Colonialist and Decolonial Metaphors

This paper argues that metaphors and colonial phenomena are related. It focuses in particular on the implications of metaphor for the study of colonialism and for the struggle against it. The aim is to harness metaphor’s power for decolonial rather than colonial uses

Genocide and Colonialism, II: Discussing a recent international conference on \u27Genocide and Colonialism\u27 and its implications for Australian debates

Lorenzo Veracini reviews a recent international conference on \u27Genocide and Colonialism\u27 and its implications for Australian debates

Unfinished Decolonisation and Globalisation

This article locates John Darwin’s work on decolonisation within an Oxbridge tradition which portrays a British world system, of which formal empire was but one part, emerging to increasing global dominance from the early nineteenth century. In this mental universe, decolonisation was the mirror image of that expanding global power. According to this point of view, it was not the sloughing off of individual territories, but rather the shrinking away of the system and of the international norms that supported it, until only its ghost remained by the end of the 1960s. The article then asks, echoing the title of Darwin’s Unfinished Empire, whether the decolonisation project is all but complete, or still ongoing. In addition, what is the responsibility of the imperial historian to engage with, inform, or indeed refrain from, contemporary debates that relate to some of these issues? The answer is twofold. On the one hand, the toolkit that the Oxbridge tradition and Darwin provide remains relevant, and also useful in thinking about contemporary issues such as China’s move towards being a global power, the United States’ declining hegemony, and some states and groups desires to rearticulate their relationship with the global. On the other hand, the decline of world systems of power needs to be recognised as just one of several types of, and approaches to, analysing ‘decolonisation’. One which cannot be allowed to ignore or marginalise the study of others, such as experience, first nations issues, the shaping of the postcolonial state, and empire legacies. The article concludes by placing the Oxbridge tradition into a broader typology of types and methodologies of decolonisation, and by asking what a new historiography of decolonisation might look like. It suggests that it would address the Oxbridge concern with the lifecycles of systems of power and their relationship to global changes, but also place them alongside, and in dialogue with, a much broader set of perspectives and analytical approaches

Review of Goodbye Bussamarai: The Mandaranji Land War, Southern Queensland 1842-1852 by Patrick Collins

Book review of: Patrick Collins. Goodbye Bussamarai: The Mandaranji Land War, Southern Queensland 1842-1852. St Lucia: University of Queensland Press, 2002. 305 + XV pp. $34.0

\u27Emphatically not a white man\u27s colony\u27: settler colonialism and the construction of colonial Fiji

Consistent with an interpretive tradition identifying Fiji as a constituent site in the evolution of colonial forms, this article argues that Fiji’s colonial history provides a privileged point from which to explore the divide separating colonial and settler colonial phenomena. While suggestive more than conclusive, it has two reciprocally supporting aims: first, it argues that colonial development in Fiji should be contextualised within transcolonial debates regarding Indigenous-settler relations, and that the construction of Fiji’s colonial landscape resulted from a decisively anti-settler determination; and, second, that a reframed understanding of Fiji’s colonial history can contribute to a reappraisal of the evolution of wider traditions of colonial governance

\u27Aboriginality and Australian cinematography: Engaging with history\u27: Review of One Night the Moon

\u27Aboriginality and Australian Cinematography: Engaging with History\u27: Review of One Night the Moon, Rachel Perkins, dir., John Romeril sc., MusicArtsDance Films Pty Ltd, film released on 08/11/2001

Colonialism brought home: On the colonialization of the metropolitan space

Departing from an appraisal of the topical relevance of what Canadian based geographer Derek Gregory has perceptively called \u27the colonial present\u27, this article presents a number of departures for an investigation of the ways in which the codes of a colonial conditions have infiltrated the metropolitan west (Gregory 2004). This article suggests a number of possible starting points for further discussion and focuses on an analysis of the long term process of transfer of colonial forms from colony to core and on an appraisal of migrations and their governance as one privileged site for the production and reproduction of coloniality

Of a \u27contested ground\u27 and an \u27indelible stain\u27: a difficult reconciliation between Australia and its Aboriginal history during the 1990s and 2000s

This article proposes an interpretative narrative of the evolution of Aboriginal history as a scholarly enterprise during the 1990s and in more recent years. The 1990s were characterised by attempts to synthesise the interpretative traditions resulting from previous decades of scholarly activity. In more recent years, the debate has shifted dramatically, dealing specifically with the genocidal nature of white Australia\u27s policy towards Aboriginal peoples. The most important passages in this process are associated with the 1992 Mabo decision by the Australian High Court and the publication of the Bringing them home report of 1997

Settler colonialism and decolonisation

Appraising the evolution of settler colonial forms during the second half of the twentieth century can contribute to an appraisal of decolonisation processes. This is both because settler colonial forms have existed in a variety of sites of European colonial expansion (and have survived in a number of postcolonial polities), and because, contrary to other colonial forms, settler colonialism has been remarkably resistant to decolonisation. This article calls for integrating two non-communicating discursive fields: adding an appraisal of settler colonialism to discussions of decolonisation, and introducing decolonisation to analyses of settler colonial contexts. It briefly outlines a history of decolonizing settler colonial structures, and it reflects on the intellectual and historiographical shifts that have accompanied these processes. This paper also suggests that an appraisal of a narrative deficit - a specific difficulty associated with conceptualising settler decolonisation - can contribute to explaining widespread reluctance in enacting meaningful postcolonial passages

A review of A. Dirk Moses (ed.), Genocide and settler society: frontier violence and stolen indigenous children in Australian history

Genocide and Settler Society constitutes a successful exercise in deparochialization. Until now, discussions of genocides in an Australian context have centered on whether this category could be applied, accompanied by debated qualifications, to the experience of Indigenous people. On the contrary, Genocide and Settler Society ultimately and convincingly reverses this order. It is not a matter of testing the relevance of genocide studies to Australian history; rather, there is a need to explore the ways in which genocide studies at large can benefit from an appraisal of the Australian experience. In order to perform this intellectual recasting, Dirk Moses has gathered contributions from a number of very authoritative Australian historians and public intellectuals, some of whom have been tremendously influential, at different stages, in the comprehensive reshaping of the historiographical landscape. These include Raymond Evans and Henry Reynolds (whose works on colonial violence and on Indigenous resistances started appearing in the 1970s), Anna Haebich and Robert Manne (who, more recently, have published extensively on the issue of stolen/removed children), and Russell McGregor and Tim Rowse (who have worked on the manufacture and delivery of Aboriginal policies). At the same time, one of the points of the book is to decompartmentalize this discussion and Moses has also gathered the work of international scholars on genocide in other contexts