Despotic dominion : property rights in British settler societies /

Includes bibliographical references and index.

1. Property rights in the colonial imagination and experience /
John McLaren, A. R. Buck, Nancy E. Wright --
2. Encountering the spirit in the land ; "property" in a kinship-based legal order by Richard Overstall --
3. Paper empires : the legal dimensions of French and English ventures in North America by Brian Slattery.
4. Concepts of economic improvement and the social construction of property rights : highlights from the English-speaking world / John C. Weaver --
5. Warm reception in a cold climate : English property law and the suppression of the Canadian legal identity / Bruce Ziff --
6. Land law, liberalism, and the agrarian ideal : British North America, 1750-1920 / Philip Girard --
7. When private rights become public wrongs : property and the state in Prince Edward Island in the 1830s / Rusty Bittermann, Margaret McCallum --
8. "This remnant of feudalism" : primogeniture and political culture in colonial New South Wales, with some Canadian comparisons / A. R. Buck --
9. "The lady vanishes" : women and property rights in nineteenth-century New South Wales / Nancy E. Wright --
10. The establishment and preservation of Hutterite Communalism in North America / Alvin J. Esau --
11. The failed experiments : the demise of Doukhobor Systems of communal property landholding in Saskatchewan and British Columbia, 1899-1999 / John McLaren --
12. Coexistence and colonization on pastoral leaseholds in South Australia, 1851-99 / Robert Foster --
13. Indian reserves, aboriginal fisheries, and the public right to fish in British Columbia, 1876-82 / Douglas Harris

"This book brings together a variety of perspectives to provide a comprehensive analysis of the important issue of property rights, which continues to animate the body politic of Australia and Canada in particular. As such, it will be of interest to students and scholars of colonial history, property theory, indigenous studies, and law, as well as to judges, lawyers, and the inquisitive general reader."--BOOK JACKET.