Book contents
- The Antipodean Laboratory
- The Antipodean Laboratory
- Copyright page
- Dedication
- Contents
- Figures
- Acknowledgements
- Note on the Text
- Introduction
- Part I Imagining Settler Humanitarianism
- 1 Morality, Violence and Sentiment
- 2 Language, Poetry and Song
- Part II Regulating Settler Society
- Part III Inventing Settler Science
- Bibliography
- Index
1 - Morality, Violence and Sentiment
Precarious Lives on Colonial Frontiers, 1788–1797
from Part I - Imagining Settler Humanitarianism
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 21 September 2023
- The Antipodean Laboratory
- The Antipodean Laboratory
- Copyright page
- Dedication
- Contents
- Figures
- Acknowledgements
- Note on the Text
- Introduction
- Part I Imagining Settler Humanitarianism
- 1 Morality, Violence and Sentiment
- 2 Language, Poetry and Song
- Part II Regulating Settler Society
- Part III Inventing Settler Science
- Bibliography
- Index
Summary
This chapter examines eighteenth-century textual records about the Australian colonies, from the early British press reports of the establishment of the penal colony at Port Jackson to the accounts of religious personnel such as the first colonial chaplain Richard Johnson. It reveals how convicts and Indigenous people were represented in texts designed for metropolitan audiences. The isolated voices of evangelical reformers provided rich accounts of the problems and failures of the penal colony. They questioned the morality of the military governance of the penal colony and the dispossession of Indigenous peoples. Evangelical accounts from New South Wales became part of a global knowledge economy and a thriving print culture; they provided evidence that thickened, and at times contradicted, official accounts that circulated in the British media.
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- The Antipodean LaboratoryMaking Colonial Knowledge, 1770–1870, pp. 33 - 65Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2023