Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-vdxz6 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-27T21:04:07.609Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Anglo-worlds in transit: connections and frictions across the Pacific*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  03 June 2016

Frances Steel
Frances Steel*
Affiliation:
University of Wollongong, School of Humanities and Social Inquiry, Wollongong, NSW 2500, Australia. E-mail: [email protected]
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

The emerging cultures of late nineteenth-century steamship mobility can be distinguished broadly by ocean basin and by specific route. In the Pacific, a steamship connection between Sydney and San Francisco was envisaged to forge and sustain strong bonds between regional ‘branches’ of the Anglo-Saxon race. This article moves beyond the rhetorical purchase of assumed affinities, to explore the more layered ways in which difference was articulated in transpacific encounters, and the attendant uncertainties and frictions in these evolving relations. When compared to routes bridging the Indian and Atlantic Oceans, with familiar imperial hierarchies and formalities behind them, British and colonial travellers in the Pacific were frequently unsettled by the more democratic and republican attitudes of the American crews and passengers they encountered. At the same time, Britain’s long-standing supremacy on the high seas provided a benchmark against which American enterprise and power in the Pacific could be assessed and found wanting.

Keywords

AustralasiaBritish empirePacificsteamship routeUnited Stateswhiteness
Type
Articles
Information
Journal of Global History , Volume 11 , Issue 2 , July 2016 , pp. 251 - 270
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2016 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Footnotes

*

Research for this article was supported by the Australian Research Council (project DE120101731). I would like to acknowledge the organizers and attendees of the symposium ‘Being in transit’, held at the University of Heidelberg in April 2013, where I presented an early version of this article, and to Martin Dusinberre and Roland Wenzlhuemer for bringing this collection together. My thanks to Helen Bones for research assistance, and to G. Balachandran and Julia Martínez for helpful feedback on previous drafts. I am grateful to the anonymous reviewers of the Journal of Global History for their constructive critical feedback, and to the editors for their advice and assistance.

References

1 Dingley, Robert, ed., The land of the golden fleece: George Augustus Sala in Australia and New Zealand in 1885, Canberra: Mulini Press, 1995, p. 101Google Scholar.

2 Casarino, Cesare, Modernity at sea: Melville, Marx, Conrad in crisis, Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 2002, p. 10Google Scholar; also cited in Giles, Paul, Antipodean America: Australasia and the constitution of U.S. literature, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013, p. 152Google Scholar.

3 Imperial Shipping Committee, The possibilities of a British passenger and cargo service between western Canada and Australia–New Zealand, London: HMSO, 1936, p. 19Google Scholar.

4 Sydney Morning Herald, 11 March 1889, p. 6.

5 ‘The maiden trip of the Mararoa’, Auckland Star, 9 February 1886, p. 2, emphasis in original.

6 Belich, James, Replenishing the earth: the settler revolution and the rise of the Anglo-world, 1783–1939, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009, p. 5CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Lake, Marilyn and Reynolds, Henry, Drawing the global colour line: white men’s countries and the question of racial equality, Melbourne: Melbourne University Press, 2008CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

7 Belich, Replenishing the earth, p. 63; Kramer, Paul A., ‘Empires, exceptions, and Anglo-Saxons: race and rule between the British and United States empires, 1880–1910’, Journal of American History, 88, 4, 2002, p. 1322CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

8 Kramer, ‘Empires’, pp. 1322, 1327.

9 Bell, Duncan, The idea of greater Britain: empire and the future of world order, 1860–1900, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2007CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Edmonds, Penelope, ‘“I followed England around the world”: the rise of trans-imperial Anglo-Saxon exceptionalism, and the spatial narratives of nineteenth-century British settler colonies of the Pacific rim’, in Leigh Boucher, Jane Carey, and Katherine Ellinghaus, eds., Re-Orienting whiteness, New York: Palgrave, 2009, pp. 99–115CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

10 Bell, Idea of greater Britain, pp. 258–9.

11 Belich, Replenishing the earth, p. 482.

12 Kramer, ‘Empires’, pp. 1340–1, 1350. American elites might still rank Britain above other European empire-builders: see Priest, Andrew, ‘Imperial exchange: American views of the British empire during the Civil War and Reconstruction’, Journal of Colonialism and Colonial History, 16, 1, 2015CrossRefGoogle Scholar, https://muse.jhu.edu/journals/journal_of_colonialism_and_colonial_history/toc/cch.16.1.html (consulted 11 March 2016).

13 Chang, Kornel, Pacific connections: the making of the US–Canadian borderlands, Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2012, p. 10Google Scholar.

14 The Protestant clergyman Josiah Strong, cited in Kramer, ‘Empires’, pp. 1334–5.

15 Lake, Marilyn, ‘White man’s country: the trans‐national history of a national project’, Australian Historical Studies, 34, 122, 2003, pp. 346–363CrossRefGoogle Scholar. See also Lake, Marilyn, ‘“The brightness of eyes and quiet assurance which seem to say American”: Alfred Deakin’s identification with republican manhood’, Australian Historical Studies, 38, 129, 2007, esp. pp. 42–43CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Lake, Marilyn, ‘British world or new world? Anglo-Saxonism and Australian engagement with America’, History Australia, 10, 3, 2013, pp. 36–50Google Scholar.

16 Anderson, Warwick, ‘Traveling white’, Boucher, in, Carey, and Ellinghaus, Re-Orienting whiteness, p. 66Google Scholar.

17 Paul Giles, Antipodean America, p. 37.

18 Ibid., p. 67.

19 British Library, Add. MS 59571, Wrench Papers, vol. 31, New Zealand and the South Sea Islands, 17 October 1912–19 March 1913.

20 University of Otago, Hocken Collections (henceforth HC), Cameron family papers, Box 7, James Mills to John Darling, 5 September 1896. Some ships enumerated Chinese passengers according to a separate ‘Canton list’, as referred to in ship arrivals listed on http://mariners.records.nsw.gov.au/ (consulted 11 March 2016).

21 National Archives of New Zealand (henceforth NANZ), BBAO A78 5544 Box 18, 1878/918, Auckland branch, Customs Service, Huirama Moanau, Waiuku.

22 ‘Maiden trip of the Mararoa’, p. 2.

23 Dingley, Land of the golden fleece, p. 110.

24 As remarked on in Howe, E. W., Travel letters from New Zealand, Australia and Africa, Topeka: Crane & Co., 1913, p. 55Google Scholar; E.W.S, ‘My Australian diary’, The Western Call [Vancouver], 18 February 1916, p. 7.

25 See Martin Dusinberre, ‘Writing the on-board: Meiji Japan in transit and transition’, pp. 271–94 in this issue.

26 ‘From Sydney to Kandavu, en route to San Francisco’, Sydney Morning Herald, 8 April 1874, p. 6.

27 As reviewed in The nineteenth century¸ reprinted in part in ‘New Zealand and Mr Froude’, Nelson Evening Mail, 22 September 1886, p. 3. For an assessment of Wakefield’s critique, see Lydia Wevers, A country of writing: travel writing and New Zealand, 1809–1900, Auckland: Auckland University Press, 2002, pp. 149–50.

28 Yu, Henry, ‘The intermittent rhythms of the Cantonese Pacific’, in Donna R. Gabaccia and Dirk Hoerder, eds., Connecting seas and connected ocean rims: Indian, Atlantic and Pacific Oceans and China Seas migrations from the 1830s to the 1930s, Leiden: Brill, 2011, pp. 393–414CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Ngai, Mae M., ‘Western history and the Pacific world’, Western Historical Quarterly, 43, 4, 2012, pp. 282–288Google Scholar. Writing during sea travel might equally serve as a way of managing the body: see Tamson Pietsch, ‘Bodies at sea: travelling to Australia in the age of sail’, pp. 209–28 in this issue.

29 ‘Shipwrecks in the Pacific’, Empire, 12 April 1853, p. 2.

30 For more on the inauguration and early political debates, see Steel, Frances, ‘Re-routing empire? Steam-age circulations and the making of an Anglo Pacific, c.1850–90’, Australian Historical Studies, 46, 3, 2015, pp. 361–368CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

31 Daily Alta California, 26 January 1870, p. 2.

32 ‘Our American letter’, Daily Southern Cross (Auckland), 16 July 1870, p. 3.

33 Lang, John Dunmore, Brief notes of the new postal route from Sydney to England, by San Francisco and New York, Sydney: William Maddock, 1875, p. 65Google Scholar.

34 ‘Australia to England’, Freeman’s Journal (Sydney), 29 September 1906, p. 37.

35 Churchward, L. G., ‘American enterprise and the foundation of the Pacific mail service’, Historical Studies: Australia and New Zealand, 3, 11, 1945, pp. 217–224Google Scholar; Pletcher, David M., Diplomacy of involvement: American economic expansion across the Pacific, 1784–1900, Columbia, MO: University of Missouri Press, 2001Google Scholar, esp. ch. 4; Steel, ‘Re-routing empire?’, pp. 363–72.

36 Pacific Mail Steamship Company, Handbook of information for passengers and shippers, Sydney: Geo. Loxon and Co., 1883, p. 21Google Scholar; Bell, Idea of greater Britain, p. 257.

37 Pacific Mail Steamship Company, Handbook of information, p. 21; Steel, ‘Re-routing empire?’, pp. 370–1.

38 Steel, Frances, Oceania under steam: sea transport and the cultures of colonialism, c.1870–1914, Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2011Google Scholar.

39 For labour politics on Spreckels’s plantation, see Dusinberre, ‘Writing the on-board’.

40 Adler, Jacob, ‘The Oceanic Steamship Company: a link in Claus Spreckels’ Hawaiian sugar empire’, Pacific Historical Review, 29, 3, 1960, pp. 257–269CrossRefGoogle Scholar. For details on the 1885 changes, see McLean, Gavin, The southern octopus: the rise of a shipping empire, Wellington: New Zealand Ship and Marine Society and the Wellington Harbour Board Maritime Museum, 1990, pp. 70–73Google Scholar.

41 McLean, Southern octopus, pp. 74–5.

42 HC, USSCo. records, AG-292-005-001/031, John Spreckels to James Mills, 11 November 1891; AG-292-005-004/035, Spreckels to Mills, 7 January 1893; NANZ, AAME W5603 81106, Box 69, ‘New Zealand Post Office: a short history of the Ocean Mail services’.

43 HC, USSCo. records, AG-292-005-001/031, John Spreckels, 19 August 1891.

44 Steel, Frances, ‘The “missing link”: space, race and transoceanic ties in the settler-colonial Pacific’, Transfers: Interdisciplinary Journal of Mobility Studies, 5, 3, 2015, pp. 49–67CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

45 NANZ, AAME W5603 81106, Box 69, ‘A short history of the Ocean Mail services’; San Francisco Call, 7 January 1899, p. 6.

46 ‘The San Francisco mail route’, Sydney Morning Herald, 21 January 1902, p. 8; ‘Our mail services’, Evening Post, 18 October 1901, p. 2; Marlborough Express, 23 May 1907, p. 6.

47 Steel, ‘Missing link’, pp. 59–60.

48 Woollacott, Angela, ‘“All this is the empire, I told myself”: Australian women’s voyages “home” and the articulation of colonial whiteness’, American Historical Review, 102, 4, 1997, pp. 1003–1029CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

49 McMillan, Robert, There and back; or notes of a voyage round the world, Sydney: William Brooks & Co, 1903, p. 64Google ScholarPubMed.

50 Constantine, Stephen, ed., Dominions diary: the letters of E. J. Harding, 1913–1916, Halifax: Ryburn, 1992, p. 54Google Scholar.

51 ‘Mr Winston Churchill’s views’, Wanganui Herald, 24 June 1908, p. 5; Steel, ‘Missing link’.

52 Fiji Times, 3 July 1895.

53 Alexander Turnbull Library, Wellington (henceforth ATL), fMS-Papers-3948, diary of William Arnold Hepburn, 1879.

54 Horatio Wilson, Walter, The Pacific route: Brisbane to New York, Brisbane: Gordon and Gotch, 1884, p. 9Google Scholar.

55 Auckland City Library (henceforth ACL), George Grey Collections, NZMS 1315, Christopher James (Jim) Parr, Letters to his wife Ethel, during an overseas trip – SS Ventura across the Pacific, 6 March 1902.

56 For example, Lang, Brief notes of the new postal route, pp. 17, 24.

57 Froude, James Anthony, Oceana, or England and her colonies, London: Longmans, Green and Co., 1886, p. 199Google Scholar.

58 ATL, MS-Papers-2010, Arthur Filmer, ‘Log of a voyage’, 1876. For more on Hawai‘i’s British connections, see Haley, James, Captive paradise: a history of Hawai‘i, New York: St Martin’s Press, 2014Google Scholar; Tate, Merze, ‘Great Britain and the sovereignty of Hawaii’, Pacific Historical Review, 31, 1962, pp. 327–348CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

59 Tangye, Richard, Notes of my fourth voyage to the Australian colonies, Birmingham: White & Pike, 1886, p. 90Google Scholar.

60 ‘Maiden trip of the Mararoa’, p. 2.

61 HC, USSCo. records, AG-292-005-001/022, Frederick Jackson to James Mills, 8 February 1892; AG-292-005-001/046, Mills to Head Office, 5 July 1899. For complaints about Oceanic steamers, see AG-292-005-001/031, Henry Gibbs to Mills, 28 May 1891 and 26 June 1891; AG-292-005-001/018, E. P. Houghton to Mills, 16 July 1889.

62 ACL, George Grey Collections, NZMS 1315, Parr, Letters, 12 March 1902.

63 HC, USSCo. records, AG-292-005-001/022, Frederick Jackson to James Mills, 1 February 1892 and 14 March 1892.

64 Timaru Herald, 16 September 1896, p. 4.

65 Howe, Travel letters, p. 16.

66 Sloan, Edward W., ‘Shipping: United States’, in John B. Hattendorf, ed., The Oxford encyclopedia of maritime history, vol. 3, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007, pp. 634–635Google Scholar; Day, Edmund E., ‘The American merchant fleet: a war achievement, a peace problem’, Quarterly Journal of Economics, 34, 4, 1920, p. 576CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

67 Kennedy, Greg, ‘American and British merchant shipping: competition and preparation, 1933–39’, in Greg Kennedy, ed., The merchant marine in international affairs, 1850–1950, London: Frank Cass, 2000, pp. 107–154Google Scholar; Imperial Shipping Committee, Possibilities of a British passenger and cargo service.

68 Dingley, Land of the golden fleece, pp. 193–4; Balachandran, G., Globalizing labour? Indian seafarers and world shipping, New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2012, p. 6Google Scholar.

69 Curthoys, Ann, ‘Conflict and consensus’, in Ann Curthoys and Andrew Markus, eds., Who are our enemies? racism and the Australian working class, Neutral Bay, NSW: Hale and Iremonger, 1978, pp. 48–65Google Scholar; Steel, Oceania under steam, pp. 98–105.

70 As related to Froude, Oceana, p. 203.

71 Tangye, Richard, Reminiscences of travel in Australia, America and Egypt, London: Sampson Low, 1883, p. 115Google Scholar. William Hepburn also mentions black servants: see ATL, fMS-Papers-3948, diary of William Arnold Hepburn, 1879. For the shifting status of African American seamen, see Bolster, W. Jeffrey, Black jacks: African American seamen in the age of sail, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1997, esp. pp. 222–225Google Scholar.

72 Dingley, Land of the golden fleece, p. 193.

73 HC, USSCo. records, AG-292-005-001/016, John Spreckels to James Mills, 7 March and 22 September 1888.

74 Ibid., Spreckels to Mills, 7 March 1888.

75 Markus, Andrew, Fear and hatred: purifying Australia and California, 1850–1901, Sydney: Hale & Iremonger, 1979, pp. 168–70; Steel, Oceania under steam, p. 101Google Scholar.

76 Guterl, Matthew and Skwiot, Christine, ‘Atlantic and Pacific crossings: race, empire, and “the labor problem” in the late nineteenth century’, Radical History Review, 91, 2005, pp. 40–61CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Lake and Reynolds, Drawing the global colour line, esp. ch. 1.

77 Oceanic was still heavily dependent on non-white crew, including Hawaiians and Mexicans, especially as coal passers. American ships were dismissed as the ‘worst’ for discipline by Sydney port officials. See ‘A first class pandemonium’, Evening News, 5 September 1906, p. 3.

78 Anderson, ‘Traveling white’, p. 68; Steel, Oceania under steam, esp. ch. 4.

79 Adams, H. Austin, The man, John D. Spreckels, San Diego, CA: Press of Frye & Smith, 1924, p. 134Google Scholar.

80 HC, Cameron Family Papers, Box 3, James Mills to Angus Cameron, 5 April 1890.

81 Bancroft Library, University of California Berkeley, Marine Cooks and Stewards Association of the Pacific Coast minutes, 1910–1931, BANC MSS 2004/178 c, vol. 2:2.

82 As related to Siegfried Eichelbaum: see ATL, MSX-7860, Chapman, Eichelbaum and Rosenberg families: Papers, Travel diary, 1 March 1912.

83 Cited in Coye, Ray W. and Murphy, Patrick J., ‘The golden age: service management on transatlantic ocean liners’, Journal of Management History, 13, 2, 2007, p. 183Google Scholar.

84 ‘To Washington and back’, Press, 15 September 1891, p. 5.

85 ‘To Washington and back’, Otago Daily Times, 14 October 1891, p. 3. Barry’s travel narratives were published anonymously, with USSCo. officials making enquiries about the identity of this ‘scribbler’ in order to alert Spreckels: HC, USSCo. records, AG-292-005-001/031, George McLean to John Spreckels, 3 November 1891.

86 McMillan, There and back, pp. 364–6.

87 ATL, MS-Papers-1454-038, Burnett family papers, outward correspondence, 1902.

88 Tangye, Notes of my fourth voyage, p. 92.

89 ‘A Nelsonian’s visit to the United States – No. II’, Colonist, 13 June 1882, p. 3.

90 ACL, George Grey Collections, NZMS 1315, Parr, Letters, 6 May 1902.

91 ATL, MS-Papers-10821-03, Kirker, James Papers, Travel diary, 1889–90.

92 ATL, MS-Papers-1454-038, Burnett family papers, 1902.

93 White, Trumbull, Pacific tours and around the world, Chicago, IL: Passenger Department Santa Fe Route (American and Australian Line), 1900, pp. 24Google Scholar, 154.

94 ACL, George Grey Collections, NZMS 1315, Parr, Letters, 8 May 1902.

95 Froude, Oceana, p. 293.

96 Howe, Travel letters, pp. 72, 112.

97 Dingley, Land of the golden fleece, p. 16.

98 Hogan, James Francis, The Australian in London and America, London: Ward & Downey, 1889, pp. 14–15Google Scholar.

99 ‘The home trip’, Wanganui Chronicle, 22 December 1894, p. 2; ATL, MSX-7860, Eichelbaum, Travel diary, 10 February 1912.

100 Tangye, Reminiscences of travel, p. 128, emphasis in original.

101 Ibid., p. 129; Boyd, Mary, Our stolen summer: the record of a roundabout tour, Edinburgh: Blackwood, 1900, p. 332Google Scholar; ATL, MS-Papers-7496-10, diary of Joseph Rowe Gard, June–December 1871.

102 Smiles, Samuel, ed., Round the world, including a residence in Victoria, and a journey by rail across North America. By a boy, New York: Harper & Brothers, 1871, p. 231Google Scholar; ‘A Nelsonian’s visit to the United States – No. II’, Colonist, 13 June 1882, p. 3.

103 ACL, George Grey Collections, NZMS 1315, Parr, Letters, 25 February 1902, emphasis in original.

104 Pietsch, Tamson, ‘A British sea: making sense of global space in the late nineteenth century’, Journal of Global History, 5, 3, 2010, pp. 433CrossRefGoogle Scholar, 442.

105 Lake, ‘Brightness of eyes’.

106 ‘The all red route’, Brisbane Courier, 29 July 1905, p. 12.

107 Lecourt, Sebastian, ‘The Mormons, the Victorians, and the idea of greater Britain’, Victorian Studies, 56, 1, 2013, pp. 86CrossRefGoogle Scholar, 87.

108 ‘The all red route’, Brisbane Courier, 29 July 1905, p. 12.

109 Stephens, A. G., A Queenslander’s travel-notes, Sydney: Beatty, Richardson & Co, 1894, p. 8Google Scholar.

110 ‘A Nelsonian en route for San Francisco’, Colonist, 9 May 1882, p. 3.

111 ‘The S. S. Monowai’, Auckland Star, 24 June 1893, p. 2.

112 For more on these contrasts, but for a later period, see Anne Rees, ‘Ellis Island in the Pacific: encountering America in Hawai‘i, 1920s–1950s’, unpublished paper for ‘Australasian–Pacific travel, magazines, and the middlebrow imagination 1925–1950’ symposium, James Cook University, Queensland, 29 November 2013.

113 Boyd, Our stolen summer, p. 331.

114 ACL, George Grey Collections, NZMS 1315, Parr, Letters, 10 March 1902, emphasis in original; ATL, MS-Papers-7496-10, diary of Joseph Rowe Gard, June–December 1871.

115 ‘A Nelsonian’s visit to the United States – No. II’, Colonist, 13 June 1882, p. 3; also noted by Estelle Nolan, travelling in 1898: see The Nolan family, Auckland: C. Russell, 1976, unpaginated.

116 Tangye, Reminiscences of travel, pp. 127–8.

117 Ibid., p. 129.