This file is part of the following reference: Jensen, Judith A Unpacking the travel writers’ baggage: imperial rhetoric in travel literature of Australia 1813-1914. PhD thesis, James Cook University. Access to this file is available from: http://eprints.jcu.edu.au/10427 PART THREE: MAINTAINING THE CONNECTION Imperial rhetoric and the literature of travel 1850-1914 Part three examines the imperial rhetoric contained in travel literature in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries which worked to convey an image of Australia’s connection to Britain and the empire. Through a literary approach that employed metaphors of family, travel writers established the perception of Australia’s emotional and psychological ties to Britain and loyalty to the Empire. Contemporary theories about race, the environment and progress provided an intellectual context that founded travel writers’ discussions about Australia and its physical links to Britain. For example, a fear of how degeneration of the Anglo-Saxon race would affect the future of the British Empire provided a background for travellers’ observations of how the Anglo-Saxon race had adapted to the Australian environment. Environmental and biological determinism explained the appearance of Anglo-Australians, native-born Australians and the Australian type. While these descriptions of Australians were not always positive they emphasised the connection of Australians to Britain and the Empire. Fit and healthy Australians equated to a fit and healthy nation and a robust and prestigious empire. Travellers emphasised the importance of Australian women to this objective, as they were the moral guardians of the nation and the progenitors of the ensuing generation. Travellers also justified the dispossession of Aborigines based on racial theories. While the interaction of people and their environment preoccupied travellers’ discussions, they also considered the adaptation of the Australian environment to British progress. A utilitarian view of the Australian environment moulded aesthetic appreciation with progress into a British form so that Australia was viewed as making an important contribution to the British Empire. Even discussions of environmental problems that resulted from British settlement could be considered in a positive light. Travellers perceived Australia’s economic potential as limitless and adding prestige to the Empire. These ideas with a strong focus on environment are covered separately in the next five chapters. 175 Chapter Seven Family Ties: Imperial patriotism and metaphors of “home” and “family” England’s greatness is too near to us at home to create sentiment; - but in the far Antipodes loyalty is the condition of the colonist’s mind. He is proud of England, though very generally angry with England because England will not do exactly what he wants. … He does not like to be told that he is to be divided from her. He is in truth loyal. He always speaks of England as home.1 Anthony Trollope, Australia and New Zealand, 1873. The metaphors of “home” and “family” in travel literature evoked a powerful metaphysical bond that reminded readers of the cohesiveness of the British Empire. “Home” denoted a stable, structured environment that could be relied upon. Socialised as British and identifying with an Anglo-Saxon (sometimes Anglo-Celtic) heritage, Australians desired to belong to the imperial family. Metaphors of “home” and “family” are interwoven into travel literature of Australia and emphasised the Australian sense of belonging to Britain. Britain was “Home”, the secure place to and from which excursions were made. While home is a familial place, connected with family memories and places, it is also a cultural or political domain to which the individual is connected by ethnicity or political institutions. Although the use of these metaphors is not exclusive to travel literature of Australia, the choice of them by travel writers strengthened the imperial rhetoric in their narratives. They used home and familial metaphors to stimulate imperial patriotism and show the Empire as unified whilst also acknowledging Australia’s eventual self-determination. Metaphors of “home” and “family” are used interchangeably in the travel literature covered here. Britain was “home” in the psyche of Australians in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Indeed Australian identity, both individual and collective, was connected to their psychological acceptance of this understanding. Bonds of birth, ancestry and tradition tied Australians to Britain and stimulated a pan-Britannic nationalism. The exposition of the concept of home by symbolic anthropologist Mary Douglas contributes to an understanding of Australia’s attachment to Britain. She suggests that the idea of home can transcend place, extending beyond physical boundaries, and can exist in an intangible sense, within the individual and the group and 1 Trollope, Australia and New Zealand, p 54. 176 that it may only be visible in the maintenance of certain cultural, social and political practices.2 This is the case with diasporas where communities have settled outside their native territory, real or imagined, but retain a strong loyalty to their place of origin based on cultural, political and religious ties. Robin Cohen, a sociologist, has identified differing forms of diaspora including the imperial diaspora which is particularly pertinent in the case of British migration to Australia. He defines an imperial diaspora as one that is marked by continuing connection with the homeland, a deference to and imitation of its social and political institutions and a sense of forming part of a grand imperial design – whereby the group concerned assumes the self-image of a “chosen race” with a global mission.3 Such was the situation in Australia where the established British social and political institutions created a bond of loyalty and deference to Britain. Home is a flexible term that can incorporate multiple locations. Steven Grosby asserts that the establishment of familiarity through “patterns of activity whose meaning is familiar to one” was important in the connection between the familial home and identification with a homeland.4 Both home and homeland are “where one’s life and one’s family is propagated, sustained and transmitted.”5 Grosby contends that as infants are familiarised with their immediate surrounds they also establish cognition of the wider concept of ‘homeland’ by being socialised into wider groups and allegiances.6 Home becomes then the locus of the accepted cultural, political and social norms of an individual or group; “home is here and there”, in Britain and Australia.7 Writing at a time when the British had withdrawn their soldiers from the colonies, Anthony Trollope observed Tasmanians to be particularly attached to Britain and appreciative of the security that emblems of British rule conveyed. He remarked: There is with them all a love of home, – which word always means England, – that touches the heart of him who comes to them from the old country. “We 2 Mary Douglas, “The Idea of a Home: A Kind of Space”, Social Research, Vol.58, No.1, 1991, pp.288- 290. Nigel Rapport, “The Topic of the Book” in N Rapport & A Dawson, Migrants of Identity: Perceptions of Home in a World of Movement, Oxford, 1998, pp 6-7. Steven Grosby, “Homeland”, in Athena S Leoussi (ed), Encyclopaedia of Nationalism, New Brunswick, 2001, pp129-131. 3 Robin Cohen, Global diasporas: An introduction, London, 1999, p.67. 4 Steven Grosby, “Homeland”, p.130. 5 Ibid., 6 Ibid., pp.130-131. 7 Rapport, “The Topic of the Book”, p.7. 177 do not want to be divided from you. Though we did in sort set up for ourselves, and though we do keep our own house, we still wish to be thought of by Great Britain as a child that is loved…”8 In this passage Trollope reinforced the image of the Tasmanians’ sense of belonging to Britain as “home”. He made the distinction between “house” and “home”, the former suggesting a mere place to reside, rather than the sense of belonging that “home” conveyed. The Tasmanian “house” had not yet become “home”. Trollope used the analogy of a child who looks to a parent for comfort to describe Tasmanians who maintained a dependence on Britain for their security. This chapter examines the concept of imperial patriotism and how metaphors of “home” and “family” were used in its constructions. It analyses the imperial rhetoric contained in these metaphors and how travellers constructed the sense of belonging and loyalty as the collective response of Australians to Britain and the empire. It explores the use of these metaphors in travellers’ discussions of Australia’s evolving national sentiment and how Anglo-Saxonness and Anglo-Celtic ethnic nationalisms provided genealogical and psychological ties to Britain at the same time as cultural identity was undergoing transformation. Imperial patriotism In explaining how imperial rhetoric operated to stimulate imperial patriotism some elaboration of the ideological concept of patriotism is pertinent. Daniel Bar-Tal’s social psychological perspective on patriotism is relevant in providing the connection between metaphors of “home” and “family” and the loyalty of Australians to empire. For Bar- Tal, patriotism is an attachment of group members towards their group and the country in which they reside. This attachment is reflected in beliefs and emotions that individuals hold.9 Attachment to groups is part of the normal socialisation process of individuals from childhood. The desire to belong to a group that is positively evaluated is important in providing the individual with a sense of security and in stimulating cooperative 8 Trollope, Australia and New Zealand, p.520. 9 Daniel Bar-Tal, “Patriotism as Fundamental Beliefs of Group Members”, Politics and the Individual, Vol.3 No.2 1993, p.45. 178 behaviour.10 At a fundamental level, patriotism is distinguished by the interrelated nature of attachment to ethnographic group and affinity to place, even when a person is not resident in that place. Political changes or ideological shifts do not affect it.