Brokers and boundaries. Colonial exploration in indigenous territory

Colonial exploration continues, all too often, to be rendered as heroic narratives of solitary, intrepid explorers and adventurers. This edited collection contributes to scholarship that is challenging that persistent mythology. With a focus on Indigenous brokers, such as guides, assistants and mediators, it highlights the ways in which nineteenth-century exploration in Australia and New Guinea was a collective and socially complex enterprise. Many of the authors provide biographically rich studies that carefully examine and speculate about Indigenous brokers’ motivations, commitments and desires. All of the chapters in the collection are attentive to the specific local circumstances as well as broader colonial contexts in which exploration and encounters occurred. This collection breaks new ground in its emphasis on Indigenous agency and Indigenous–explorer interactions. It will be of value to historians and others for a very long time. Professor Ann Curthoys, University of Sydney. In bringing together this group of authors, the editors have brought to histories of colonialism the individuality of these intermediaries, whose lives intersected colonial exploration in Australia and New Guinea. Dr Jude Philp, Macleay Museum

Grazing to Gravy: Faunal Remains and Indications of Genízaro Foodways on the Spanish Colonial Frontier of New Mexico

Understanding identity aspects of those labeled Genízaro during the late Spanish Colonial period of New Mexico benefits from finer-grained perspectives on what ranges and mixtures of practices persons bearing this casta designation may have performed while preparing cuisine. Materials from the northern frontier site of Casitas Viejas (LA 917) suggest that the closely related households of this fortified plaza may have departed from the less expansive culinary practices of colonial elites while drawing from their multiple social relationships at the various stages of production and consumption of foods. In other words, at different temporal and spatial scales, behaviors reflected in the material record refute historical notions about a creolized community that tried to diminish identity difference within the village. The goal of this work is to explore through the study of faunal remains some of the relationships between foodways and cultural identity in a manner that might assist in some disentangling of the sticky problems archaeologists face in interpreting traces of dynamic past situations of identity from a static material record recovered today

Geographic Protest: The Role of Counter-Mapping in Supporting Campaigns Against Large-Scale Extractive Projects in Colombia: The Case of La Colosa

In a few short years, social movements in Cajamarca, Colombia, were able to convince a once divided community to near-unanimously reject establishment of the world’s largest gold mine on their doorstep. This paper examines the role of contestatory cartography in achieving this remarkable result. It explores the range of mapping and counter-mapping tools used by movements in the region, showing how a combination of classic GIS and more neogeographical tools have been used to counter the mining project from both a legal and social standing. While the paper also finds hierarchies of control are still in place and not eroded by participatory mapping activities, it also suggests that counter-mapping and the involvement of the community in exploring their own landscape was crucial to the rejection of AngloGold Ashanti’s La Colosa project

Intermediaries, Servants, or Captives : Disentangling Indigenous labour in D. W. Carnegie’s exploration of the Western Australian desert

In the late fifteenth century, Christopher Columbus kidnapped Caribbean people to train and use them as translators who could inform him about potential dangers and desirable commodities. The Dutch East India Company in the early seventeenth century instructed their captains to capture Indigenous peoples whenever possible for the same purpose. Then, in the late eighteenth century maritime explorers like James Cook and Matthew Flinders, on occasion, kidnapped Islander and Aboriginal people in the Pacific and Australia as punishment for perceived thefts, and as a means of asserting their authority over seemingly recalcitrant native peoples. Thus, for centuries European explorers felt at liberty to capture Indigenous individuals as a strategy for discovering information about local environments and polities, as well as for enforcing discipline and control

Making Geographies : The Circulation of British Geographical Knowledge of Australia, 1829-1863

This study is concerned with the challenging question of how British geographies of Australia were made in the mid-nineteenth century. It examines the processes and practices that constituted the analysis, movement and use of the enormous amount of information produced by British explorations and surveys of the Australian continent. The study focuses on the period between 1829-1863, when the interior of the continent was explored and settlements expanded at a rapid rate. The study focuses on the roles of the following actors in Great Britain and the Australian colonies: The Colonial Office, official establishments overseen by governors in the colonies, the Royal Geographical Society (RGS) and the cartographer John Arrowsmith (1790–1873). The material examined consists of the official correspondence between the Colonial Office and the governors of the colonies, and other correspondence, printed material, and manuscript and printed maps that were prepared in the Australian colonies and in Great Britain by different actors. The research is conducted by investigating the processes of knowledge-making with methodological tools used in the history of knowledge and processual map history. These include the analytical tool of ‘circulation’ and examining the processes that constituted the production, movement and use of maps. In practice, the study is conducted by (1) examining the manuscript material (maps, texts) alongside the printed and published material and (2) by examining the material relating to their circulation and use, such as minutes, annotations and marginalia. In sum, the research findings demonstrate how the snippets of information produced by different individuals gained the power to define the continent by being circulated. These developments, which took place in the mid-nineteenth century, were rooted in the social processes that occurred in different, interconnected locations. The main findings and implications of this study include: (1) The production of British geographies of Australia was a spatio-temporal process, as the location of knowledge-work and the pace at which material became available in different locations influenced the type of knowledge formed by the actors; (2) Geographical knowledge of Australia was achieved through chains of knowledge brokers in different locations. Pieces of information were mediated and transformed in the hands of numerous different actors into geographical knowledge; (3) Intertextuality and multi-modality contributed to the production of geographical knowledge, whereby maps and text had co-constitutive roles in the process; (4) John Arrowsmith was a key individual in the process of mapping Australia. This was due to his strong relationship with the Colonial Office, the RGS and Australian explorers; (5) The processual approach is productive when studying the history of knowledge and this work encourages the use of archival material in order to examine the processes of knowledge-making. This study encourages the further application of this method, especially in relation to studies aiming to understand how knowledge was formed and how structures of knowledge were established in different locations.Väitöskirjassani tutkin Australiaa koskevan maantieteellisen tiedon muodostamista 1800-luvun keskimmäisinä vuosikymmeninä eli ajankohtana, jolloin britit enenevässä määrin asuttivat mannerta. Tutkin käytäntöjä ja prosesseja, joiden tuloksena tutkimusmatkojan ja kartoittamisen tuloksena tuotettua Australian mannerta koskevaa informaatiota analysoitiin, välitettiin eri paikkoihin ja käytettiin. Tutkimukseni keskittyy vuosien 1829–1863 väliseen ajanjaksoon, jolloin mantereen sisäosia tutkittiin intensiivisesti ja eri puolille mannerta perustetut siirtokunnat laajenivat kiihtyvällä vauhdilla. Tarkastelen erityisesti seuraavia toimijoita Australian siirtokunnissa ja Britanniassa: Britannian siirtomaaministeriö, siirtokuntien kuvernöörit, Lontoossa toiminut Royal Geographical Society ja kartografi John Arrowsmith (1790–1873). Tutkimuksessa käytetyt aineistot koostuvat kirjeenvaihdosta, painetuista materiaaleista, käsikirjoituskartoista ja painetuista kartoista, joita eri toimijat tuottivat Britanniassa ja Australian siirtokunnissa. Toteutan tutkimukseni rekonstruoimalla tiedon liikkumisen ja tuottamiseen prosesseja.Tutkimukseni menetelmät yhdistävät työkaluja tiedon historiasta ja kartografian historiasta. Käytän analyysin välineenä tiedon liikkuvuttaa kuvaavaa käsitettä sirkulaatiota ja tutkin karttoja niiden tuottamisen, liikkumisen ja käyttämisen prosessien osana. Käytännössä toteutan tutkimukseni 1) lukemalla ristiin käsikirjoitusaineistoja (kartat, tekstit) painettujen ja julkaistujen materiaalien kanssa ja 2) tutkimalla aineistoja, jotka kertovat eri tekstien ja karttojen liikkumisesta ja käytöstä, kuten muistiinpanoja ja marginaalimerkintöjä. Tutkimukseni tulokset osoittavat kuinka tiedon osat saivat merkityksensä osana laajempia tietorakenteita liikkumalla paikasta ja toimijalta toiselle. Tiedon liike perustui sosiaalisille käytännöille, jotka sitoivat yhteen eri puolilla maailmaa sijaitsevat paikat. Tutkimuksen päätuloksia ovat: 1) Maantieteellisen tiedon tuottaminen oli spatio-temporaalinen prosessi ja nopeus, jolla eri toimijat saivat eri materiaalit käyttöönsä, vaikutti muodostetun tiedon sisältöön; 2) Maantieteellistä tietoa tuotettiin toisiinsa yhteydessä olevien tiedon välittäjien ja työstäjien työn tuloksena. Eri toimijat välittivät tietoa eteenpäin ja muokkasivat tietoa näin tehdessään; 3) Intertekstuaalisuudella ja monimodaalisuudella oli keskeinen merkitys tiedon muodostamisen prosesseissa. Kartoilla ja teksteillä oli toisiaan täydentävä rooli; 4) John Arrowsmith oli avainhenkilö Australian kartoittamisessa. Tämä johtui hänen verkostoistaan siirtomaaministeriön ja RGS:n kanssa; 5) Prosessuaalinen näkökulma on hedelmällinen lähtökohta tiedon muodostumisen prosessien tutkimiseen ja tutkimus alleviivaa arkistomateriaalin käytön merkitystä tiedon muodostumisen tutkimuksessa. Tutkimuksen tulokset rohkaisevat sirkulaation ja prosessuaalisten näkökulmien käyttöön tutkimuksissa, joissa pyritään tutkimaan, kuinka eri toimijat ovat historiallisesti tuottaneet tietoa ja näin osallistuneet erilaisten tietorakenteiden vakiinnuttamiseen

THE SURROGATE COLONIZATION OF PALESTINE, 1917-1939

The "surrogate colonization" of Palestine had a foreign power giving to a nonnative group rights over land occupied by an indigenous people. It thus brought into play the complementary and conflicting agendas of three culturally distinguishable parties: British, Jews and Arabs. Each party had both "externalist" [those with no sustained practical experience of day to day life in Palestine] and "internalist" representatives. The surrogate idea was based on a "strategic consensus" involving each party's externalist camp: the British ruling elite, the leadership of the World Zionist Organization and the Hashemite Dynasty of Arabia. The collapse of this triangular consensus, which put an end to the policy but not the process of surrogate colonization, resulted from irreconcilable antagonisms within and between the major currents of each internalist camp. A focus on the land problem in Palestine highlights contradictions in each party's internalist agenda, which forestalled a rift between the Jewish and British sides of the consensus long enough for the Zionist settlement in Palestine (Yishuv) to acquire territory and to develop a largely self-sufficient economic, cultural, political and military infrastructure