The Antipodean Laboratory
Making Colonial Knowledge, 1770–1870

A compelling account of how colonial knowledge from Australia influenced global thinking about religion, science, and society.

Anna Johnston (Author)

9781009186902, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 5 October 2023

300 pages
23.5 x 15.8 x 2.3 cm, 0.62 kg

'From Johnston's balanced and comprehensive navigation of the now extensive and conflicted field of settler colonial studies, as well as from the evidence she provides in her detailed studies of often overlooked texts relating to her three 'experimental' fields of enquiry in colonial New South Wales and Van Diemen's Land - humanitarianism and Indigenous welfare; convictism and penal reform; and natural history networks - it is clear that no one has thought so carefully about the relationship between knowledge and power in colonial locations, while at the same time paying close analytical and ethical attention to the lived conditions of the production and circulation of various kinds of knowledge, to their mutual dependencies and tensions, and to the collateral and ongoing effects of cross-cultural knowledge exchange.' William Christie, Australia National University

In this compelling study, Anna Johnston shows how colonial knowledge from Australia influenced global thinking about convicts, natural history and humanitarian concerns about Indigenous peoples. These were fascinating topics for British readers, and influenced government policies in fields such as prison reform, the history of science, and humanitarian and religious campaigns. Using a rich variety of sources including natural history and botanical illustrations, voyage accounts, language studies, Victorian literature and convict memoirs, this multi-disciplinary account charts how new ways of identifying, classifying, analysing and controlling ideas, populations, and environments were forged and circulated between colonies and through metropolitan centres. They were also underpinned by cultural exchanges between European and Indigenous interlocutors and knowledge systems. Johnston shows how colonial ideas were disseminated through a global network of correspondence and print culture.

Introduction: settler colonialism and its forms of knowledge
Part I. Imagining Settler Humanitarianism: 1. Morality, violence and sentiment: precarious lives on colonial frontiers, 1788–1797
2. Language, poetry and song: reading indigenous wordlists and grammars, 1770–1874
Part II. Regulating Settler Society: 3. 'Virtuous curiosity': penal practices and social theories, 1791–1843
4. Prison letters: reading and writing from Norfolk Island, 1834–1860
Part III. Inventing Settler Science: 5. Collecting practices: Botany, print culture and empire, 1768–1988
6. Creating colonial readers and imperial networks: the Tasmanian journal of natural science, 1841–1849
Conclusion: knowing the colony, knowing the world.

Subject Areas: Australasian & Pacific history [HBJM]