School of Historical and Philosophical Studies - Theses
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ItemThe Australian missionary endeavour in China, 1888-1953( 1978)Late in the nineteenth century, when cultural and commercial contact between China and Australia was minimal and the Australian public felt a deep, ingrained distaste for its own Chinese immigrant population, Australian missionaries began to join the Christian missionary enterprise in China. The initial stimulus for the movement was, however, provided largely by British missions and their deputationists who visited Australia in the 1890s. The first stage of the movement was not, therefore, an expression of the burgeoning Australian nationalism in which distrust and loathing of the Chinese immigrant was an integral element. Furthermore, it continued as it began. Between 1888 and 1953, more than 500 missionaries worked in China, the great majority in British, not exclusively Australian, mission organizations. The endeavour was a predominantly Protestant phenomenon, characterized by a high proportion of evangelists, a small core of post-secondary or tertiary-trained professionals, and a large number of women. Apart from a few outstanding contributions to China's social welfare and Sinology, most missionaries were fully occupied with converting the Chinese to Christianity. Although initially and continually stimulated by influences which were external to the Australian environment, the movement had its own internal logic. It was highly self-propagating, drawing a large proportion of its members from friends and families within the ecclesia, the religious community. It did not, however, constitute a homogeneous community. This was due to the wide differences in the ethos and methods of the mission societies involved. Once in China, the great majority of missionaries obeyed the rules and followed the policies of the British societies to which they belonged. They responded to the Chinese and conditions in China in this capacity and adopted the image of Christian internationalism which those societies increasingly projected to accommodate to the demands of Chinese nationalism. Most missionaries therefore voluntarily suppressed their Australian identity. Australian branches of mission societies, with few exceptions, followed suit. As a consequence of the way the movement began, and this effort to remain supranational, Australian missionary interest in China never harmonized with developing Australian secular interest. The missionary movement peaked in 1923 and again in 1933 in response to favourable conditions for Christianity in China; secular interest developed after 1938 and during World War II in response to China's valuable resistance to the common enemy, Japan. For the above reasons, and because of their own mission-centrism, Australian missionaries were not effective translators of the Chinese culture to Australia; nor did they transmit Australian secular attitudes to China. Those Chinese who, in the last stages of the endeavour, were aware of the identity of the Australian missionary, saw him as the colonial subject of British imperial domination. Finally, the missionary body's effect on China's culture and historical development is best assessed in terms of its role as an intellectual stimulus to the social revolution which fomented throughout the undertaking, climaxed in 1949, and rejected the entire Western missionary enterprise.
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ItemThe Victorian charity network in the 1890's( 1976-06)Poverty was widespread in Victorian society in the later nineteenth century, but the colony remained proud that it had not had to resort to a Poor Law in order to meet the needs of the less fortunate of its citizens. Instead, the relief of the destitute was the responsibility of a large number of voluntary charitable agencies, most financially dependent on the government to a greater or lesser extent, but totally under the control of those private citizens who chose and were able to make regular donations. (For complete precis open document)
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ItemThe emergence and character of women's magazines in Australia 1880-1914( 1975)Four major points relating to the emergence and character of women's magazines in Australia are explored in this thesis:- when they began, why they began when they did in the 19th century, what form they took when published and the views they expounded about the status and life of women in Australia between the years l880-19l4. Thirty-five women's magazines were consulted, but only one or two representative examples of each type are discussed in any detail. The magazines themselves fall into two distinct categories during this period - the general or service magazine containing fiction, fashion and homemaking features; and the suffrage or political magazine dealing with the implications of votes for women. The thesis is divided into three sections and follows a basically chronological pattern. The first section of four chapters deals with the English background of women's and family magazines to 1850; the popularity of these publications in the Australian colonies throughout the 19th century; the level of education and literacy among women in Australia during this period; and the early attempts to found women's magazines in Melbourne and Sydney in the 1880's. Section two discusses the suffrage and political magazines published for women in Sydney and Melbourne between the years 1889-1914. The first of these two chapters is devoted to a detailed examination of Australia's first successful feminist magazine, Louisa Lawson's Dawn (1888-1905); while the second discusses the suffrage and political magazines for women in New South Wales and Victoria, and compares their failure to the success of Mrs. Lawson's publication. The third and final section examines the emergence of the modern American-influenced magazines in Australia from 1894 to 1914, a whole chapter being devoted to the New Idea (1902-14) as the archetypal example of this trend.
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ItemRadicalism and the Sydney press c. 1838-1846( 1978)Claims by historians about the nature and scope of radical and working class activity in New South Wales before the gold rushes vary considerably. On the one hand stands Robin Gollan's view that until 1848 Australia had nothing that could properly be called a radical movement. On the other stands L. J. Hume's assertion that in 1842 radicalism in association with the working classes reached a peak in New South Wales and thereafter went into a decline. Differing from both Gollan and Hume, Michael Roe argues that a distinct working class political movement began to emerge in 1843 and from then on became progressively stronger. The recent writing of T. H. Irving and others of the New Left has attempted to incorporate the pre-1850 period into broad these about the nineteenth century development of a bourgeois hegemony. To attempt to reconcile these conflicting interpretations would be a futile and impossible exercise. Specific studies can help instead to reveal some of the complexities which have allowed such a disparate group of opinions to be formed. The aim of the present thesis is to develop a new perspective on pre-gold rush radicalism through an examination of the role of Sydney's newspaper press. The period to be considered centres on the 1838-46 years of Sir George Gipps' governorship, but a preliminary study of the background from 1824, (the year when the Australian was founded,) was considered essential. In the course of the thesis it will be shown firstly that the radicalism which emerged in the depression of the early 'forties differed in important ways from the emancipist radicalism which preceded it. Secondly it will be argued that by 1846, the radicals and the newspapers of Sydney had pushed New South Wales a long way on the road to becoming a political, rather than an a-political or anti-political society. Notions of a society divided into mutually hostile groups of employers and employees were thus common subjects of controversy at the end of the depression where they had been virtually unknown before.