scholarly journals “Moral Rubbish in Close Proximity”: Penal Colonization and Strategies of Distance in Australia and New Caledonia, c.1853–1897

2019 ◽  
Vol 64 (3) ◽  
pp. 445-471
Author(s):  
Briony Neilson
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
East Coast ◽  
New Caledonia ◽  
Moral Panic ◽  
Nation Building ◽  
Temporal Distance ◽  
Penal Colony ◽  
The Past ◽  
Close Proximity ◽  
Convict Transportation

AbstractIn the second half of the nineteenth century, the two convict-built European settler colonial projects in Oceania, French New Caledonia and British Australia, were geographically close yet ideologically distant. Observers in the Australian colonies regularly characterized French colonization as backward, inhumane, and uncivilized, often pointing to the penal colony in New Caledonia as evidence. Conversely, French commentators, while acknowledging that Britain's transportation of convicts to Australia had inspired their own penal colonial designs in the South Pacific, insisted that theirs was a significantly different venture, built on modern, carefully preconceived methods. Thus, both sides engaged in an active practice of denying comparability; a practice that historians, in neglecting the interconnections that existed between Australia and New Caledonia, have effectively perpetuated. This article draws attention to some of the strategies of spatial and temporal distance deployed by the Australian colonies in relation to the bagne in New Caledonia and examines the nation-building ends that these strategies served. It outlines the basic context and contours of the policy of convict transportation for the British and the French and analyses discursive attempts to emphasize the distinctions between Australia and New Caledonia. Particular focus is placed on the moral panic in Australian newspapers about the alleged dangerous proximity of New Caledonia to the east coast of Australia. I argue that this moral panic arose at a time when Britain's colonies in Australia, in the process of being granted autonomy and not yet unified as a federated nation, sought recognition as reputable settlements of morally virtuous populations. The panic simultaneously emphasized the New Caledonian penal colony's geographical closeness to and ideological distance from Australia, thereby enabling Australia's own penal history to be safely quarantined in the past.

The Continuous Past: Historical Referents in Nineteenth-Century American Journalism

2007 ◽  
Vol 9 (3) ◽  
pp. 119-174 ◽  
Author(s):  
Betty Houchin Winfield ◽  
Janice Hume
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Native Americans ◽  
Nation Building ◽  
Memory Studies ◽  
National History ◽  
The Past ◽  
Historical Continuity ◽  
New Immigrants ◽  
American Journalism ◽  
Historical References

This study examines how nineteenth-century American journalism used history. Based primarily on almost 2,000 magazine article titles, the authors found a marked increase in historical referents by 1900. Primarily used for context and placement, historical references often noted the country's origins, leaders and wars, particularly the Civil War. By connecting the present to the past, journalists highlighted an American story worth remembering during a time of nation-building, increased magazine circulation, and rise of feature stories. References to past people, events and institutions reiterated a particular national history, not only to those long settled, but also to new immigrants. Journalistic textual silences were the histories of most women, African Americans, Native Americans and immigrants. This study found historical continuity in contrast to Lipsitz and a repeated national institutional core as opposed to Wiebe. It reinforced other memory studies about contemporary usefulness of the past, and agrees with Higham's contention that the century's journalistic reports created the initial awareness of the nation's history.

Taking Responsibility for the Pasts

Pólemos ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 15 (2) ◽  
pp. 191-206
Author(s):  
Svend Erik Larsen
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Identity Formation ◽  
Collective Memory ◽  
Personal Identity ◽  
Nation Building ◽  
Forensic Evidence ◽  
Personal Power ◽  
Personal Lives ◽  
The Past

Abstract One of the most significant connections between power and responsibility occurs in relation to the past. The post-revolutionary political powers of the new nations in the nineteenth century reinterpreted or, less politely formulated, invented their past to fit the process of nation building and only then take responsibility for future development of the nations. And they were not alone: pre-nineteenth century periods and the 20th and 21st centuries abound with examples. In our personal lives, self-empowerment often depends on the capacity to take responsibility for one’s past, including all its happy and traumatic moments. In a court room the forensic evidence of past events alone gives the judges the power to decide the fate of the defendant. In neither of the cases power and responsibility can work together without activating individual and collective memory and without finding a language to express responsibility as a manifestation of political, formal and personal power in a process of political legitimization, legal affirmation of justice and personal identity formation. With literary examples from South Africa this article discusses power and responsibility in their relation to a troubled political, legal and personal past.

scholarly journals Argentine Cinema and National Identity (1966-1976)

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Carolina Rocha
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
National Identity ◽  
Nation Building ◽  
High Expectations ◽  
The Past ◽  
Historical Film ◽  
Political Events ◽  
Production And Consumption ◽  
Left And Right ◽  
Film Genres

Argentine Cinema and National Identity covers the development of Argentine cinema since the late 1950s to the mid-1970s, a period that has been understudied. Marked by tumultuous political events, these decades witnessed debates about Argentina’s modernity and tradition that affected film production and consumption. Two film genres, the historical film and the gauchesque— a genre based on outlaw gauchos was crucial for nation-building in the nineteenth century—generated great local interest and high expectations among film producers and distributors. The notion of national identity guides the analysis of certain emblematic films that were well-received by domestic audiences and engaged with the issue of Argentine identity. This manuscript investigates the way Argentine cinema positioned itself when facing the competition of glossy American films by representing the past and the heroic founding figures so as to bridge the stark divisions between the Argentine left and right in the late 1960s.

Dressing Thai

2020 ◽  
Vol 2 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 112-128
Author(s):  
Kanjana Hubik Thepboriruk
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Social Economic ◽  
Nation Building ◽  
The State ◽  
State Control ◽  
National Unity ◽  
Half Century ◽  
The Past ◽  
Global Status ◽  
Legal Consequences

Abstract Public attire and policies governing it have been a reoccurring feature of Siamese/Thai nation building since the nineteenth century. Clothing has been political instruments for rulers and regime in raising the global status of Siam and Siamese Kings, transforming the Kingdom of Siam into the Nation of Thailand, reviving the popularity of the monarchy, promoting national unity, and provoking political opponents. Their collective efforts during the past one and half century gradually normalised the policing of Thai bodies and increased the state control of public attire in service of the Nation. Today, despite such attire no longer being criminalised, the possible negative political, social, economic, and legal consequences of non-conformity continue to drive Thais to accept the State’s ‘invitation’ to use their bodies in promoting its agenda.

Illustrated Media, the Built Environment and Identity Politics in Fin-de-siècle Catalonia: Printing Images, Making the Nation

2015 ◽  
Vol 4 (2) ◽  
pp. 113-135
Author(s):  
Lucila Mallart
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Built Environment ◽  
Identity Politics ◽  
Nation Building ◽  
Constitutive Relationship ◽  
Fin De Siecle ◽  
Late Nineteenth Century ◽  
Fin De Siècle ◽  
Late Nineteenth

This article explores the role of visuality in the identity politics of fin-de-siècle Catalonia. It engages with the recent reevaluation of the visual, both as a source for the history of modern nation-building, and as a constitutive element in the emergence of civic identities in the liberal urban environment. In doing so, it offers a reading of the mutually constitutive relationship of the built environment and the print media in late-nineteenth century Catalonia, and explores the role of this relation as the mechanism by which the so-called ‘imagined communities’ come to exist. Engaging with debates on urban planning and educational policies, it challenges established views on the interplay between tradition and modernity in modern nation-building, and reveals long-term connections between late-nineteenth-century imaginaries and early-twentieth-century beliefs and practices.

Remembering the Past in Nineteenth-Century Scotland

2014 ◽  
Author(s):  
James J. Coleman
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
National Identity ◽  
19Th Century ◽  
21St Century ◽  
Collective Memories ◽  
The Past ◽  
Prevailing View ◽  
The Way

At a time when the Union between Scotland and England is once again under the spotlight, Remembering the Past in Nineteenth-Century Scotland examines the way in which Scotland’s national heroes were once remembered as champions of both Scottish and British patriotism. Whereas 19th-century Scotland is popularly depicted as a mire of sentimental Jacobitism and kow-towing unionism, this book shows how Scotland’s national heroes were once the embodiment of a consistent, expressive and robust view of Scottish nationality. Whether celebrating the legacy of William Wallace and Robert Bruce, the reformer John Knox, the Covenanters, 19th-century Scots rooted their national heroes in a Presbyterian and unionist view of Scotland’s past. Examined through the prism of commemoration, this book uncovers collective memories of Scotland’s past entirely opposed to 21st-century assumptions of medieval proto-nationalism and Calvinist misery. Detailed studies of 19th-century commemoration of Scotland’s national heroes Uncovers an all but forgotten interpretation of these ‘great Scots’ Shines a new light on the mindset of nineteenth-century Scottish national identity as being comfortably Scottish and British Overturns the prevailing view of Victorian Scottishness as parochial, sentimental tartanry

Mission Tracks in the Bush

2019 ◽  
Vol 3 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 103-124
Author(s):  
Gemma Tulud Cruz
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Western Australia ◽  
South Australia ◽  
Nation Building ◽  
Cultural Encounters ◽  
History Of

Christian missionaries played an important role in the Australian nation building that started in the nineteenth century. This essay explores the multifaceted and complex cultural encounters in the context of two aboriginal missions in Australia in the nineteenth century. More specifically, the essay explores the New Norcia mission in Western Australia in 1846-1900 and the Lutheran mission in South Australia in 1838-1853. The essay begins with an overview of the history of the two missions followed by a discussion of the key faces of the cultural encounters that occurred in the course of the missions. This is followed by theological reflections on the encounters in dialogue with contemporary theology, particularly the works of Robert Schreiter.

The Identification and Study of Indian Shell Middens in Eastern North America: 1643–1861

1986 ◽  
Vol 6 (3) ◽  
pp. 227-243 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andrew L. Christenson
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Civil War ◽  
North America ◽  
East Coast ◽  
Eastern North America ◽  
Shell Midden ◽  
Shell Middens ◽  
Work Done

Although the interest in shell middens in North America is often traced to reports of the discoveries in Danish kjoekkenmoeddings in the mid-nineteenth century, extensive shell midden studies were already occurring on the East Coast by that time. This article reviews selected examples of this early work done by geologists and naturalists, which served as a foundation for shell midden studies by archaeologists after the Civil War.

Introduction

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nurit Yaari
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Eastern Europe ◽  
The Political ◽  
Late Nineteenth Century ◽  
Jewish Culture ◽  
The Past ◽  
Future State ◽  
History Of ◽  
Late Nineteenth ◽  
State Of Israel

This chapter examines the lack of continuous tradition of the art of the theatre in the history of Jewish culture. Theatre as art and institution was forbidden for Jews during most of their history, and although there were plays written in different times and places during the past centuries, no tradition of theatre evolved in Jewish culture until the middle of the nineteenth century. In view of this absence, the author discusses the genesis of Jewish theatre in Eastern Europe and in Eretz-Yisrael (The Land of Israel) since the late nineteenth century, encouraged by the Jewish Enlightenment movement, the emergence of Jewish nationalism, and the rebirth of Hebrew as a language of everyday life. Finally, the chapter traces the development of parallel strands of theatre that preceded the Israeli theatre and shadowed the emergence of the political infrastructure of the future State of Israel.

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