Skip to main content
×
×
Home

Empire and Order on the Colonial Frontiers of Georgia and New South Wales

  • Lisa Ford
Extract

In 1767, settlers on the western frontier of Georgia in North America sent a dire petition to their governor begging for protection. They claimed that local Creek Indians had stolen their horses and planned imminently to destroy their livestock and to kill their families. Before the governor could respond, the settlers crossed the Indian boundary to loot and burn a Creek village. In doing so they galvanized the imperial legal order into action – not against Creek horse thieves but against settler vigilantes on Creek land. At the urging of London officials, the governor of Georgia had the settlers arrested and charged, first with a felony, and when that failed, with ‘abuse and misdemeanour at common law against government’. However, Georgia's jurors refused to hold them accountable on either charge.

Copyright
References
Hide All

Primary Sources

Aualon Project, Yale Law School: http://elsinore,cis,yale,edu/lawweb/avalon/18th,htm
Bench of Magistrates Records, SZ775, New South Wales Record Office, Kingswood.
Candler, Allen D., ed., Colonial Records of the State of Georgia (Atlanta & Athens, Ga, 1907).
Colonial Office Records, CO 5/68–70, 5/658–665, 676–680, 201/238, 202/34, relating to the Georgia, Indian Affairs and New South Wales, National Archives (NA), London.
Colonial Secretary's Papers, 17881825 (CSP), 4/5783, 4/1819, ML Safe l/18b, SZ988, SZ1044, 4/424, New South Wales Record Office, Kingswood.
Colonial Secretary's Papers, 18261982 (SB), 4/1133.1, 5/1161, 4/8020.4, 5/4774.2, New South Wales Record Office, Kingswood.
Court of Criminal Jurisdiction Records, (CO), SZ776A- SZ803, New South Wales Record Office, Kingswood.
D'arcy Wentworth Papers, A753, Mitchell Library, Sydney.
Decisions of the Superior Courts of New South Wales, 1788–1899, Macquarie University Division of Law, http://www,law,mq,edu.au/scnsw/
Gollan, VictoriaBarclay, Jane, Aboriginal Colonial Court Cases, 1788–1838, http://www.records.nsw.gov.au/archives/aboriginal_colonial_court_cases_1788–1838_4525.asp
Governor Macquarie's Papers, A773, Mitchell Library, Sydney.
Hays, J.E., ed., Indian Treaties, Cessions of Land in Georgia, 1705–1837, Georgia State Archives (W.P.A. Project, 7158).
Historical Records of Australia, Series 1: Governors Despatches to and From England (Sydney, 1915).
Sydney Gazette and New South Wales Advertiser (facsimilie edition; Sydney, 1963).
Bennet, J.M., Sir Francis Forbes: First Chief Justice of New South Wales, 1823–1837 (Leichhardt, NSW, 1998).
Benton, Lauren, Law and Colonial Cultures: Legal Regimes in World History, 1400–1900 (Cambridge, 2002).
Bolton, Herbert E., and Ross, Mary, The Debatable Land: A Sketch of the Anglo-Spanish Contest for the Georgia Country (Berkeley, Ca., 1925).
Braund, KathrynHolland, E., Deerskins & Duffels: The Creek Indian Trade with Anglo-America, 1685–1815 (Lincoln, Neb., 1993).
Cadle, Farris W., Georgia Land Surveying History and Law (Athens, Ga, 1991).
Connor, John, The Australian Frontier Wars, 1788–1838 (Kensington, NSW, 2003).
Dowd, Gregory, War Under Heaven: Pontiac: The Indian Nations & the British Empire (Baltimore, 2002).
Etheridge, Robbie, Creek Country: The Creek Indians and their World (Chapel Hill, 1993).
Golder, Hilary, High and Responsible Office: A History of the New South Wales Magistracy (Sydney, 1991).
Grotius, Hugo, De Jure Belli Ac Pacts Libri Tres Vol. II, trans. Kelsey, Francis W. (Oxford, 1925).
Hanks, Peter, and Cass, Deborah, Australian Constitutional Law: Materials and Commentary (Sydney, 1999).
Johnson, James, Militiamen, Rangers, and Red coats: the Military in Georgia, 1754–1776 (Macon, Ga, 1992).
Karsten, Peter, Between Law and Custom: ‘High’ and ‘Low’ Legal Cultures in the Lands of the British Diaspora — The United States, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand, 1600–1900 (Cambridge, 2002).
Kawashima, Yasuhide, Puritan Justice and the Indian: White Man's Law in Massachusetts, 1630–1763 (Middletown, Conn., 1986).
Kercher, Bruce, An Unruly Child: A History of Law in Australia (St Leonards, NSW, 1995).
McHugh, Paul, Aboriginal Societies and the Common Law: A History of Sovereignty, Status, and Self-determination (Oxford & New York: OUP, 2004).
Reece, Bob, Aborigines and Colonists: Aborigines and Colonial Society in New South Wales in the 1830s and 1840s (Sydney, NSW & Portland, Or., 1974).
Reynolds, Henry, Law of the Land, 2nd ed, (Ringwood, Vic, Australia, 1992).
Reynolds, Henry, Aboriginal Sovereignty: Three Nations, One Australia? (St Leonards, NSW, 1996).
Richter, Daniel, Facing East from Indian Country: A Native History of Early America (Cambridge, Mass., 2001).
Snapp, J. Russell, John Stuart and the Struggle for Empire on the Southern Frontier (Baton Rouge, 1996).
Stanley, Peter, The Remote Garrison: The British Army in Australia, 1788–1870 (Kenthurst, NSW, 1986).
Turner, Frederick Jackson, The Frontier in American History (New York, 1920).
Vattel, Emmerich, The Law of Nations or the Principles of Natural Law Applied to the Conduct of Affairs of Nations and Sovereigns, trans. Fenwick, Charles G. (Washington, 1916).
Weaver, John C, The Great Land Rush and the Making of the Modern World, 1650–1900 (Montreal, 2003).
White, Richard, The Middle Ground: Indians, Empires and Republics in the Great Lakes Region, 1650–1815 (Cambridge & New York, 1991).
Williams, Robert A., The American Indian in Western Legal Thought: The Discourses of Conquest (New York & Oxford, 1990).
Wood, W. Allan, Dawn in the Valley (Sydney, 1972).
Adelman, Jeremy, and Aaron, Stephen, ‘From Borderlands to Borders: Empires, Nation States, and the Peoples of North American History’, American Historical Reuiew 104 (1999), 814841.
Anghie, Antony, ‘Finding the Peripheries: Sovereignty and Colonialism in Nineteenth-Century International Law’, Harvard International Law Journal 40/1 (1999), 180.
British Association Geographical Glossary Committee, ‘Some Definitions in the Vocabulary of Geography’, The Geographical Journal 117/4 (1951), 458459.
Carter, Clarence E., ‘The Beginnings of British West Florida’, The Mississippi Valley Historical Reuiew 4/3 (1917), 314341.
Carter, Clarence E., ‘British Policy towards the American Indians in the South, 1763–8’, English Historical Review 33/129 (1918), 3756.
Carter, Clarence E., ‘The Significance of the Military Office in America, 1763–1775’, American Historical Review 28/3 (1923), pp 475488.
Conway, Stephen, ‘Britain and the Revolutionary Crisis, 1763–1791’, in Marshall, P.J., ed., The Oxford History of the British Empire, The Eighteenth Century (Oxford, 1998), Vol. II, 325347.
Cumfer, Cynthia Dee, ‘Local Origins of National Indian Policy: Cherokee and Tennessean Ideas about Sovereignty and Nationhood, 1790–1811”, Journal of the Early Republic 23/1 (2002), 2146.
Delaney, David and Leitner, Helga, ‘The Political Construction of Scale’, Political Geography 16.2 (1997), 9397.
Fulcher, Jonathan, ‘The Wik Judgment, Pastoral Leases and Colonial Office Policy and Intention in NSW in the 1840s’, Australian Journal of Legal History 4/1 (1998), 3356.
Gould, Eliga, ‘Zones of Law, Zones of Violence: The Legal Geography of the British Atlantic, circa 1772’, William and Mary Quarterly 60/3 (2003), 475510.
Griffiths, Tom, ‘The Frontier Fallen’, Eureka Street 13/2 (2003), 2430.
Haefeli, Evan, ‘A Note on the Use of North American Borderlands’, American Historical Review 104 (1999), 12221225.
Hazeltine, H.D.The Influence of the Magna Carta on American Constitutional Development’, Columbia Law Reuiew 17/1 (1917), 117.
Hermes, Katherine, ‘Jurisdiction in the Colonial North East: Algonquian, English and French Governance’, American Journal of Legal History 42/1 (1999), 5273.
Hulsebosch, Daniel, ‘Imperia in Imperio: The Multiple Constitutions of Empire in New York, 1750–1777’, Law and History Review 16 (1998), 319379.
Juricek, John T, ‘American Usage of the Word “Frontier” from Colonial Times to Frederick Jackson Turner’, Proceedings from the American Philosophical Society 110/1 (1966), 1034.
Kercher, Bruce, ‘Native Title in the Shadows: the Origins of the Myth of Terra Nullius in Early New South Wales Courts’, in Bunton, Gregory Blue Martin and Crozier, Ralph, eds, Colonialism and the Modern World Order (ME Sharpe, 2002), 100119.
Krasner, Stephen D., ‘Compromising Westphalia’, International Security 20/3 (1996), 115151.
McHugh, Paul, ‘The Common-Law Status of Colonies and Aboriginal “Rights”: How Lawyers and Historians Treat the Past’, Saskatchewan Law Review 61/2 (1998), 393–42.
Sheehan, James, ‘The Problem of Sovereignty in European History’, American Historical Review 111 (2006), 116.
Silvern, Steven E., ‘Scales of Justice: Law, American Indian Treaty Rights and the Political Construction of Scale’, Political Geography 18 (1999), 639668.
Slattery, Brian, ‘Concepts of Economic Improvement and the Social Construction of Property Rights: Highlights from the English-speaking World’, in McLaren, John, Buck, A.R. and Wright, Nancy E., eds, Despotic Dominion: Property Rights in British Settler Societies (Vancouver, 2005).
Smith, N., and Dennis, W., ‘The Restructuring of Political Scale: Coalescence and Fragmentation of the Northern Core Region’, Economic Geography 63 (1987), 160182.
Stanley, Peter, ‘“Soldiers and Fellow Countrymen”: The Military in Colonial Australia’, in Australia, Two Centuries of War and Peace (Canberra, 1988), 6591.
Walters, Mark D., ‘Mohegan Indians v. Connecticut (1705–1773) and the Legal Status of Aboriginal Customary Laws and Government in British Morth America”, Osgood Law Review 33/4 (1995), 785829.
Zaret, David, ‘Petitions and the “Invention” of Public Opinion in the English Revolution’, American Journal of Sociology 101/6 (1996), 14971555.
Cumfer, Cynthia Dee, ‘The Idea of Man is so Various’: An Intellectual History of Tennessee, 1768–1810 (PhD diss.; University of California, Los Angeles, 2001).
Walters, Mark D., Continuity of Aboriginal Customs and Government (PhD diss.; Oxford University, 1995).
Recommend this journal

Email your librarian or administrator to recommend adding this journal to your organisation's collection.

Itinerario
  • ISSN: 0165-1153
  • EISSN: 2041-2827
  • URL: /core/journals/itinerario
Please enter your name
Please enter a valid email address
Who would you like to send this to? *
×

Metrics

Full text views

Total number of HTML views: 0
Total number of PDF views: 14 *
Loading metrics...

Abstract views

Total abstract views: 103 *
Loading metrics...

* Views captured on Cambridge Core between September 2016 - 12th June 2018. This data will be updated every 24 hours.