SERF. Down at the very bottom of the feudal system, a serf worked as a laborer, essentially in no more than a modified form of slavery.

  SHAKU. A traditional Japanese measure of length, the Japanese foot, allowed officially until 1966, still used for some cloth measurement today. One variety, the whale shaku, used baleen whiskers as ruler.

  SHARECROPPER. A tenant farmer who works the land for its owner and receives a portion of the crop as compensation for doing so.

  TERRA NULLIUS. The classically Imperial legal fiction claiming that sparsely populated lands unoccupied by (generally British) settlers belonged in law to nobody, and were thus susceptible to ownership by their European discoverers. Australia and much of interior North America were once regarded in this manner.

  THEODOLITE. A barely portable instrument of lenses, compasses, and brass vernier scales and mounted usually on a tripod, combining great precision with cumbersome weight and size, used in surveying tracts of land, meridians, or entire countries.

  TIMAR. An early form of land distribution during the Ottoman empire in which temporary and nonheritable grants of conquered territory were made to those cavalrymen, Janissaries, and even slaves who had taken part in the conquest.

  TITLE. A legal right to the ownership of land or of other property, usually based on an aggregation of facts or evidence from the land’s recorded history.

  TORRENS TITLE. While serving as registrar general of South Australia in 1858, the Irish lawyer Sir Robert Torrens introduced a system of land registration that allowed the government to create certificates of ownership—Torrens titles—that decisively proved possession. The system has since been adopted near universally in Western nations.

  TRESPASS. Defined in law as the wrongful and uninvited entry onto lands owned by another person, and the perpetration of damage, however trivial, to the owner’s real property.

  TSUBO. A Japanese unit of a measurement equivalent to two tatami mats.

  USUFRUCT. The right to enjoy—but not to destroy, sell, or otherwise profoundly alter—land that belongs to someone else. Thomas Jefferson famously remarked that “the earth belongs—in usufruct—to the living.”

  VARA. The Spanish yard, generally equivalent to some thirty-three inches, and which is still occasionally found used as a measurement standard in Texas

  YOJANA. A varying unit of distance employed in early fifth-century India and equating to between eight and nine miles.

  YOKELET. In Kent, in southern England, a yokelet once signified a small arable farm that could be worked by one yoke of oxen. It became briefly used as a measure of land—somewhat larger than an acre, which originated in the size of a field that could be worked by just a single animal.

  YOKING. A strip of ploughed land, usually no more than ten yards wide, fashioned by farmers in Scotland and far northern England.

  Bibliography

  Anderson, Sam. Boom Town: The Fantastical Saga of Oklahoma City. New York. Crown. 2018.

  Applebaum, Anne. Red Famine: Stalin’s War on Ukraine. London. Allen Lane. 2017.

  Archives New Zealand. The Treaty of Waitangi. Wellington. Bridget Williams Books. 2017.

  Baker, Alan R. and Gideon Biger (eds.). Ideology and Landscape in Historical Perspective: Essays on the Meanings of Some Places in the Past. Cambridge. Cambridge University Press. 1992.

  Berkman, Richard L. and W. Kip Viscusi. Damming the West: Ralph Nader’s Study Group Report on the Bureau of Reclamation. New York. Grossman. 1973.

  Berry, Wendell. The Gift of Good Land: Further Essays Cultural and Agricultural. Berkeley, CA. Counterpoint. 1981.

  Bowes, John P. Land Too Good for Indians: Northern Indian Removal. Norman. University of Oklahoma Press. 2016.

  Brasher, Rex. Secrets of the Friendly Woods. New York. The Century Co. 1926.

  Brewer, Richard. Conservancy: The Land Trust Movement in America. Hanover, NH. University Press of New England. 2003.

  Brooke-Hitching, Edward. The Phantom Atlas: The Greatest Myths, Lies and Blunders on Maps. London. Simon & Schuster. 2016.

  Butler, Jenna. A Profession of Hope: Farming on the Edge of the Grizzly Trail. Hamilton, ON. Wolsak and Wynn. 2015.

  Butler, Samuel. Erewhon, or Over the Range. London. Trübner. 1872.

  Byrnes, Giselle. Boundary Markers: Land Surveying and the Colonisation of New Zealand. Wellington. Bridget Williams Books. 2001.

  Cahill, Kevin. Who Owns the World: The Surprising Truth About Every Piece of Land on the Planet. New York. Grand Central. 2010.

  Calloway, Colin G. The Indian World of George Washington: The First President, the First Americans, and the Birth of the Nation. New York. Oxford University Press. 2018.

  Christophers. Brett. The New Enclosure: The Appropriation of Public Land in Neoliberal Britain. London. Verso. 2018.

  Conquest, Robert. Harvest of Sorrow: Soviet Collectivization and the Terror-Famine. New York. Oxford University Press. 1986.

  Crane, Nicholas. The Making of the British Landscape: From the Ice Age to the Present. London. Weidenfeld & Nicolson. 2016.

  Cronon, William. Changes in the Land: Indians, Colonists, and the Ecology of New England. New York. Hill & Wang. 1983.

  Dartnell, Lewis. Origins: How Earth’s History Shaped Human History. New York. Basic Books. 2019.

  Dary, David. Entrepreneurs of the Old West. Lincoln. University of Nebraska Press. 1986.

  Debo, Angie. A History of the Indians of the United States. Norman. University of Oklahoma Press. 1970.

  Debo, Angie. And Still the Waters Run: The Betrayal of the Five Civilized Tribes. Princeton. Princeton University Press. 1940.

  Denman, D. R. Origins of Ownership: A Brief History of Land Ownership and Tenure in England from Earliest Times to the Modern Era. London. Allen & Unwin. 1958.

  Devine, T. M. The Scottish Clearances: A History of the Dispossessed. London. Allen Lane. 2018.

  Douglas, Roy. Land, People and Politics: A History of the Land Question in the United Kingdom 1878–1952. London. Allison & Busby. 1976.

  Dressler, Camille. Eigg: The Story of an Island. Edinburgh. Polygon. 1998.

  Dunbar-Ortiz, Roxanne. An Indigenous Peoples’ History of the United States. Boston. Beacon Press. 2014.

  Dunn, Shirley W. The River Indians: Mohicans Making History. Fleischmanns, NY. Purple Mountain Press. 2009.

  Easdale, Nola. Kairuri: The Measurer of Land. Petone, New Zealand. Highgate. 1988.

  Egan, Timothy. The Worst Hard Time: The Untold Story of Those Who Survived the Great American Dust Bowl. Boston. Houghton Mifflin. 2006.

  Fairlie, Simon et al. (eds.). The Land. Bridport, Dorset. March 2006–present.

  Fellmeth, Robert C. Politics of Land: Ralph Nader’s Study Group Report on Land Use in California. New York. Grossman. 1973.

  Ferguson, Niall. Empire: How Britain Made the Modern World. London. Allen Lane. 2013.

  Ferrari, Marco, et al. A Moving Border: Alpine Cartographies of Climate Change. New York. Columbia Books on Architecture. 2018.

  Foreman, Grant. Indian Removal: The Emigration of Five Civilized Tribes of Indians. Norman. University of Oklahoma Press. 1932.

  Forster, E. M. Abinger Harvest. New York. Harcourt, Brace. 1936.

  Gammage, Bill. The Biggest Estate on Earth: How Aborigines Made Australia. Crows Nest, NSW. Allen & Unwin. 2011.

  Geisler, Charles C. (ed.). Who Owns Appalachia?: Land Ownership and Its Impact. Lexington, KY. University Press of Kentucky. 1981.

  George, Henry. Progress and Poverty: An Inquiry into the Cause of Industrial Depressions and of Increased Want with Increase of Wealth; the Remedy. New York. Appleton & Co. 1879.

  Godwin, Peter. When a Crocodile Eats the Sun. New York. Little, Brown. 2008.

  Grandin, Greg. The End of the Myth: From the Frontier to the Border Wall in the Mind of America. New York. Henry Holt. 2019.

  Greer, Allan. Property and Dispossession: Natives, Empire and Land in Early Modern America. Cambridge, UK. Cambridge University Press. 2018.

  Griffiths, Billy. Deep Time Dreaming: Uncovering Ancient Australia. Carlton, VIC. Black Inc. 2018.

  Hamsun, Knut. Growth of the Soil. (Orig: Markens Grode). New York. Knopf. 1921.

  Hardy, Roger. The Poisoned Well: Empire and Its Legacy in the Middle East. New York. Oxford University Press. 2017.

  Hewitt, Rachel. Map of a Nation: A Biography of the Ordnance Survey. London. Granta. 2010.

  Heyman, Stephen. The Planter of Modern Life: Louis Bromfield and the Seeds of a Food Revolution. New York. Norton. 2020.

  Hightower, Michael J. 1889: The Boomer Movement, the Land Run, and Early Oklahoma City. Norman. University of Oklahoma Press. 2018.

  Hinks, Arthur R. Maps and Survey. Cambridge. Cambridge University Press. 1913.

  Hogue, Michel. Metis and the Medicine Line: Crossing a Border and Dividing a People. Chapel Hill. University of North Carolina Press. 2015.

  Hoig, Stan. The Oklahoma Land Rush of 1889. Oklahoma City. Oklahoma Historical Society. 1989.

  Hunter, James. The Claim of Crofting: The Scottish Highlands and Islands, 1930–1990. Edinburgh. Mainstream Publishing. 1991.

  Hunter, James. From the Low Tide of the Sea to the Highest Mountain Tops: Community Ownership of Land in the Highlands and Islands of Scotland. Isle of Lewis. The Islands Book Trust. 2012.

  Hutchinson, Bruce. The Struggle for the Border. Don Mills, ONT. Oxford University Press. 1955.

  Johnson, Miranda. The Land Is Our History: Indigeneity, Law, and the Settler State. New York. Oxford University Press. 2016.

  Johnson, Richard B. (ed.). History of Us: Nisenan Tribe of the Nevada City Rancheria. Santa Rosa, CA. Comstock Bonanza Press. 2018.

  Jorgensen, Neil. A Guide to New England’s Landscape. Chester, CT. The Globe Pequot Press. 1977.

  Kaplan, Robert D. Earning the Rockies: How Geography Shapes America’s Role in the World. New York. Random House. 2017.

  Keay, John. The Great Arc: The Dramatic Tale of How India Was Mapped and Everest Was Named. New York. HarperCollins. 2000.

  King, Michael. The Penguin History of New Zealand. Auckland. Penguin. 2003.

  King, Michael. Whina: A Biography of Whina Cooper. London. Hodder & Stoughton. 1983.

  Kunstler, James Howard. The Geography of Nowhere: The Rise and Decline of America’s Man-Made Landscape. New York. Touchstone. 1993.

  Leopold, Aldo. A Sand County Almanac: And Sketches Here and There. New York. Oxford University Press. 1949.

  Linklater, Andro. Measuring America: How the United States Was Shaped by the Greatest Land Sale in History. New York. Penguin. 2003.

  Linklater, Andro. Owning the Earth: The Transforming History of Land Ownership. London. Bloomsbury. 2013.

  Lopez, Barry (ed.). Home Ground: Language for an American Landscape. San Antonio, TX. Trinity University Press. 2006.

  Lynam, Edward (ed.). The Mapmaker’s Art: Essays on the History of Maps. London. The Batchworth Press. 1953.

  Mabey, Richard. The Common Ground: a Place for Nature in Britain’s Future? London. Hutchinson. 1980.

  Maier, Charles S. Once Within Borders: Territories of Power, Wealth and Belonging since 1500. Cambridge, MA. Harvard University Press. 2016.

  Marsden, Philip. Rising Ground: A Search for the Spirit of Place. London. Granta. 2014.

  Marsden, Philip. The Summer Isles: A Voyage of the Imagination. London. Granta. 2019.

  Marshall, James M. Land Fever: Dispossession and the Frontier Myth. Lexington, KY. University Press of Kentucky. 1986.

  McGuire, Lloyd H., Jr. Birth of Guthrie: Oklahoma’s Run of 1889 and Life in Guthrie in 1889 and the 1890s. San Diego. Privately Published. 1998.

  Mingay, G. E. Parliamentary Enclosure in England: An Introduction to Its Causes, Incidence and Impact 1750–1850. Harlow, Essex. Longman. 1997.

  Ministry of Justice, New Zealand. 150 Years of the Maori Land Court. Wellington. New Zealand Government. 2015.

  Mitchell, John Hanson. Ceremonial Time: Fifteen Thousand Years on One Square Mile. Cambridge, MA. Perseus Books. 1984.

  Mitchell, John Hanson. Trespassing: An Inquiry into the Private Ownership of Land. Reading, MA. Perseus Books.1998.

  Monbiot, George. Feral: Rewilding the Land, the Sea, and Human Life. London. University of Chicago Press. 2014.

  Moss, Graham. Britain’s Wasting Acres: Land Use in a Changing Society. London. The Architectural Press. 1981.

  Neiwert, David A. Strawberry Days: How Internment Destroyed a Japanese American Community. New York. Palgrave Macmillan. 2005.

  Nicolson, I. F. The Mystery of Crichel Down. Oxford. Clarendon Press. 1986.

  Nikoliç, Zoran. The Atlas of Unusual Borders. Glasgow. HarperCollins, 2019.

  O’Donnell, Edward T. Henry George and the Crisis of Inequality: Progress and Poverty in the Gilded Age. New York. Columbia University Press. 2015.

  O’Malley, Vincent. The Great War for New Zealand: Waikato 1800–2000. Wellington. Bridget Williams Books. 2019.

  O’Malley, Vincent. The New Zealand Wars. Wellington. Bridget Williams Books. 2019.

  O’Malley, Vincent et al. The Treaty of Waitangi Companion: Maori and Pakeha from Tasman to Today. Auckland. Auckland University Press. 2010.

  Osborn, William C. The Paper Plantation: Ralph Nader’s Study Group on the Pulp and Paper Industry in Maine. New York. Grossman. 1974.

  Polhemus, John and Richard Polhemus. Up on Preston Mountain: The Story of an American Ghost Town. Fleischmanns, New York. Purple Mountain Press. 2005.

  Prebble, John. The Highland Clearances. London. Secker & Warburg. 1963.

  Purdy, Jedediah. This Land Is Our Land: The Struggle for a New Commonwealth. Princeton. Princeton University Press. 2019.

  Quinn, Tom. The Reluctant Billionaire: The Tragic Life of Gerald Grosvenor, 6th Duke of Westminster. London. Biteback Publishing. 2018.

  Rackham, Oliver. The History of the Countryside. London. Dent. 1986.

  Rader, Andrew. Beyond the Known: How Exploration Created the Modern World and Will Take Us to the Stars. New York. Scribner. 2019.

  Rees, Tony. Arc of the Medicine Line: Mapping the World’s Longest Undefended Border Across the Western Plains. Lincoln. University of Nebraska Press. 2007.

  Reeves, Richard. Infamy: The Shocking Story of the Japanese American Internment in World War Two. New York. Henry Holt. 2015.

  Robillard, Walter G. and Donald A. Wilson. Brown’s Boundary Control and Legal Principles. Hoboken. Wiley. 2003.

  Rothstein, Richard. The Color of Law: A Forgotten History of How Our Government Segregated America. New York. Liveright. 2017.

  Rowse, Tim. Indigenous and Other Australians Since 1901. Sydney. University of New South Wales Press. 2017.

  Sapp, Rick. Native Americans State by State. New York. Quarto. 2018.

  Schama, Simon. The Story of the Jews. London. HarperCollins. 2013.

  Schulten, Susan. A History of America in 100 Maps. London. The British Library. 2018.

  Segeren, W. G. (ed.). Polders of the World. Arnhem. Published Proceedings of Symposium, Lelystad. 1982.

  Shorto, Russell. Amsterdam: A History of the World’s Most Liberal City. New York. Random House. 2013.

  Shrubsole, Guy. Who Owns England? How We Lost Our Green and Pleasant Land and How to Take It Back. London. William Collins. 2019.

  Stamp, L. Dudley and W. G. Hoskins. The Common Land of England and Wales. London. Collins. 1963.

  Stannard, David E. American Holocaust: The Conquest of the New World. New York. Oxford University Press. 1992.

  Stein, Mark. How the States Got Their Shapes. New York. HarperCollins. 2008.

  Tolstoy, Leo. How Much Land Does a Man Need? And Other Stories. London. Penguin. 1994.

  Toynbee, Arnold J. A Study of History. London. Oxford University Press. 1946.

  Tree, Isabella. Wilding: Returning Nature to Our Farm. London. Picador. 2018.

  Treuer, Anton. Atlas of Indian Nations. Washington, D.C. National Geographic. 2013.

  Treuer, David. The Heartbeat of Wounded Knee: Native America from 1890 to the Present. New York. Riverhead Books. 2019.

  Trudolyubov, Maxim. The Tragedy of Property: Private Life, Ownership and the Russian State. Cambridge. Polity Press. 2018.

  Vitek, William and Wes Jackson (eds.). Rooted in the Land: Essays on Community and Place. New Haven. Yale University Press. 1996.

  Watson, Peter. Ideas: A History of Thought and Invention, from Fire to Freud. New York. HarperCollins. 2005.

  Weaver, John C. The Great Land Rush and the Making of the Modern World, 1650–1900. Montreal. McGill-Queen’s University Press. 2003.

  Weisman, Alan. The World Without Us. New York. St. Martin’s Press. 2007.

  Wigan, Michael. The Salmon: The Extraordinary Story of the King of Fish. London. William Collins. 2013.

  Wightman, Andy. The Poor Had No Lawyers: Who Owns Scotland (and How They Got It). Edinburgh. Birlinn. 2015.

  Index

  A specific form of pagination for this digital edition has been developed to match the print edition from which the index was created. If the application you are reading this on supports this feature, the page references noted in this index should align. At this time, however, not all digital devices support this functionality. Therefore, we encourage you to please use your device’s search capabilities to locate a specific entry.

  Page numbers of illustrations appear in italics.

  aboriginal people of Australia, 199–200

  antiquity of, 200, 239, 244

  bias against, 199

  controlled burning by, 240–41, 241, 243, 244–45

  Cook and, 235–39

  Earth as their mother, 402–3

  Guugu Yimithir group, 238

  Gweagal family, 237, 237

  as landowners, 235

  as T.O.’s (Traditional Owners), 200, 239, 244

  wisdom of, 235–45, 241

  Accursius, Franciscus, 215

  Adams, John, 139n

  Adams, John Quincy, 146

  Afghanistan, 49n, 71

  border (Durand Line), 81

  Africa

  anti-imperial rebellions, 366

  borders and countries created and mapped, 367–68

  British and European colonies in, 98–99, 131–32, 363–66, 365