ABSTRACT
Neither imperial claims to sovereignty nor the imposition of the structures of British law flowed easily from the fact of the imperial presence. Both had to be invented and created. The relationship between international law and imperial order was not put on a sound theoretical foundation until the later part of the century. Similarly, the relation between British sovereignty claims and Indigenous politics remained in an uncertain state as efforts were made to find a way to accommodate British law to Indigenous realities. Those uncertainties were not to be resolved until settler governance replaced direct imperial rule.
