RACE AND IDENTITY IN THE TASMAN WORLD, 17691840
EMPIRES IN PERSPECTIVE
Series Editors : Tony Ballantyne
Duncan Bell
Francisco Bethencourt
Caroline Elkins
Durba Ghosh
Advisory Editor : Masaie Matsumura
TITLES IN THIS SERIES
1 Between Empire and Revolution: A Life of Sidney Bunting, 18731936
Allison Drew
2 A Wider Patriotism: Alfred Milner and the British Empire
J. Lee Thompson
3 Missionary Education and Empire in Late Colonial India, 18601920
Hayden J. A. Bellenoit
4 Transoceanic Radical, William Duane: National Identity and Empire, 17601835
Nigel Little
5 Natural Science and the Origins of the British Empire
Sarah Irving
6 Empire of Political Thought: Indigenous Australians and the Language of Colonial Government
Bruce Buchan
7 The English Empire in America, 16021658: Beyond Jamestown
L. H. Roper
8 India in the French Imagination: Peripheral Voices, 17541815
Kate Marsh
9 British Narratives of Exploration: Case Studies on the Self and Other
Frdric Regard (ed.)
10 Law and Imperialism: Criminality and Constitution in Colonial India and Victorian England
Preeti Nijhar
11 Slaveholders in Jamaica: Colonial Society and Culture during the Era of Abolition
Christer Petley
12 Australian Between Empires: The Life of Percy Spender
David Lowe
13 The Theatre of Empire: Frontier Performances in America, 17501860
Douglas S. Harvey
14 Anglo-Spanish Rivalry in Colonial South-East America, 16501725
Timothy Paul Grady
15 Royal Patronage, Power and Aesthetics in Princely India
Angma Dey Jhala
16 British Engineers and Africa, 18751914
Casper Andersen
17 Ireland and Empire, 16921770
Charles Ivar McGrath
FORTHCOMING TITLES
Baudin, Napoleon and the Exploration of Australia
Nicole Starbuck
Arctic Exploration in the Nineteenth Century: Discovering the Northwest Passage
Frdric Regard (ed.)
The Quest for the Northwest Passage: Knowledge, Nation and Empire, 15761806
Frdric Regard (ed.)
Race and Identity in the Tasman World, 1769-1840
BY
Rachel Standfield
First published 2012
by Pickering & Chatto (Publishers) Limited
Published 2016
by Routledge
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Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business
Taylor & Francis 2012
Rachel Standfield 2012
To the best of the Publisher's knowledge every effort has been made to contact relevant copyright holders and to clear any relevant copyright issues. Any omissions that come to their attention will be remedied in future editions.
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BRITISH LIBRARY CATALOGUING IN PUBLICATION DATA
Standfield, Rachel.
Race and identity in the Tasman world, 1769-1840. (Empires in perspective)
1. Ethnicity Australia Tasmania History 19th century. 2. Tasmania
History.
I. Title II. Series
305.8'99150946-dc23
ISBN-13: 978-1-84893-240-1 (hbk)
Typeset by Pickering & Chatto (Publishers) Limited
Contents
This book is based on my PhD thesis undertaken at the University of Otago. Particular thanks must go to my supervisors, Tony Ballantyne, Ann Curthoys and Rani Kerin for their exceptional supervision and their ongoing support both during and after my PhD. Thanks also to Angela Wanhalla and Alan Lester for their constructive criticisms and great help as PhD examiners and afterwards. Two anonymous referees are to be thanked for their helpful feedback. Thanks to the History Department at the University of Otago, the Centre for Indigenous Studies at Charles Sturt University and to Charles Sturt University for a publication grant, and the Monash Indigenous Centre.
Of course special thanks go to my family, both in Australia and in England, and to Jason, for his love and support.
An earlier version of appeared as These Unoffending People: Myth, History and the Idea of Aboriginal Resistance in David Collins Account of the English Colony in New South Wales , in F. Peters-Little, A. Curthoys and J. Docker (eds), Passionate Histories: Myth, Memory and Indigenous Australia, (Canberra: ANU E Press and Aboriginal History Incorporated, 2010), pp. 12340.
This is a history of ideas about race which are taken for granted. It examines racial tropes applied to Mori and Aboriginal people: tropes so fundamental to our perceptions of them as people that they have become naturalized and normalized within both contemporary and historical understandings of Australia and New Zealand. In response to such normalization, this analysis interrogates racial thought at the time it was expressed as well as how it has subsequently been represented in national histories. The racial thought created in the early period of British connection with the indigenous peoples of the region, from the Cook voyages to the Treaty of Waitangi, is not merely of historical importance, but informs stereotypes which continue to hold great power in contemporary society. The racial categorization of the indigenous peoples of Australia and New Zealand had broader consequences than the creation of stereotypes, however, with important material effects for both colonizers and colonized. The most fundamental of these effects was, and continues to be, understandings of land ownership and sovereignty. The most basic comparison in the race relations of Australia and New Zealand is that Mori were understood to be sovereign owners of their country while Aboriginal people were not. The most important contribution of this work is to examine the processes by which this happened.
An examination of a visit by a Mori chief to early colonial New South Wales can illuminate, from the perspective of both imperial racial thought and historical scholarship, some of the issues addressed in this work. In the years before large-scale European settlement in New Zealand colonial authorities in New South Wales sought to establish relationships with Mori chiefs to allow access to resources such as timber and flax, and Mori chiefs, also keen to establish trading relationships, travelled to New South Wales with increasing regularity. In 1805 the Hikut chief Te Pahi travelled to the British settlement at Port Jackson, in one of the earliest Mori visits to the colony. His visit excited considerable comment in New South Wales colonial sources; New South Wales Governor Phillip Gidley King suggested to Sir Joseph Banks that his Manners are that of a well bred Gentleman allowing a little for the Country he comes from.
