The Antipodean laboratory : making colonial knowledge, 1770-1870 / Anna Johnston.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Johnston, Anna, 1972- author.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Australia--Civilization.

Australia.

Australia--Intellectual life.

Australia--Colonization.

Australia--History--1788-1900.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (xii, 313 pages) : digital, PDF file(s).

Place of Publication:

Cambridge ; New York, NY : Cambridge University Press, 2023.

Summary:

In this compelling study, Anna Johnston shows how colonial knowledge from Australia influenced global thinking about convicts, natural history and humanitarian concerns about Indigenous peoples. These were fascinating topics for British readers, and influenced government policies in fields such as prison reform, the history of science, and humanitarian and religious campaigns. Using a rich variety of sources including natural history and botanical illustrations, voyage accounts, language studies, Victorian literature and convict memoirs, this multi-disciplinary account charts how new ways of identifying, classifying, analysing and controlling ideas, populations, and environments were forged and circulated between colonies and through metropolitan centres. They were also underpinned by cultural exchanges between European and Indigenous interlocutors and knowledge systems. Johnston shows how colonial ideas were disseminated through a global network of correspondence and print culture.

Contents:

Introduction. Settler colonialism and its forms of knowledge

Morality, violence and sentiment : precarious lives on colonial frontiers, 1788-1797

Language, poetry and song : reading indigenous wordlists and grammars, 1770-1874

'Virtuous curiosity' : penal practices and social theories, 1791-1843

Prison letters : reading and writing from Norfolk Island, 1834-1860

Collecting practices : botany, print culture and empire, 1768-1988

Creating colonial readers and imperial networks : the Tasmanian journal of natural science, 1841-1849

Conclusion. Knowing the colony, knowing the world.

Notes:

Title from publisher's bibliographic system (viewed on 22 Sep 2023).

Other Format:

Print version:

ISBN:

9781009186896 (ebook)

Access Restriction:

Restricted for use by site license.