Race and Identity in the Tasman World, 1769–1840

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Rachel Standfield

Empires in Perspective

British imperial encounters with indigenous cultures created perceptions and stereotypes that still persist today. The initial creation of racial images in relation to violence – such as ‘warrior race’ or ‘unoffending people’ – had particular consequences for land ownership. Whilst the Maori of New Zealand were understood to be sovereign owners of their country, Australian Aboriginals were not. Standfield examines these differences and how they occurred.

Sample pages

• Introduction
• Index

Readership

Empire Studies, Colonialism, Anthropology and History of Australasia

Contents

Introduction
1 'These Warlike People': Violence, Imperial Ethnography and Depictions of Maori Sovereignty on the Endeavour Voyage
2 'We See this Country in the Pure State of Nature': Discourses of Blackness, Absence and Imperial Possibility
3 'They Would Speedily Abandon the Country': Reading Land and Resistance at the Time of First Settlement
4 'A Valuable and Beneficial Article': The Expansion of British Imperialism in the Tasman World
5 'A Few Blankets ... would Greatly Relieve their Wants': Samuel Marsden in New South Wales
6 'The Finest and Noblest Race of Heathens': The New Zealand Mission and Racial Thought in the Tasman World
7 'An Incontrovertible Right to their own Soil': Land, Race and the Humanitarian Evaluation of Empire
8 'That Innocent Commerce': The Aborigines Committee Report’s Policy Recommendations and the Unexpected Outcomes of Empire
Conclusion

Related titles

• The Aboriginal Male in the Enlightenment World
• Baudin, Napoleon and the Exploration of Australia
• British Narratives of Exploration: Case Studies on the Self and Other
• Empire of Political Thought: Indigenous Australians and the Language of Colonial Government
• Representing Humanity in the Age of Enlightenment
• The Indian and Pacific Correspondence of Sir Joseph Banks, 1768–1820
• The Scientific Correspondence of Sir Joseph Banks, 1765–1820

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