An epic novel set in PNG and the British colony of Queensland in the 19th century, when European colonialism reached its peak. The convention was that if a representative of a colonial power spent one year on territory not yet gobbled up by any European state, his state could claim that land as its colony. But what if the “representative” — in this case a Russian — refused to cooperate and did not want the “natives’ to be annexed?
Read about it in “Fatal Empires”.
Trevor Steele novels 