Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Figures and Tables
- Notes on the Contributors
- Acknowledgements
- A Tribute to Sir Tom Devine
- 1 Introduction-Global Migrations: The Scottish Diaspora since 1600
- 2 ‘As Hewers of Wood, and Drawers of Water’: Scotland as an Emigrant Nation, c. 1600 to c. 1800
- 3 ‘You Have Only Seen the Fortunate Few and Draw Your Conclusion Accordingly’: Behavioural Economics and the Paradox of Scottish Emigration
- 4 Scottish Diasporas and Africa
- 5 ‘Have the Scotch no Claim upon the Cherokee?’ Scots, Indians and Scots Indians in the American South
- 6 Conflicts of Interest, Crises of Conscience: Scots and Aboriginal People in Eastern Australia, 1830s–1861
- 7 The Importance of Scottish Origins in the Nineteenth Century: James Taylor and Ceylon Tea
- 8 ‘Our Old World Diff'rences are Dead’: The Scottish Migrant Military Tradition in the British Dominions during the First World War
- 9 ‘Part of my Heritage’: Ladies’ Pipe Bands, Associational Culture and ‘Homeland’ Identities in the Scottish Diaspora
- 10 Understanding Scottishness among Sojourners, Settlers and Descendants in Hong Kong and New Zealand
- 11 Encountering an Imaginary Heritage: Roots Tourism and the Scottish Diaspora
- 12 Home is where the Heart is: Affinity Scots in the Scottish Diaspora
- 13 What Scottish Diaspora?
- 14 Afterword
- Index
6 - Conflicts of Interest, Crises of Conscience: Scots and Aboriginal People in Eastern Australia, 1830s–1861
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 23 September 2017
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Figures and Tables
- Notes on the Contributors
- Acknowledgements
- A Tribute to Sir Tom Devine
- 1 Introduction-Global Migrations: The Scottish Diaspora since 1600
- 2 ‘As Hewers of Wood, and Drawers of Water’: Scotland as an Emigrant Nation, c. 1600 to c. 1800
- 3 ‘You Have Only Seen the Fortunate Few and Draw Your Conclusion Accordingly’: Behavioural Economics and the Paradox of Scottish Emigration
- 4 Scottish Diasporas and Africa
- 5 ‘Have the Scotch no Claim upon the Cherokee?’ Scots, Indians and Scots Indians in the American South
- 6 Conflicts of Interest, Crises of Conscience: Scots and Aboriginal People in Eastern Australia, 1830s–1861
- 7 The Importance of Scottish Origins in the Nineteenth Century: James Taylor and Ceylon Tea
- 8 ‘Our Old World Diff'rences are Dead’: The Scottish Migrant Military Tradition in the British Dominions during the First World War
- 9 ‘Part of my Heritage’: Ladies’ Pipe Bands, Associational Culture and ‘Homeland’ Identities in the Scottish Diaspora
- 10 Understanding Scottishness among Sojourners, Settlers and Descendants in Hong Kong and New Zealand
- 11 Encountering an Imaginary Heritage: Roots Tourism and the Scottish Diaspora
- 12 Home is where the Heart is: Affinity Scots in the Scottish Diaspora
- 13 What Scottish Diaspora?
- 14 Afterword
- Index
Summary
THIS CHAPTER RESPONDS TO two challenges. One is John MacKenzie's suggestion that in our studies of empire and settler colonialism we ought to deconstruct the terms ‘British’ and ‘British settler’ into their component parts – English, Scottish, Welsh and Irish. The other comes from Australian historian Ann McGrath, who urges historians to work harder than they have done so far to disentangle the component ethnicities that made up the category ‘white’ that is so foundational to whiteness and settler colonial studies.
In setting out to understand the ethnic dimensions of British settler colonialism, as these two historians wish us to do, this chapter focuses on the relationships between Scots and Aboriginal people in the eastern Australian colonies – New South Wales (NSW), Victoria and Queensland – from the mid 1830s to the early 1860s. This was a period of intense pastoral expansion, high immigration and rapid political change. In these decades, a set of struggling British colonies under direct British rule, mostly dependent on convict labour, and occupying relatively small regions in a vast continent, were nearly all transformed into a set of large, free, self-governing democratic colonies. It was the period when some regions experienced intense frontier conflict and violence, while others saw its end and the emergence of a post-frontier society characterised by a mix of Aboriginal employment, poverty, institutionalisation and interaction with the newcomer populations. For the settlers, my focus is both on Scottish pastoralists, often known as squatters, and their Scottish-Australian critics, often the educated middle class, including journalists, politicians, amateur ethnographers, and men of the church. In the course of exploring these diverse relationships, this chapter considers some key individual Scots in the Australian colonies, including the explorer Thomas Mitchell, pastoralists Niel Black, Angus McMillan and the Archer brothers, writers Katherine Kirkland and Mary McConnel, newspaper editor Thomas McCombie, missionary John Green, and perhaps most significant of all, Presbyterian minister, editor and writer John Dunmore Lang. It also considers those Aboriginal individuals and communities who encountered these Scots, from the Kurnai in the south to the Kabi Kabi and Wakka Wakka peoples in the north.
In exploring the interactions between Scots and Aboriginal people in eastern Australia, we confront the question of whether there were any significant differences between Scottish and other settlers in terms of their ideas about Aboriginal people and especially their actions towards them.
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- Global MigrationsThe Scottish Diaspora since 1600, pp. 98 - 116Publisher: Edinburgh University PressPrint publication year: 2016