Australia: settler colonialism and terra nullius
A settler colony founded on the fiction of “land belonging to no one”
Britain claimed and settled Australia from 1788, treating it in law as terra nullius despite tens of thousands of years of Aboriginal habitation. In Mabo v Queensland (No 2) (1992) the High Court of Australia rejected the “enlarged notion of terra nullius” and recognized native title.
What happened
Eddie Mabo and other Meriam people sued for recognition of their traditional land rights. The High Court had to decide whether the common law recognized indigenous title predating British sovereignty, confronting the doctrine that Australia was legally unoccupied at settlement.
The common law of this country would perpetuate injustice if it were to continue to embrace the enlarged notion of terra nullius… (Brennan J, Mabo, 1992)
Under each definition
Foreign sovereignty imposed over an inhabited territory.
Permanent British settlement replacing/displacing the indigenous population is the defining feature; a paradigm settler colony.
Australia’s own trajectory is settler, not post-independence control.
Routinely described as colonization/invasion in ordinary usage.
The case that the label applies
Britain took sovereignty and land from an indigenous population and built a permanent settler society, justified by a doctrine (terra nullius) that erased indigenous presence — textbook settler colonialism, as the High Court itself acknowledged in overturning it.
The case against
Mabo recognized native title but did not disturb the Crown’s underlying sovereignty; some argue this is a limit on the ruling, not a defence of colonization. There is no serious dispute that Australia was colonized.
In their words
The common law of this country would perpetuate injustice if it were to continue to embrace the enlarged notion of terra nullius
The verdicts above are how each definition would most likely classify this situation — illustrative guidance, not court rulings. Colonialism has no treaty crime, so no application is a legal “finding”; every characterization is attributed to the person or body that made it. The lenses diverge most on two questions — whether there is a “metropole” and who counts as “indigenous” — and on the difference between a historical judgment and a moral analogy. See the Definition tab for each definition’s full text. Inclusion is documentation, not a finding.