ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the practical implications of European ideas of natural law, natural rights and the law of nations with specific reference to the idea of terra nullius. The cases of the European encounters with the American Indians and Australian Aborigines provide an excellent illustration of how such abstract doctrines, with their universal standards and applicability, led to widely differing conclusions when translated into concrete social and political contexts requiring practical prescriptions and imperative injunctions. The idea of terra nullius has become increasingly prevalent in recent discussions of the legitimacy of European expansionism, but especially so in the context of the history wars in Australia. Even in the mid-eighteenth century, natural law was still being inextricably linked to Gods authority. The doctrine of vacant or unoccupied lands, available for others to acquire and appropriate was a central pillar in conceptualising relations between European and non-European nations, that is, between civilized and barbarous and savage societies.
