The claim that land could be taken
for use by one people because it was classed as unoccupied has been used by many nations
since the late 15th century. Terra nullius is the term by which
this is known. Terra being the Latin word for land, and nullius
meaning of no one, or nobody’s. The term has been used
notably by European colonisers to give legitimacy to their occupation, even
though people were already living on the land.
Cain murdering Abel. Painting by
Peter Rubens, 1600.
The antecedents of the term and of European colonisation can be traced to a specific time, place, and almost to one person. The date is 14 June 1452, and the place is the Vatican. The person is Pope Nicholas V and his advisors. Pope Nicholas V issued a papal bull (a public decree or similar document issued by a pope of the Catholic Church) known as the Dum Diversas. This bull authorised King Alfonso V of Portugal to conquer and subjugate ‘those rising against the Catholic faith…(namely) the Saracens and pagans’ in the Ottoman Empire.
A further papal bull (Romanus Pontifex) in 1455 was full of praise for King Alfonso V’s victories and instructed him to capture all Saracens, Turks, and other non-Christians and place them into perpetual slavery. These two papal bulls later became the justification for the Atlantic slave trade.
Christopher Colombus, in attempting to find a route to China and India that did not have to contend with the Ottoman Empire, chanced instead upon the Americas. Colombus’ report back to Queen Isabella and King Ferdinand in Barcelona during March 1493 kick-started the so-called Age of Discovery (more accurately the Age of Colonisation and Conquest.) It also resulted in a flurry of new papal bulls by Pope Alexander VI which divided the newly ‘discovered’ lands between Portugal and the Catholic Monarchs of Spain (Queen Isabella and King Ferdinand.)
Collectively these papal bulls became known as the Doctrine of Discovery. Essentially, they decreed that the Americas were open to “discovery” because the inhabitants were non-Christian and therefore of no significance in the European mind.
The fact that other peoples were already living on these lands did not, in the coloniser’s minds, constitute possession by them. More often than not the notion of res nullius (Latin, meaning nobody’s thing) was invoked, although some theologians at the time questioned this. The idea that lands could be possessed and occupied by colonisation, notwithstanding people already living there, became entrenched in the western mind. Res nullius morphed into terra nullius (nobody’s land) and was applied most famously by the colonisers of Australia, where (notwithstanding that they had been living on the continent for some 65,000 years or more) the indigenous people of Australia were not counted in censuses until 1971, following a referendum in 1967. It was not until 1992 that the notion of terra nullius was overturned by the Australian courts.
Even though res nullius and terra nullius were coined and used extensively from the late 15th century onwards, the concept of nobody’s land is an age-old one. It can be found in the very first book of the Bible. Many Biblical passages refer to a wilderness and most of these references do indeed indicate land in which no-one else is living. However, there is one very famous story in the Bible in which nobody’s land is invoked notwithstanding others living there.
The story of Cain and Abel is one that many people know. Let us look into this story.
Cain and Abel are twin brothers, and the children of Adam and Eve, with Cain being the older. ‘Now Abel was a keeper of sheep, but Cain was a tiller of the ground’ (Genesis 4.2). The Bible tells us that as grown men the brothers bring offerings ‘to the Lord.’ Cain brings fruit of the ground and Abel brings the firstborn of his flock and their fat. The Lord accepts Abel’s offering but not Cain’s. Genesis 4.5 tells us that ‘Cain was very angry and his countenance fell.’ Cain entices Abel into the fields and in a fit of envy kills him. We then read one of the most famous passages from the Bible in Genesis 4.9: ‘Then the Lord said to Cain, “Where is Abel, your brother?” He said, “I do not know. Am I my brother’s keeper.”’
Let’s stop here and look beneath the surface. First, their names. Cain is a translation (via Greek) of the Hebrew qayin meaning to acquire, take, or possess something. Abel’s name derives from the Hebrew word havel meaning to be empty, as well as vapor, breath, and foolishness.
As with many myths, allegories, and legends the characters in them tend to be representations of categories of people or their traits and behaviours. In this story Cain represents the agricultural societies of the Levant area, and Abel the nomadic herders to the south.
Read as allegory, the murder of Abel by Cain is a depiction of the agriculturally based settler cultures raiding and slaughtering the nomadic peoples so that they can acquire (there’s Cain’s name) more land to plant crops and feed a growing settler population. For those doing the raiding and slaughtering these lands were viewed as empty (there’s Abel’s name) and ripe for taking. The fact that people did inhabit the area simply meant that they had to be exterminated: they were, after all, simply nomads, roaming around an otherwise empty land.
Can we recognise the similarities between terra nullius and havel (Abel)? Both mean empty, owned by no-one.
Can we also see the arrogant superiority shown by the colonisers and the qayin (Cain)? Both mean to take and acquire unlawfully (in both cases.)
The sense of entitlement has been inherent within western/European cultures for centuries. The hundreds of indigenous and nature-based cultures who have lived as hunters, gatherers, and as nomads have suffered because of this sense of superiority and entitlement for centuries.
