'Bannelong sat down to dinner with Governor Phillip, and drank his wine and coffee as usual': Aborigines and wine in early New South Wales (original) (raw)
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My starting point for this thesis (conferred in 2009) was the absence of an early history of Australian wine growing conducted by an academic historian rather than researchers in other disciplines or the wine media. I have used existing work on wine history in New South Wales (Australia) from 1788 to 1901 alongside a significant body of new research to create an historical argument suitable for incorporation into more broadly-themed narratives of Australian history and to inform studies of wine growing in other academic fields. My principal argument is that although wine growing proved of little economic value in colonial primary production compared with nation-building commodities - such as pastoralism, wheat growing and gold - advocates of the cultivation of wine grapes believed wine growing embodied beneficial, even transformative, cultural value so they persisted in attempting to create a ‘civilizing’ industry. Several times, from 1788 to 1901, advocates invoked wine and wine growing as capable of creating order in a wild or ‘savage’ landscape and within a settler society shaped culturally by shifting adaptations to both imported and ‘native’ influences in agriculture as well as alcohol production, consumption and distribution. While the methodological framework employed here falls mainly within economic, social and environmental history, sociological theories have contributed to findings on causation. The result is a comprehensive, expert narrative of colonial wine growing in New South Wales enriched by links to key developments in Australian colonial history and with reference to wine growing in other British colonies or former territories. This thesis incorporates material from my earlier publications and has in turn been revised into a 'crossover' book titled First Vintage: Wine in Colonial New South Wales (UNSW Press, 2012).
Global Food History, 2019
Studies of the impact of European forms of alcohol on Indigenous peoples tend to focus on health and social problems arising from overconsumption. This article takes a new approach by, first, parsing wine from the non-culturally specific treatment of all forms of alcohol in the lives of Aboriginal Australians; and, second, considering Aboriginal employment in Australian wine production since the early nineteenth century alongside these peoples' exclusion from the late-twentieth century rise of an Australian "good life" of democratized wine drinking practices. By re-entangling these elements of Aboriginal lives in settler colonial society, we reveal an unknown facet of Aboriginal economic contribution, highlight relationships between Aboriginal-and Italian-Australians, and challenge negative stereotypes that Aboriginal Australians are unable to control themselves in the presence of alcohol.
International Journal of Critical Indigenous Studies, 2013
In this article, I critique the historical narratives surrounding the consumption of Australian native foods by European settlers. I argue that culinary historians and other commentators present the contemporary consumption of native foods as a means of rejecting the colonial attitudes of the past. In this narrative, early settlers lacked appreciation for Australian native foods and, by extension, Indigenous Australian culture and knowledge. Based on this depiction of colonial history, the current interest in native foods becomes symbolic of a wider revaluing of Australia’s previously denigrated indigenous flora and fauna and Indigenous people. However, as I relate, some early European settlers and their descendants ate a wide variety of native Australian foods. These historical episodes challenge the conventional narrative of Australian culinary history and, in particular, the idea that contemporary consumption constitutes a novel break from past culinary practices. Moreover, as I demonstrate, settler interest in native foods was often consistent with the attitudes that justified and underwrote colonisation. By drawing attention to the role that native foods played in the colonial project, I complicate the idea that recognition of these foods is sufficient to address this history.
'Dependent colonies: the importation of material culture into the Australian colonies
1995
"Great Britain established colonies in Australia during the late 18th and early 19th ncenturies by importing capital, goods andf people. During the early settlement, colonists were almost totally dependent upon shipping for their goods. Indeed it can be argued that the capacity of countries like Great Britain to successfully invade and colonize was largely dependent on international trade, which provided familiar, appropriate food, drink and material culture for the population transported to the colonies. This paper uses data obtained from two colonial-period shipwrecks excavated in Australia during the last 20 years. In 1797 the merchantman Sydney Cove wrecked on a voyage from Calcutta to the newly established British penal colony at Port Jackson (Australia) with a speculative cargo. William Salthouse wrecked in 1841 at the end of a voyage from Montreal to the recently established colony at Melbourne."
Social Exclusion: An Approach to the The Australian Case, Edited by Doris Weiss, 2003
Developing Hegel’s ideas on the dialectic of recognition and its role in the evolution of civilization, Charles Taylor in a seminal work, Multiculturalism and the “Politics of Recognition” (since translated into Italian, French and German), defended multiculturalism, in which different cultures within a country are recognized and respected, as a new phase in ethical and political development (Taylor and Gutmann, 1992; Taylor, 1994). Australia is unique in modern history in the extent to which it has embraced multiculturalism and abandoned nationalism - the commitment to a territorial community the membership of which is defined first and foremost in terms of place of birth. It appears to be a post-nationalist, multicultural society that celebrates its cultural diversity. Far from being social outcastes, immigrants, who are selected for their level of education, have a higher average income than native-born Australians. Australia, therefore, might seem to provide a vision of the future for those countries striving to overcome the exclusionary tendencies of their nationalist heritage. Here I will that the Australian experience brings into question the whole idea of multiculturalism.
No Fish, No House, No Melons: the earliest Aboriginal Guides in Colonial New South Wales
Aboriginal History, 2020
Aboriginal individuals – often men – who went with the colonists on their travels in colonial New South Wales performed various, often vital, roles. While this is well known, less attention has been paid to the ways in which relationships developed between the colonists and those guiding, or how these relationships were dependent on meeting the needs and desires of all involved. By teasing apart some of the earliest, shakiest beginnings of Aboriginal men travelling with and ‘guiding’ the colonists, this article suggests that guiding was negotiated from the outset – the product of intercultural dialogue and deliberation – and that it is a phenomenon that benefits from being more fully contextualised.