the Aborigines had known for centuries ended as young boys were kidnapped to dive for pearls, then whipped and abandoned when the bends ruined them for work; "half-caste" children were taken from their mothers; and natives were put in neck irons and sent to internment camps under false diagnoses of STDs.
Mining history, popular fiction, anthropology, and his own travels, Lindqvist brilliantly weaves together an illuminating and disturbing history of how "no man's land" became the province of the white man.
About the Author
Sven Lindqvist has published more than thirty books, including “Exterminate All the Brutes”, The Skull Measurer’s Mistake, A History of Bombing, and Terra Nullius (all published by The New Press). He holds a PhD in the history of literature from Stockholm University, an honorary doctorate from Uppsala University, and an honorary professorship from the Swedish government. He lives in Stockholm.