Trajectories of protection: Protectorates of Aborigines in early 19th century Australia and Aotearoa New Zealand (original) (raw)
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Scholars of settler colonial governance in Victoria have tended to characterise the colony as distinctive. It was, most agree, shaped by unusually intensive efforts to govern, survey, 'civilise' and control Aboriginal people, rather than to destroy or simply neglect them, although the latter certainly occurred too. 1 Here, we wish to scrutinise the idea of Victorian exceptionalism, focusing on the late 1850s and early 1860s, the years shortly after the achievement of responsible government in 1856. With responsible government, Britain lost control over Aboriginal policy, and, just as importantly, British humanitarian societies lost their lines of direct influence on policy. In this period, then, we can trace the beginnings of Aboriginal policy as colonial politicians devised it under the new system of responsible government.
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Aboriginal History Journal
Resistance to an outside force, group or influence is a norm al tech nique in the direction of hum an affairs. C.D. Row ley has characterized Aboriginal resistance to E uropean invasion as 'norm al reactions by m em bers of any m inority w ith a com parable h isto ry '. 1 When E uro peans invaded A ustralia the Aborigines were at first tentative in their response, but later they m ade definite overtures of friendship, based on m utual reciprocity, particularly to itinerant European invaders who were n o t intending to occupy Aboriginal land. When this was abused, the Aborigines resisted, usually by attacking the European camps. Where E uropean invaders settled perm anently, some Aborigines dem anded paym ent for occupation. Where paym ent was not fo rth com ing Aborigines used guerilla m ethods to remove the invader. When the Aborigines were dispossessed and placed in institutions they em ployed the resistance techniques of a defeated people to preserve their dignity and id en tity. They relied upon non-cooperation, silence, lying and ingratitude as well as acts o f small scale defiance and affronts to m iddle class m ores in order to outrage their captors. Kevin Gilbert has since pointed o u t th a t their treatm en t in defeat and cap tivity can be com pared w ith the treatm ent of people in concentration cam ps.2 The dispossession o f the Aboriginal people in south eastern A ustralia was followed n o t by the disappearance of Aboriginal groups b u t by the developm ent of separate part-A boriginal com m unities, for the spirit of survival and adaptation in Aboriginal society is as strong as in any other. These com m unities have fought for recognition despite attem pts to legislate them out of existence. They have either been isolated from 'w h ite' society because they have been considered too Aboriginal, or they have been denied Aboriginal legal status because they have been considered too European. Above all they have been considered incapable o f self-determ ination. This article explores the em ergence and developm ent o f one part-Aboriginal com m unity in south eastern A ustralia in the nineteenth century, the Cape Barren Islanders. It focuses upon their relations w ith the 'authorities' and 'outsiders' who m ade periodic attem pts to change their identity and econom y. The Islanders' resistance to these efforts is exam ined and their techniques for survival investigated. The emergence of the part-A boriginal com m unity in Bass Strait in 1 1970: 1-2. 2 1973: 7. 27.
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J. G. A. Pocock’s work has made major contributions to the two fields of history and political science. In this article, we investigate the significance of his contributions to a wider field of social science and, in particular, to the discipline of sociology. Pocock’s attention to the question of sovereignty and its constant reconfiguration throughout the British world is brought together with the concerns of authors writing in an actor network tradition. Pocock’s British world, a world that moves between and connects different archipelagos, is an assemblage, one composed of political arrangements that travel but also have to be stabilised. This process is only ever provisional but is played out, Pocock claims, in a unique way in Aotearoa/New Zealand. Arguing against the claimed certainties of postcolonial historiography he suggests that the Aotearoa/New Zealand case is composed of a range of different futures involving the securing of and/or loss of sovereignty. These are currently being renarrated by its historians. This process of renarration necessarily involves a public role for the historian and has led Pocock, as commentator from a distance, into making critical interventions in what he refers to as the debate over sovereignty in Aotearoa/New Zealand.
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