Intimacies of Violence in the Settler Colony Economies of Dispossession Around the Pacific Rim
Total Page:16
File Type:pdf, Size:1020Kb
Cambridge Imperial & Post-Colonial Studies INTIMACIES OF VIOLENCE IN THE SETTLER COLONY ECONOMIES OF DISPOSSESSION AROUND THE PACIFIC RIM EDITED BY PENELOPE EDMONDS & AMANDA NETTELBECK Cambridge Imperial and Post-Colonial Studies Series Series Editors Richard Drayton Department of History King’s College London London, UK Saul Dubow Magdalene College University of Cambridge Cambridge, UK The Cambridge Imperial and Post-Colonial Studies series is a collection of studies on empires in world history and on the societies and cultures which emerged from colonialism. It includes both transnational, comparative and connective studies, and studies which address where particular regions or nations participate in global phenomena. While in the past the series focused on the British Empire and Commonwealth, in its current incarna- tion there is no imperial system, period of human history or part of the world which lies outside of its compass. While we particularly welcome the first monographs of young researchers, we also seek major studies by more senior scholars, and welcome collections of essays with a strong thematic focus. The series includes work on politics, economics, culture, literature, science, art, medicine, and war. Our aim is to collect the most exciting new scholarship on world history with an imperial theme. More information about this series at http://www.palgrave.com/gp/series/13937 Penelope Edmonds Amanda Nettelbeck Editors Intimacies of Violence in the Settler Colony Economies of Dispossession around the Pacific Rim Editors Penelope Edmonds Amanda Nettelbeck School of Humanities School of Humanities University of Tasmania University of Adelaide Hobart, TAS, Australia Adelaide, SA, Australia Cambridge Imperial and Post-Colonial Studies Series ISBN 978-3-319-76230-2 ISBN 978-3-319-76231-9 (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-76231-9 Library of Congress Control Number: 2018941557 © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2018 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the pub- lisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, express or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institu- tional affiliations. Cover illustration: S.T. Gill, Stockman’s Hut, 1856. © National Library of Australia Printed on acid-free paper This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by the registered company Springer International Publishing AG part of Springer Nature. The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland CONTENTS 1 Precarious Intimacies: Cross-Cultural Violence and Proximity in Settler Colonial Economies of the Pacific Rim 1 Penelope Edmonds and Amanda Nettelbeck Part I Moral Economies and Labour Relations in the Pastoral Sector 23 2 The Australian Agricultural Company, the Van Diemen’s Land Company: Labour Relations with Aboriginal Landowners, 1824–1835 25 Lyndall Ryan 3 Ambiguity and Necessity: Settlers and Aborigines in Intimate Tension in Mid-Nineteenth-Century Australia 45 Angela Woollacott 4 Intimate Violence in the Pastoral Economy: Aboriginal Women’s Labour and Protective Governance 67 Amanda Nettelbeck v vi Contents 5 The ‘Proper Settler’ and the ‘Native Mind’: Flogging Scandals in the Northern Territory, 1919 and 1932 89 Ben Silverstein Part II Emotional Economies and Cultural Hybridities 113 6 Eliza Batman’s House: Unhomely Frontiers and Intimate Overstraiters in Van Diemen’s Land and Port Phillip 115 Penelope Edmonds and Michelle Berry 7 Women’s Work and Cross-Cultural Relationships on Two Female Frontiers: Eliza Fraser and Barbara Thompson in Colonial Queensland, 1836–1849 139 Victoria K. Haskins 8 ‘Murder Will Out’: Intimacy, Violence, and the Snow Family in Early Colonial New Zealand 159 Kristyn Harman 9 ‘Tangled Up’: Intimacy, Emotion, and Dispossession in Colonial New Zealand 179 Angela Wanhalla and Lachy Paterson Part III Economies of Colonial Knowledge 201 10 Arctic Circles: Circuits of Sociability, Intimacy, and Imperial Knowledge in Britain and North America, 1818–1828 203 Annaliese Jacobs Contents vii 11 Mrs Milson’s Wordlist: Eliza Hamilton Dunlop and the Intimacy of Linguistic Work 225 Anna Johnston 12 ‘A Frivolous Prosecution’: Allegations of Physical and Sexual Abuse of Domestic Servants and the Defence of Colonial Patriarchy in Darwin and Singapore, 1880s–1930s 249 Claire Lowrie Index 273 NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS Michelle Berry has a BAppSc (Heritage Conservation, University of Canberra) and a Grad. Dip. History (University of Melbourne). She is currently completing a Masters degree on Eliza Batman and colonial women and the law in History and Classics, Humanities School, University of Tasmania, Australia. She has a professional background in heritage and public history, and has worked in the museum sector for thirty years. Penelope Edmonds is an Associate Professor of History, School of Humanities, University of Tasmania, Australia. Her research and teaching interests include colonial/postcolonial histories, humanitarianism and human rights, Australian and Pacific-region transnational histories, perfor- mance, visual culture, and museums. Her latest book, Settler Colonialism and (Re)conciliation: Frontier Violence, Affective Performances, and Imaginative Refoundings (2016), was shortlisted for the 2017 Ernest Scott Prize in Australian and colonial history. Kristyn Harman is a historian in the School of Humanities, University of Tasmania, Australia. She specialises in cross-cultural encounters across Britain’s nineteenth-century colonies, and twentieth-century Australasia. She is the author of Cleansing the Colony: Transporting Convicts from New Zealand to Van Diemen’s Land (2017), and was the winner of the 2014 Australian Historical Association Kay Daniels award for her book Aboriginal Convicts: Australian, Khoisan, and Maorī Exiles. Her work has been pub- lished in journals including The Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History, Journal of Colonialism and Colonial History, Aboriginal History, History Australia, and the Journal of New Zealand History. ix x Notes on Contributors Victoria K. Haskins is a Professor of History at the University of Newcastle, Australia, and Director of the Purai Global Indigenous and Diaspora Research Studies Centre. She has published widely on Indigenous history, and is the co-author, with John Maynard, of Living with the Locals: Early Europeans’ Experience of Indigenous Life (2016). Annaliese Jacobs is a University Associate in History and Classics, Humanities School, at the University of Tasmania, Australia. Originally from Alaska (where she worked as a historian for the National Park Service from 2001 to 2006), she received her PhD from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 2015. Her work examines the interactions between polar explorers’ families, Indigenous intermediaries, and vernac- ular agents in the early-to-mid nineteenth century. Anna Johnston is an Australian Research Council Future Fellow in the Institute for Advanced Studies in the Humanities and Associate Professor in English Literature, School of Communication and Arts at the University of Queensland, Australia. Claire Lowrie is a Senior Lecturer in History at the University of Wollongong, Australia. She works on the history of labour and colonial- ism in Southeast Asia and northern Australia and specialises in the history of Asian and Indigenous domestic service. Her book Masters and Servants: Cultures of Empire in the Tropics was published in 2016. She has also pub- lished in Modern Asian Studies, Pacific Historical Review, the Journal of Colonialism and Colonial History, and Gender and History. Amanda Nettelbeck is a Professor in the Department of History, University of Adelaide, Australia. Her research centres on the history and memory of frontier violence, colonial race relations, and the legal gover- nance of Indigenous people. She is co-author or co-editor of several books, most recently Fragile Settlements: Aboriginal Peoples, Law and Resistance in Southwest Australia and Prairie Canada (co-authored with Russell Smandych, Louis Knafla, and Robert Foster, 2016) andViolence, Empire and Colonialism in the Modern World (co-edited with Philip Dwyer, 2017). A new book project titled Indigenous Rights and Colonial Subjecthood is contracted by Cambridge University Press. Lachy Paterson is an Associate Professor in Te Tumu: School of Māori, Pacific and Indigenous Studies, University of Otago, Aotearoa, New Zealand, where he teaches te reo Māori (Māori language) and Māori his- tory. He draws on reo-Māori