Attitudes towards Aborigines by squatters, European works & liberals; very brief history of missions in N.S.W. and work of missionaries in N.S.W. & Tasmania.

This book unravels the paradoxical denigration of the first significant group of free (non-convict), working-class emigrants to the Australian colony of New South Wales in the 1830s. Though their labour was sorely needed, the colonial elite rejected the new arrivals on the grounds that they were ‘lazy’ and ‘immoral’. These criticisms stemmed from political, economic, and cultural motivations that ultimately sought to protect, legitimise, and cement the elite’s financial and social hegemony. The author seeks to explore the ulterior motives behind the public denouncements of immigrants by exposing the conflicting and opportunistic rationales used. Brought to Australia from Britain and Ireland through the experiment of ‘government-assisted migration,’ these immigrants are often remembered as ‘brave pioneers’ today, but this book exposes the deep antagonistic attitudes toward immigration that remain entrenched in Australian society. Uncovering early forms of class antagonism in Australia, this book presents useful insights for those researching Australian history and migration studies, as well as scholars of colonial history, by providing a model for re-evaluating and confronting a long-standing pattern in most settler societies: hostility toward immigrants.

This edited collection from a distinguished group of contributors explores a range of topics including literature as imperialist propaganda, the representation of the colonies in British literature, the emergence of literary culture in the colonies and the creation of new gender roles such as ‘girl Crusoes’ in works of fiction.

The exhibitions of the Victorian and Edwardian eras are the lens through which this book examines the economic, cultural, and social forces that helped define Britain and the Empire. It focuses on exhibitions in England, Australia, and India from the Great Exhibition to the Festival of Empire.

Why is it that Australians are still misled by myths about their convict heritage? Why are so many family historians surprised to find a convict ancestor in their family trees? Why did an entire society collude to cover up its past? Babette Smith traces the stories of hundreds of convicts over the 80 years of convict transportation to Australia....

Australia is the last continent to be settled by Europeans, but it also sustains a people and a culture tens of thousands years old. For much of the past 200 years the newcomers have sought to replace the old with the new. This book tells how they imposed themselves on the land, and brought technology, institutions and ideas to make it their own. It relates the advance from penal colony to a prosperous free nation and illustrates how, as a nation created by waves of newcomers, the search for binding traditions was long frustrated by the feeling of rootlessness, until it came to terms with its origins. The third edition of this acclaimed book recounts the key factors - social, economic and political - that have shaped modern-day Australia. It covers the rise and fall of the Howard government, the 2007 election and the apology to the stolen generation. More than ever before, Australians draw on the past to understand their future.

In nineteenth-century settler colonies such as Upper Canada, New South Wales and New Zealand, governors not only administered, they stood at the head of colonial society and ordered the festivities and ceremonies around which colonial life centred. Governors were expected to be repositories of political wisdom and constitutional lore. Governors and Settlers explores the public and private beliefs of governors such as Sir Thomas Brisbane, Sir John Colborne, Sir George Grey and Lord Elgin as they struggled to survive in colonial cultures which both deified and vilified their personal qualities.

The story of Australia's post-war immigration program is well known, but little has been written about migration to Australia between the wars. This 1995 book is a systematic study of assisted emigration from Britain to Australia during the inter-war years. It looks at the British and Australian politicians and bureaucrats involved in the program and the half-million migrants who uprooted themselves. While their imperial ties were significant, the book shows that British and Australian governments acted in their own interests, using migration to meet their different needs, with little regard for the migrants themselves. Michael Roe shows that the Anglo-Australian relationship was rife with contradictions and these often came to a head in the debates over migration. Not only is the book an important study of imperial relations in the 1920s and 1930s, it describes an important and overlooked aspect of Australian political and social history.

In 1847, in one of the most important cases in Australian legal history, the Chief Justice of NSW, Sir Alfred Stephen, handed down a decision that would have profound implications for both the development of Australian property law and the property rights of the Aboriginal peoples of Australia. The case was Attorney General v Brown, and in his decision Stephen CJ ruled that the laws of property in Australia were governed by feudal principles. The shadow cast by Attorney General v Brown has been a long one, stretching down to the decision in Mabo and beyond. Judicial thinking and much legal scholarship continues to emphasise a connection between the feudal origins of the English law and the state of contemporary Australian property law, thereby perpetuating a "nostalgic" view of Australian property law. This book, in contrast, argues that the feudal imprint on property in Australia had been "washed away" by the early 1860s and that the decades of the early nineteenth century witnessed the making of a distinct Australian property law. Egalitarianism, rather than feudalism, this book argues, shaped the emergence of Australian property law. This book situates legal development in its social and political context, re-evaluating the relationship between political ideas, social values and law reform in early Australia.

This book provides a comprehensive overview of capital punishment in the Australian colonies for the very first time. The author illuminates all aspects of the penalty, from shortcomings in execution technique, to the behaviour of the dying criminal, and the antics of the scaffold crowd. Mercy rates, execution numbers, and capital crimes are explored alongside the transition from public to private executions and the push to abolish the death penalty completely. Notions of culture and communication freely pollinate within a conceptual framework of penal change that explains the many transformations the death penalty underwent. A vast array of sources are assembled into one compelling argument that shows how the ‘lesson’ of the gallows was to be safeguarded, refined, and improved at all costs. This concise and engaging work will be a lasting resource for students, scholars, and general readers who want an in-depth understanding of a long feared punishment. Dr. Steven Anderson is a Visiting Research Fellow in the History Department at The University of Adelaide, Australia. His academic research explores the role of capital punishment in the Australian colonies by situating developments in these jurisdictions within global contexts and conceptual debates.