Tim Calabria | La Trobe University (original) (raw)
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Leibniz-Institut für Europäische Geschichte (IEG), Mainz
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Papers by Tim Calabria
Rural History, 2022
In the 1850s goldrush, new communities emerged in Victoria with members from diverse origins of p... more In the 1850s goldrush, new communities emerged in Victoria with members from diverse origins of place, faith and ethnicity. Settlers usually migrated to pursue wealth; however, the social cohesion these young towns required often came from beyond logics of economy. As the goldrush waned from the 1860s, communal searches for children lost in the bush became a secular ‘rite’ that helped produce ‘moral communities’, which articulated shared values through common beliefs and social practices associated with lost children. Entire segments of communities would gather, suspend economic pursuits and search for lost children, often for days or weeks at a time. The euphoria of finding the child alive, or the solemn reverie when the child perished, forged communal goodwill through shared sentiment. The rite of the search became disseminated through newspapers, literature and word-of-mouth, while the ‘bush’ – a construction referring to various landscapes in Australia – enabled readers to parti...
Law & History, 2020
This article re-examines modalities of governing the ‘half-caste’ legal category in Central Austr... more This article re-examines modalities of governing the ‘half-caste’ legal category in Central Australia between 1914 and 1937. It mainly analyses administrators’ discourse, with a focus on the Alice Springs half-caste children’s home, the Bungalow. Robert Stott’s regime in Central Australia (1911–1928) has received limited attention in the literature. Stott sought to prop up the failing settler colony in Central Australia by establishing the half-caste cohort as a colonised labour pool. He pursued policies that would increase their population while eroding their claims to the land. The administration of Cecil Cook (1931–1938) continued this policy agenda, contrary to his infamous eliminationist rhetoric. Ex-alumni of the Bungalow resisted state controls over them as half-castes and, in 1937, one graduate, Emily Geesing, won a court case that determined she was not beholden to half-caste regulations. The victory redefined the limits of state control ahead of the end of Cook’s tenure as Chief Protector in 1938. Overall, the Bungalow emerges as both a mechanism of colonisation and a breeding space for ‘decolonised consciousness’.
Book Reviews by Tim Calabria
Rural History, 2022
In the 1850s goldrush, new communities emerged in Victoria with members from diverse origins of p... more In the 1850s goldrush, new communities emerged in Victoria with members from diverse origins of place, faith and ethnicity. Settlers usually migrated to pursue wealth; however, the social cohesion these young towns required often came from beyond logics of economy. As the goldrush waned from the 1860s, communal searches for children lost in the bush became a secular ‘rite’ that helped produce ‘moral communities’, which articulated shared values through common beliefs and social practices associated with lost children. Entire segments of communities would gather, suspend economic pursuits and search for lost children, often for days or weeks at a time. The euphoria of finding the child alive, or the solemn reverie when the child perished, forged communal goodwill through shared sentiment. The rite of the search became disseminated through newspapers, literature and word-of-mouth, while the ‘bush’ – a construction referring to various landscapes in Australia – enabled readers to parti...
Law & History, 2020
This article re-examines modalities of governing the ‘half-caste’ legal category in Central Austr... more This article re-examines modalities of governing the ‘half-caste’ legal category in Central Australia between 1914 and 1937. It mainly analyses administrators’ discourse, with a focus on the Alice Springs half-caste children’s home, the Bungalow. Robert Stott’s regime in Central Australia (1911–1928) has received limited attention in the literature. Stott sought to prop up the failing settler colony in Central Australia by establishing the half-caste cohort as a colonised labour pool. He pursued policies that would increase their population while eroding their claims to the land. The administration of Cecil Cook (1931–1938) continued this policy agenda, contrary to his infamous eliminationist rhetoric. Ex-alumni of the Bungalow resisted state controls over them as half-castes and, in 1937, one graduate, Emily Geesing, won a court case that determined she was not beholden to half-caste regulations. The victory redefined the limits of state control ahead of the end of Cook’s tenure as Chief Protector in 1938. Overall, the Bungalow emerges as both a mechanism of colonisation and a breeding space for ‘decolonised consciousness’.