ABSTRACT
When James Cook set sail for the southern ocean in the Endeavour in 1768, he carried with the ship’s papers the following advice regarding the ‘Natives of the several lands where the Ship may touch, given to him by the President of the British Royal Society, one of the sponsors of his voyage to observe the transit of Venus’ (Beaglehole 1955: 514):
They are the natural, and in the strictest sense of the word, the legal possessors of the several Regions they inhabit.
