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White Without Soap White Without Soap Philanthropy Caste and Exclusion in Colonial Victoria 1835-1888 A Political Economy of Race Marguerita Stephens White Without Soap Philanthropy Caste and Exclusion in Colonial Victoria 1835-1888 A Political Economy of Race Marguerita Stephens Submitted in total fulfilment of the requirements of the degree of Doctor of Philosophy November 2003 Department of History University of Melbourne Printed on Acid-free Paper Abstract The thesis explores the connections between nineteenth century imperial anthropology, racial ‘science’, and the imposition of colonising governance on the Aborigines of Port Phillip/Victoria between 1835 and 1888. It explores the way that particular, albeit contested, images of Aborigines ‘became legislative’. It surveys the declining influence of liberal and Evangelical ‘philanthropy’ at the end of the 1830s, the pragmatic moral slippages that transformed humanitarian gestures into colonial terror, and the part played by the Australians in the emergence of the concept of race as the chief vector of colonial power. The thesis contrasts the rhetoric of the British Evangelicals with governmental rationalisations in connection with Major Lettsom’s murderous raid on the Kulin on the outskirts of Melbourne. It then probes two mid century ‘scientific’ discourses - one concerning the purported infertility of Aboriginal women in connection with white men (a thesis that captivated Social Darwinists but was belied by the ubiquitous presence of children of mixed descent); the other concerning the purported propensity of the Australians to wantonly destroy their own offspring - to illustrate how self-serving misinterpretations of the effects of colonisation, and of Aboriginal cultural practices, presented the Kulin as less than human and underwrote the removal of their children into ‘protective’ incarceration. It explores how a policy originally intended to ‘domesticate’ and transform the children of the Kulin into model citizens turned into a project designed to eradicate the Aborigines of Victoria by ‘breeding them out’. It considers the contestations between humanitarians and racialists at the Board for the Protection of the Aborigines and how, in the 1870s, an arcane theory that the Aborigines were of Caucasian origins came to underwrite an intentionally genocidal ‘absorption’ policy that deployed the arithmetics of caste. Throughout the thesis, the determination of the Kulin survivors to adapt to the new circumstances, their efforts to farm the Coranderrk station lands as independent, free farmer-citizens, their resistance to the Board’s efforts to ‘board out’ their children and dispossess them of every acre of land in the colony, is juxtaposed against representations of the Aborigines as primitives, savages, as less than human and inherently bound for extinction on the one hand, and as a people passively awaiting the remedy of being made ‘white without soap’ on the other. i Declaration This is to certify that (i) the thesis comprises only my original work towards the Ph.D, (ii) due acknowledgement has been made in the text to all other material used, (iii) the thesis is less than 100,000 words in length, exclusive of tables, maps, bibliographies and appendices. ii TABLE OF CONTENTS Acknowledgements …………………………………………………………. iv The View From Coranderrk …………………………………………………………. vi Note on Language …………………………………………………………. vii Map …………………………………………………………. viii Introduction Imperial Economies of Race………………………………………... 1 Chapter One From Philanthropy to Race 1835-1848 …………………………..... 30 Chapter Two Colonising the Body: Infanticide and Governance ………………… 61 Chapter Three Colonising the Body: A Species Apart ……………………………..104 Chapter Four Citizens, Rebels and Ambiguous Identities in the Ethno-Zoo …….. 126 Chapter Five The Coranderrk Dormitory: Gender, Caste and Extinction ……….. 176 Chapter Six ‘You can make them white here without soap’ …………………… 220 Conclusion ‘Yarra, my father's country’ ………………………………………. 276 Bibliography ………………………………………………………. 284 iii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS Many people have assisted in the development of this thesis. My thanks must first go to Joy Murphy Wandin, Elder of the Wurundjeri, who generously welcomed my interest in the history of her people, and wished me well in the venture. I am also indebted to Vicky Nicholson who invited me to go with her to Coranderrk, and who introduced me to Barbara Tan, then owner of the property, and occupier of the house built for Superintendent Shaw in 1888. It was a glorious spring day and we three sat out under dappled shade while Vicky spoke of the continuing connection she has with the place where her mother was born in the second decade of the twentieth century. Barbara Tan later allowed me to spend a morning in the house looking over her collection of materials connected with the history of Coranderrk. My thanks are especially due to Dr David Goodman who has been a patient, encouraging, painstaking and generous supervisor who showed unfailing interest in the project even when I despaired of completing it. A supervisor’s belief that the project will come to fruition is an invaluable asset to any student. Two years into the project, Dr Ian Anderson joined David and myself, as co-supervisor. Ian’s enthusiasm for the project, his intellectual creativity, and his assurance that what I was unearthing about the history of the Kulin in the time of invasion was of value did much to allay my anxieties about being a non-Aboriginal scholar in this field. The enjoyable conversations we had over coffee regularly rejuvenated my hope that the work might contribute in a small way to the project of reconciliation in Australia. My thanks are also due to Sandra Smith and Mary Morris at the Museum of Victoria, to the staff at the Baillieu Library Rare Books Room and the Dixson Library, to the administrative team and faculty members at the Department of History, to the helpful and willing professionals at the Australian Archives Victorian Office, and especially to Judy Scurfield at the State Library of Victoria who assisted me with access to the inner recesses of that building. To certain others I owe an incalculable debt of gratitude. I have the privilege and joy to live in a little community in inner Melbourne in which people talk about ideas and politics, take meals together, look out for and love each other’s children and elderly folk, encourage each other to be our best and iv generally take care. Diana McLachlan, Amaryll Perlesz, Diana Zulicki, Melanie Brand and, until she passed away last year, Marica Perlesz, have been my intellectual and personal rocks in this endeavour. Marica’s eager requests to read each part of the thesis as it developed were rewards in themselves and will always be remembered fondly. Diana M’s careful reading of the final draft was particularly appreciated. Thanks also to Sarah and the Thursday Breakfast Girls, and to Fi Cutting and Corrie Zulicki for assistance with translations. During the time it took to write the thesis, my father, Robert Edward Stephens, and two dear friends, Barbara Anthony and Thelma Solomon, passed away. Families come in many forms. Would that this little victory could have been ours together. Lastly, I want to thank my mother, Beatrice, who served politics with Sunday lunch and has waited patiently for this task to be completed; and my daughter Tillie who has provided intelligent and wise counsel, has shared the cooking, and has tolerated my breakfast lectures with grace and good humour, most of the time. My wise child has become a delightful young woman. Naturally, this work is for Tillie, who else? v The View From Coranderrk ‘View from Mr Ryrie’s, Upper Yarra’ drawn by William Thomas around 1845. All but the three mountains closest to the headwaters of the Yarra are marked ‘all gone dead’. Thomas’s notations read: ‘Here are the mountains as seen in my district … as you stand at Mr Ryrie’s.’ ‘There can be no doubt from these names and ranges taken from an old wandering Black named Kurburra (alias Ruffy) how particular the Blacks are of giving names to every portion of country – even to the ranges as correct for their purpose as civilized surveyors … Every spot has its name … .’ Robert Brough Smyth Papers, State Library of Victoria MS 8781, Box 1176/7 (b) and (c), items 25-34. Reproduced by permission. vi Note On Language The Kulin Federation of Central Victoria consists of five intermarrying clans, each of which spoke a distinct but related and mutually intelligible language or dialect at the beginning of the colonial period. The clans are generally named by reference to these languages or ‘wurrungs’. In nineteenth century texts the clans were commonly referred to as the Woiworung (occasionally the ‘Yarra’ or Melbourne people), Bunurong (occasionally the Western Port people), Taungurong (occasionally the Goulburn River or Delatite River people), Wauthaurung, and Jajawrong, though, the spellings were not standardised and there were a number of variations. In 1996, Ian D.Clark, in conjunction with the Victorian Aboriginal Corporation for Languages, reexamined the earliest transcriptions of these languages in an attempt to make modern spelling reflect traditional, pre-colonisation pronunciation. Clark settled on the following spelling for the Kulin clans: Woi wurrung, Boon wurrung, Daung wurrung, Watha wurrung and Djadja wurrung.1 The Museum of Victoria has adopted Clark’s scheme. In this thesis, Clark’s spelling is used except when quoting, in which case the spelling in the original text is retained. The use of
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