An important collection, Cosmopolitan Archaeologies delves into the politics of contemporary archaeology in an increasingly complex international environment. The contributors explore the implications of applying the cosmopolitan ideals of obligation to others and respect for cultural difference to archaeological practice, showing that those ethics increasingly demand the rethinking of research agendas. While cosmopolitan archaeologies must be practiced in contextually specific wa...

Fantastic Dreaming explores how whites have measured Australian Aboriginal people through their material culture and domestic practices, aspects of culture intimately linked to Enlightenment notions of progress and social institutions such as marriage and property. Archaeological investigation reveals that the Moravian missionaries' attempts to "civilize" the Wergaia-speaking people of northwestern Victoria centered on spatial practices, housing, and the consumption of mat...

Historically, photographs of Indigenous Australians were produced in unequal and exploitative circumstances. Today, however, such images represent a rich cultural heritage for descendants, who see them in distinctive and positive ways. Calling the shots brings together researchers who are using this rich archive to explore Aboriginal history, to identify relatives, and to reclaim culture. It reverses the colonial gaze to focus on the interactions between photographer and Indigenous people ...

Emotions are not universal, but are experienced and expressed in diverse ways within different cultures and times. This overview of the history of emotions within nineteenth-century British imperialism focuses on the role of the compassionate emotions, or what today we refer to as empathy, and how they created relations across empire. Jane Lydon examines how empathy was produced, qualified and contested, including via the fear and anger aroused by frontier violence. She reveals the overloo...

On the eve of the Great War, in 1914 the Australian Federal Government sponsored the British Association for the Advancement of Science (BAAS) to travel to Australia for their annual conference. Over 150 scientists were fully funded by the Australian Commonwealth government and they travelled on three ships especially commanded for this purpose.Across five major cities, public talks, demonstrations and excursions familiarised the visiting scientists with Australian natural and hard...

As a student, Jane Lydon was shocked by the photograph on the cover of Charles Rowley's 1970 classic, The Destruction of Aboriginal Society, which showed two Aboriginal men in neck-chains. In this original and highly illustrated book she uses photography to tell a bigger story of the struggle for Aboriginal rights in Australia. While many of the images are confronting, the book tells the positive story of the way in which photography has been used as a tool for change and to argue...

Bringing the histories of British anti-slavery and Australian colonization together changes our view of both. This book explores the anti-slavery movement in imperial scope, arguing that colonization in Australasia facilitated emancipation in the Caribbean, even as abolition powerfully shaped the Settler Revolution. The anti-slavery campaign was deeply entwined with the administration of the empire and its diverse peoples, as well as the radical changes demanded by industrialization and ra...

An indigenous reservation in the colony of Victoria, Australia, the Coranderrk Aboriginal Station was a major site of cross-cultural contact the mid-nineteenth century and early twentieth. Coranderrk was located just outside Melbourne, and from its opening in the 1860s the colonial government commissioned many photographs of its Aboriginal residents. The photographs taken at Coranderrk Station circulated across the western world; they were mounted in exhibition displays and classified amon...

With their power to create a sense of proximity and empathy, photographs have long been a crucial means of exchanging ideas between people across the globe; this book explores the role of photography in shaping ideas about race and difference from the 1840s to the 1948 Declaration of Human Rights. Focusing on Australian experience in a global context, a rich selection of case studies – drawing on a range of visual genres, from portraiture to ethnographic to scientific photographs – show ho...

Over his long career Mathew Blagden Hale (1811-1895) participated in key aspects of nineteenth century Australian colonialism. Hale was ordained as a priest in the Church of England at the age of 26, an exciting time for idealistic young Britons following the abolition of slavery in 1833, and a high point of enthusiasm for missionary work around the empire. But it was not until 1847 that he joined the new Bishop of Adelaide Augustus Short in travelling to the colony of South Australia, whe...

The 1838 Myall Creek Massacre is remembered for the brutality of the crime committed by white settlers against innocent Aboriginal men, women and children, but also because eleven of the twelve assassins were arrested and brought to trial. Amid tremendous controversy, seven were hanged. Myall Creek was not the last time the colonial administration sought to apply the law equally to Aboriginal people and settlers, but it was the last time perpetrators of a massacre were convicted and hanged...

This book investigates the legacies of British slavery beyond Britain, focusing upon the colonisation of Australia and New Zealand, and explores why this history has been overlooked. After August 1833, when the British Parliament abolished slavery in the British Caribbean, Mauritius and the Cape, the former slave-owners were paid compensation for the loss of their ‘property’. New research has begun to show that many beneficiaries had ties to other parts of the British Empire, including the...