Globalisation, Entrepreneurship and the South Pacific: Reframing Australian Colonial Architecture, 1800-1850 (Hobart, Tas., 2016) (original) (raw)

Abstract

In 1957, Clinton Hartley Grattan, one of Australia’s most important foreign observers, wrote of the shadow of the “urban” in legends of the Australian “bush”.1 He argued that the early frontiers of Australian settlement were frontiers of men with private capital, or entrepreneurs, and those frontiers thus carried more elements of the urban than is commonly realised. Such early colonial enterprises around Australia’s south and southeastern coasts, and across the Tasman included sealing, whaling, milling and pastoralism, as well as missionary, trading and finance ventures. In advance of official settlements in the late-eighteenth and early-nineteenth centuries, entrepreneurs mapped coastlines, pioneered trade routes and colonised lands. Backed by private capital they established colonial infrastructural architecture effecting urban expansion in the Australian colonies, New Zealand and beyond. Yet this architecture is rarely a subject of architectural histories. [...] Tasmanian College of the Arts, organised by Harriet Edquist (RMIT) and Stuart King (UTas), October 17-18, 2016

Figures (28)

In 1961, Syd Butlin’s history of the Bank of Australasia and the Union Bank of Australia was published by Longmans in Melbourne. The two banks had merged in 1951 as the ANZ and the company’s board of directors decided that a history should be written to celebrate the achievements of the two leading banks before their names were forgotten. Founded in 1835, the Bank of Australasia had pioneered branch-banking and deposit-taking in Australia, having founded its first three offices simultaneously in Sydney, Hobart and Launceston. ‘The Australasia was also the first multinational bank in Australia, being London-based and directed. Previously, colonial banks such as the Bank of New South Wales had largely raised capital from shareholders and only operated locally, along the lines of an English county bank. Butlin’s history of the Australasia and the Union Bank was hailed in the (then) recently established journal Business Archives and History.’ Butlin and his brother Noel were leading economic historians of the day when whole economic history departments flourished at the country’s leading universities. In 1967, the Economic History Society of Australia and New Zealand took over responsibility for Business History and Archives (retitling it the Australian Economic History Review) as all manner of histories of Australian economic development, focusing on key companies or industries, were produced by university-trained historians. Butlin’s history of the ANZ had been supported by a team of research assistants who scoured the scattered branches for material to help Butlin in his task. Along with his dissertation, Butlin’s history of the ANZ are landmarks in Australian business history.° Yet 1961 was also the year of the founding of the Australian Society for the Study of Labour History (ASSLH). Established as a radical project, ASSLH soon had a membership of over 500 academics, unions, teachers and libraries.* To the economists, ASSLH represented anti-business history, however, as its members set out to record, celebrate and explain the achievements of the labour movement. Since the 1960s,

In 1961, Syd Butlin’s history of the Bank of Australasia and the Union Bank of Australia was published by Longmans in Melbourne. The two banks had merged in 1951 as the ANZ and the company’s board of directors decided that a history should be written to celebrate the achievements of the two leading banks before their names were forgotten. Founded in 1835, the Bank of Australasia had pioneered branch-banking and deposit-taking in Australia, having founded its first three offices simultaneously in Sydney, Hobart and Launceston. ‘The Australasia was also the first multinational bank in Australia, being London-based and directed. Previously, colonial banks such as the Bank of New South Wales had largely raised capital from shareholders and only operated locally, along the lines of an English county bank. Butlin’s history of the Australasia and the Union Bank was hailed in the (then) recently established journal Business Archives and History.’ Butlin and his brother Noel were leading economic historians of the day when whole economic history departments flourished at the country’s leading universities. In 1967, the Economic History Society of Australia and New Zealand took over responsibility for Business History and Archives (retitling it the Australian Economic History Review) as all manner of histories of Australian economic development, focusing on key companies or industries, were produced by university-trained historians. Butlin’s history of the ANZ had been supported by a team of research assistants who scoured the scattered branches for material to help Butlin in his task. Along with his dissertation, Butlin’s history of the ANZ are landmarks in Australian business history.° Yet 1961 was also the year of the founding of the Australian Society for the Study of Labour History (ASSLH). Established as a radical project, ASSLH soon had a membership of over 500 academics, unions, teachers and libraries.* To the economists, ASSLH represented anti-business history, however, as its members set out to record, celebrate and explain the achievements of the labour movement. Since the 1960s,

A first phase of South Seas was completed in 2004. Since then, I have undertaken a number of digital projects with visual navigational and analytic elements. They include a recent re-design of the online version of the Tasmanian Companion to History, for which I am constructing a number of maps — a number layering surviving historical maps of Tasmania so as to allow users to trace changes in the island’s urban and rural environments. I have also begun work on an online edition of the Journals of George Augustus Robinson, which will be a collaboration with colleagues at the University of Tasmania, and Aboriginal knowledge custodians and traditional owners of the island’s northern regions.

A first phase of South Seas was completed in 2004. Since then, I have undertaken a number of digital projects with visual navigational and analytic elements. They include a recent re-design of the online version of the Tasmanian Companion to History, for which I am constructing a number of maps — a number layering surviving historical maps of Tasmania so as to allow users to trace changes in the island’s urban and rural environments. I have also begun work on an online edition of the Journals of George Augustus Robinson, which will be a collaboration with colleagues at the University of Tasmania, and Aboriginal knowledge custodians and traditional owners of the island’s northern regions.

Over time, my approach to digital mapping has developed in the direction of using open source applications that enable a clear separation of data sources from the means by which they are visualised (Figure 2).

Over time, my approach to digital mapping has developed in the direction of using open source applications that enable a clear separation of data sources from the means by which they are visualised (Figure 2).

A web interface was built enabling searches to be performed on the corpus and the results displayed on Google maps. Using MIT’s Simile application, the displayed results could be filtered by time. Additional geo-data could also be associated with Trove content.

A web interface was built enabling searches to be performed on the corpus and the results displayed on Google maps. Using MIT’s Simile application, the displayed results could be filtered by time. Additional geo-data could also be associated with Trove content.

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References (33)

  1. See my review of Philip Goad and Julie Willis (eds), The Encyclopedia of Australian Architecture (Port Melbourne, Vic.: Cambridge University Press, 2010), in Fabrications: The Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians, Australia and New Zealand 20, no. 2 (2011): 137-40. Also Andrew Leach, "Problems in the Historiography of New Zealand Architecture," CNZS Bulletin of New Zealand Studies 1 (2008): 1-15.
  2. Compare Donald Denoon, Philippa Mein-Smith and Marivic Wyndham, A History of Australia, New Zealand and the Pacific (Oxford: Blackwell, 2000);
  3. James Belich, Replenishing the Earth: The Settler Revolution and the Rise of the Anglo World, 1793-1939 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009). I use the term Tasman World after Philippa Mein-Smith, Remaking the Tasman World (Christchurch: Canterbury University Press, 2008).
  4. For example, Scott Hill, "Francis Greenway and the Design of the Hyde Park Barracks," Fabrications 20, no. 2 (2011): 6-33; and G A Bremner, Imperial Gothic: Religious Architecture and High Anglican Culture in the British Empire, 1840-1870 (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press 2013).
  5. S. J. Butlin, Australia and New Zealand Bank: The Bank of Australasia and the Union Bank of Australia Limited, 1828-1951 (Melbourne: Longmans, 19 61).
  6. Business Archives Council of Australia, Business Archives and History (Sydney: Business Archives Council of Australia, 1959-66).
  7. S.J. Butlin, Foundations of the Australian Monetary System 1788-1851 (Melbourne: Melbourne University Press, 1953).
  8. Australian Society for the Study of Labour History, Report of the Annual General Meeting (Canberra: The Society, 1962).
  9. David Merrett, "Whither Business History? Memory, Message and Meaning," Agenda 22 (2015): 63-73.
  10. Academic Association of Historians in Australian and New Zealand Business Schools, http://sydney.edu.au/ business/research/blhg/aahanzbs.
  11. Geoff Jones and Jonathon Zeitlin, eds., The Oxford Handbook of Business History (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003).
  12. John F. Wilson, Steven Toms, Abe de Jong, Emily Buchnea, eds., The Routledge Companion to Business History (London: Routledge, 2017).
  13. Butlin, Australia and New Zealand Bank, chapter 1.
  14. Geoffrey Jones, British Multinational Banking, 1830-1990 (Oxford: Clarendon, 1993), 15.
  15. Simon Ville, "Colonial Enterprise," in The Cambridge Economic History of Australia, ed. Simon Ville and Glenn Withers (Melbourne: Cambridge University Press), 202-21.
  16. Simon Macdonald, "Transnational History: A review of past and present scholarship," https://www.ucl. ac.uk/centre-transnational-history/objectives/simon_macdonald_tns_review; Ian Tyrrell, "Reflections on the Transnational Turn in United States History: Theory and Practice," Journal of Global History 3 (November 2009): 453-474.
  17. See "AHR Conversation: On Transnational History," American Historical Review 111, no. 5 (2006): 1441-1464.
  18. Simon J. Potter and Jonathan Saha, "Global History, Imperial History and Connected Histories of Empire," Journal of Colonialism and Colonial History 16, no. 1 (Spring 2015).
  19. See Rollo Arnold, "Some Australasian Aspects of New Zealand Life, 1890-1913," New Zealand Journal of History 4, no. 1 (1970): 54; Rollo Arnold, "The Australasian Peoples and their World, 1888-1915," in Tasman Relations: New Zealand and Australia 1788-1988, ed. Keith Sinclair (Auckland: Auckland University Press, 1987), chapter. 3.
  20. Daniel T. Rodgers, "Bearing Tales: Networks and narratives in social policy transfer," Journal of Global History 9 (2014): 301-313.
  21. Donald Denoon and Philippa Mein Smith with Marivic Wyndham, A History of Australia, New Zealand and the Pacific (Oxford: Blackwell, 2000).
  22. Matt K. Matsuda, Pacific Worlds: A History of Seas, Peoples, and Cultures (Cambridge & New York: Cambridge University Press, 2012), 3.
  23. J. G. A. Pocock, The Discovery of Islands: Essays in British History (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005), 21.
  24. Pocock, The Discovery of Islands, 19.
  25. Pocock, The Discovery of Islands, 42.
  26. Pocock, The Discovery of Islands, 43.
  27. James Belich, Paradise Reforged: A history of the New Zealanders from the 1880s to the year 2000 (Auckland: Allen Lane/Penguin, 2001), 46.
  28. Philippa Mein Smith, Peter Hempenstall and Shaun Goldfinch, Remaking the Tasman World (Christchurch: Canterbury University Press, 2008). See also Philippa Mein Smith, "The Tasman World," in The New Oxford History of New Zealand, ed. Giselle Byrnes (Oxford & Melbourne: Oxford University Press, 2009), chapter. 13;
  29. Philippa Mein Smith and Peter Hempenstall, "Australia and New Zealand: Turning Shared Pasts into a Shared History," History Compass 1, no. 1 (2003): 1-10.
  30. 14 This term is borrowed from Tony Ballantyne, Webs of Empire: Locating New Zealand' s Colonial Past (Wellington: Bridget Williams Books, 2012). For Ballantyne, these webs are a trade in ideas, whereas economic webs and commodities also need to be considered.
  31. Alice Bennett and Georgia Warner, Country Houses of Tasmania (Sydney: Allen & Unwin, 2009), 150-51.
  32. E. J. Cameron, "Kermode, Robert Quayle (1812-1870)," Australian Dictionary of Biography, http://adb.anu.edu.au/ biography/kermode-robert-quayle-2832.
  33. On Annie Quayle Moore (briefly Townend), see "Unsung Heroines -Annie Quayle Townend," Christchurch City Libraries, http://christchurchcitylibraries.com/Heritage/Publications/UnsungHeroines/ AnnieQuayleTownend/.