Antipodean Laboratory - Making Colonial Knowledge, 17701870

In this compelling study, Anna Johnston shows how colonial knowledge from Australia influenced global thinking about convicts, natural history and humanitarian concerns about Indigenous peoples. These were fascinating topics for British readers, and influenced government policies in fields such as prison reform, the history of science, and humanitarian and religious campaigns. Using a rich variety of sources including natural history and botanical illustrations, voyage accounts, language studies, Victorian literature and convict memoirs, this multi-disciplinary account charts how new ways of identifying, classifying, analysing and controlling ideas, populations, and environments were forged and circulated between colonies and through metropolitan centres. They were also underpinned by cultural exchanges between European and Indigenous interlocutors and knowledge systems. Johnston shows how colonial ideas were disseminated through a global network of correspondence and print culture.

List of contents

Introduction: settler colonialism and its forms of knowledge; Part I. Imagining Settler Humanitarianism: 1. Morality, violence and sentiment: precarious lives on colonial frontiers, 1788-1797; 2. Language, poetry and song: reading indigenous wordlists and grammars, 1770-1874; Part II. Regulating Settler Society: 3. 'Virtuous curiosity': penal practices and social theories, 1791-1843; 4. Prison letters: reading and writing from Norfolk Island, 1834-1860; Part III. Inventing Settler Science: 5. Collecting practices: Botany, print culture and empire, 1768-1988; 6. Creating colonial readers and imperial networks: the Tasmanian journal of natural science, 1841-1849; Conclusion: knowing the colony, knowing the world.

About the author

Anna Johnston is Professor in English Literature at University of Queensland whose research explores the history and aftermath of the British Empire, especially in Australia. She is the author of Missionary Writing and Empire, 1800–1860 (2003).

Product details

• Authors: Anna (University of Queensland) Johnston, Johnston Anna
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press ELT
• Languages: English
• Product format: Paperback / Softback
• Released: 20.03.2025
• EAN: 9781009186919
• ISBN: 978-1-0-0918691-9
• No. of pages: 325
• Subjects: Humanities, art, music > History > Regional and national histories; Non-fiction book > History > Miscellaneous; Cultural Studies, Australia, HISTORY / Australia & New Zealand, 19th century, c 1800 to c 1899, 20th century, c 1900 to c 1999, Indigenous Peoples, Australasian & Pacific history, Colonialism and imperialism, Diaries, letters and journals, Trees, wildflowers and plants: general interest, Sociology and anthropology, Australasian and Pacific history, Botany and plant sciences, Later 18th century c 1750 to c 1799, Indigenous people: governance and politics, Indigenous, ethnic and folk religions and spiritual beliefs