A Monument for the Nation: the Australian Encyclopaedia (1925/26)
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Zurich Open Repository and Archive University of Zurich Main Library Strickhofstrasse 39 CH-8057 Zurich www.zora.uzh.ch Year: 2007 A monument for the nation : the ”Australian Encyclopaedia” (1925/26) Kavanagh, Nadine Posted at the Zurich Open Repository and Archive, University of Zurich ZORA URL: https://doi.org/10.5167/uzh-163657 Dissertation Published Version Originally published at: Kavanagh, Nadine. A monument for the nation : the ”Australian Encyclopaedia” (1925/26). 2007, University of Zurich, Faculty of Arts. A Monument for the Nation: the Australian Encyclopaedia (1925/26) Thesis presented to the Faculty of Arts of the University of Zurich for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy by Nadine Kavanagh of Baar / Zug Accepted in the autumn semester 2007 on the recommendation of Prof. Dr. Madeleine Herren and Prof. Dr. Ian Tyrrell Sydney 2007 Contents ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS.......................................................................................................3 INTRODUCTION .....................................................................................................................4 1 THE SOFT POWER OF THE ENCYCLOPAEDIC GENRE ............................................15 1.1 THEORY AND HISTORY OF ENCYCLOPAEDIAS ...................................................................15 1.2 ENCYCLOPAEDIAS FROM A POLITICAL PERSPECTIVE .......................................................22 2 AUSTRALIA AND THE CORE OF NATION BUILDING................................................29 2.1 THEORETICAL APPROACHES TO NATION BUILDING..........................................................29 2.2 DEFINITIONS .......................................................................................................................30 2.3 MEASURING NATION BUILDING?........................................................................................31 2.4 FACTORS AND FORCES IN THE AUSTRALIAN NATION BUILDING PROCESS........................33 2.5 THE ACHIEVEMENT OF ENCYCLOPAEDIAS ........................................................................52 3 A NEW MEANING FOR AN OLD GENRE .......................................................................54 3.1 THE ORIGINS OF THE AUSTRALIAN ENCYCLOPAEDIA .......................................................54 3.2 CHAMBERS AS A MODEL FOR THE AUSTRALIAN ENCYCLOPAEDIA ...................................60 3.3 CONCLUSION.....................................................................................................................117 4 STAGES IN AUSTRALIAN NATION BUILDING ..........................................................120 4.1 POSITIVE AND NEGATIVE LEMMATA................................................................................126 4.2 FREEZING VIEWS..............................................................................................................140 4.3 AN INVITATION TO BROWSE?...........................................................................................159 4.4 CONCLUSION.....................................................................................................................162 5 A WELCOME ADVERTISEMENT FOR AUSTRALIA .................................................164 CONCLUSION......................................................................................................................175 BIBLIOGRAPHY..................................................................................................................182 CURRICULUM VITAE........................................................................................................198 2 Acknowledgements I am indebted to the Forschungskredit of the University of Zurich and the Salomon David Steinberg-Stipendien-Stiftung (Zurich) for their financial support of my thesis. My thanks also go to the University of New South Wales, Sydney, and in particular Prof. Martyn Lyons, who made it possible for me to study at UNSW as a Visiting Research Associate while I wrote my thesis. I am very grateful to my parents-in-law Paul and Keryl Kavanagh for their wonderful support. Thank you to my mum, Margrit Hagen, and my dad, Roland Hagen, for their love. I would also like to thank all my friends in Switzerland and Australia, in particular Tanja Hess-Scheiwiler, whose loyal and loving friendship has accompanied me through the writing of this thesis despite the oceans that lie between us. And last but not least, I would like to thank my husband Morgan Kavanagh. His unconditional love and our many discussions on my research kept me going when work on my thesis was difficult. 3 Introduction In 1919 the editor Arthur Wilberforce Jose wrote to the publisher George Robertson to ask him for advice about the procedures he should follow as editor of the Australian Encyclopaedia (AE): We are now up against a problem which may recur in connection with the Encyclopaedia work. When a man has been engaged to do an article, and some of his work is obviously and irrefutably wrong, what is my duty? Do I put it straight, and have the article published as his? or do I leave it wrong and let his signature take the blame? or do we delete his signature and do what we like with the article? In the case of men like Jeffery or Scott there will be no trouble: both are of that decent type that wants its stuff right, and doesn’t mind who puts it right. But the immediate case is Collingridge. (...) Now, if this were a magazine article, C. could say what he liked and could be contradicted. But in an Encyclopaedia article that can’t be done.1 This letter shows that Jose had recognised an important characteristic of the encyclopaedic genre: in contrast to many other genres, encyclopaedias, like dictionaries, give the air of being both objective and infallible. There are several reasons for this. Most encyclopaedias are written not by one, but by a large number of authors, who are often recognised authorities in their field. In many encyclopaedias the authors remain anonymous, implying that they are giving the consensus view on the topics presented. The style in which encyclopaedia articles are written suggests that they present ‘facts’; they contain no questions or formulations that indicate uncertainty.2 It is in the interest of the producers of encyclopaedias to nurture this air of objectivity. In encyclopaedia prefaces, statements like the following may be found: The CYCLOPAEDIA OF AUSTRALASIA (...) supersedes and renders obsolete all previous books upon the British dominions in the South. It is a complete Australasian Library in itself. It cannot itself be superseded by process of time, since the historical information it contains is of permanent value, and the current (mostly statistical) information can be readily brought up to date at any time with a pen by the possessor of the volume.3 1 Letter from Arthur Wilberforce Jose on 21 July 1919 to George Robertson, Mitchell Library (hereafter ML): MS 314/41. 2 Paul Michel and Madeleine Herren, ‘Unvorgreifliche Gedanken zu einer Theorie des Enzyklopädischen: Enzyklopädien als Indikatoren für Veränderungen bei der Organisation und der gesellschaftlichen Bedeutung von Wissen’, Allgemeinwissen und Gesellschaft, Akten des internationalen Kongresses über Wissenstransfer und enzyklopädische Ordnungssysteme, vom 18. bis 21. September 2003 in Prangins, Paul Michel and Madeleine Herren (eds.) (Project Allgemeinwissen und Gesellschaft, URL: www.enzyklopaedie.ch, 2005) pp. 52–53. 3 David Blair, ‘Introduction’, Cyclopædia of Australasia; or, Dictionary of Facts, Events, Dates, Persons and Places Connected with the Discovery, Exploration, and Progress of the British Dominions in the South, etc., David Blair (ed.) (Fergusson and Moore, Melbourne 1881) p. xi. 4 The words ‘information’ and ‘permanent’ imply that encyclopaedias contain objective facts beyond the historical process, while ‘complete’ and ‘Library’ suggest exhaustive knowledge above the fluctuations of ‘the current’. Encyclopaedias thus lay claim not only to objectivity, but also to completeness. This claim is an illusion: knowledge is a construction.4 Knowledge varies according to social-historical and cultural factors such as the needs, ideals, rulers and fashions of particular times and places.5 Encyclopaedias, a classic model for the storage of knowledge, reflect this subjectivity in the construction of knowledge. Analysis of encyclopaedias reveals what aspects of knowledge are considered important in a society, what values are being promoted and what areas of knowledge are regarded as taboo.6 Encyclopaedias are not passive mirrors, but have the power, along with other cultural, artistic and educational products, to subtly control and, paradoxically, to change the societies which produced them. Considering this political potential of encyclopaedias it is surprising that they have been largely neglected in historical-political research, although they have been examined in various other contexts. Some studies have dealt with encyclopaedias as a literary genre revealing linguistic characteristics; some have discussed encyclopaedias from a lexicographic or library-historical perspective; some have restricted themselves to the analysis of individual encyclopaedias or to particular periods of encyclopaedic production, leaving the political significance of the works treated largely unexplored.7 4 The definition of the terms ‘knowledge’, ‘information’ and ‘education’ vary according to different periods and places. There is no clear distinction between them. The terms have in common that they do not signify