Bringing early colonial astronomy to life

2021 ◽  
Vol 62 (2) ◽  
pp. 2.20-2.21
Author(s):  
Anna Ridley
Keyword(s):  
New South ◽  
New South Wales ◽  
Astronomical Society ◽  
Royal Astronomical Society ◽  
South Wales ◽  
Early Colonial ◽  
Scientific Endeavour

Abstract Anna Ridley describes a new exhibition at Old Government House, Sydney, that uses documents from the Royal Astronomical Society library and archive – and technology – to help tell the story of scientific endeavour in colonial New South Wales

Fleets of Fodder: The Ecological Orchestration of Agrarian Improvement in New South Wales and the Cape of Good Hope, 1780–1830

2017 ◽  
Vol 56 (3) ◽  
pp. 532-556 ◽  
Author(s):  
Maura Capps
Keyword(s):  
New South ◽  
New South Wales ◽  
Cape Of Good Hope ◽  
Agricultural Revolution ◽  
South Wales ◽  
Early Colonial ◽  
Fodder Crops ◽  
Independent Process ◽  
Imperial State

AbstractThis article challenges the dominant historical paradigms used to analyze imperial plant and animal transfers by examining the role of fodder crops in early colonial development in New South Wales and the Cape of Good Hope. In Alfred Crosby's enduring formulation of ecological imperialism—that is, the ecological transformation of temperate colonies of settlement by European plants, animals, and pathogens—was a largely independent process. To Crosby's critics, his grand narrative fails to acknowledge the technocratic management of plant and animal transfers on the part of increasingly long-armed colonial states from the mid-nineteenth century. Yet neither approach can adequately explain the period between the decline of Britain's Atlantic empire in the 1780s and the rise of its global empire in the 1830s, a period dominated by an aggressive ethos of agrarian improvement but lacking the institutional teeth of a more evolved imperial state. Traveling fodder crops link these embryonic antipodean colonies to the luminaries of the Agricultural Revolution in Britain. The attempt to transfer fodder-centric mixed husbandry to these colonies points to an emerging coalition of imperial ambition and scientific expertise in the late eighteenth-century British Empire.

Recovering and Reporting Australia's Early Colonial Case Law: The Macquarie Project

2000 ◽  
Vol 18 (3) ◽  
pp. 659-666 ◽  
Author(s):  
Bruce Kercher
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
North American ◽  
New South ◽  
New South Wales ◽  
Case Law ◽  
Penal Colony ◽  
Late Eighteenth Century ◽  
South Wales ◽  
Early Colonial ◽  
Late Eighteenth

When it was established in 1788, New South Wales became the most remote, and most peculiar, of the British empire's overseas colonies. The founding colony of what would eventually become Australia, it was established as a penal colony, a place to send the unwanted criminals of Britain and Ireland. Britain lost more than the majority of its North American possessions in the late eighteenth century. It also lost its principal repository for unwanted felons. New South Wales filled the gap.

Illuminating Incidents in Antipodean Astronomy: Attempted Formation of the Australian Astronomical Society in 1892

1984 ◽  
Vol 5 (3) ◽  
pp. 422-425 ◽  
Author(s):  
Wayne Orchiston ◽  
Ragbir Bhathal
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
New South ◽  
New South Wales ◽  
South Australia ◽  
Astronomical Society ◽  
South Wales

Although scientific astronomy has a long and illustrious history in Australia, it was not until 1895 that the first astronomical society was formed. This was the New South Wales Branch of the British Astronomical Association (see B.A.A. 1894-5; Gale 1895a,b), and before the end of the century it was joined by others in Melbourne and Brisbane (B.A.A. 1897-8; Editor’s Note 1979; Ellery 1901:13; Thomson 1897). These societies and their predecessors, the Astronomy Branches of the Royal Societies of New South Wales and South Australia (Waters 1980), were the mainstay of astronomical activity – both professional and amateur – in nineteenth century Australia, providing as they did regular meetings, library facilities, and avenues for publication and celestial observation.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document