School of Historical and Philosophical Studies - Theses
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ItemJohn Ridley's contributions to Australian technology and to the early progress of South Australia( 1979)This study is primarily concerned with the working career of John Ridley (1806-1887), and with his contributions to the flour-milling industry of South Australia, to wheat harvesting technology, and to the progress of the colony generally. Ridley emigrated to South Australia from the north of England in 1840, and remained there until early 1853. Although still a relatively young man, he then returned to England to live in semi-retirement. The following text will show that Ridley contributed substantially to the technical and economic progress of the young- colony in at least two separate ways :- (i) He built the first flour-mill in South Australia in the year 1840, and subsequently operated it as a very successful business until he left the colony in 1853. The mill was steam-driven, of substantial capacity for the time, and of considerable economic significance to the colony. The local flour-milling industry which grew up soon afterwards freed the colony from crippling expenditures for imported flour and other breadstuffs, thus permitting a sound local economy to be developed. During 1842 Ridley leased a second (inoperative) flourmill near Adelaide, completely refitted it, and brought it too into successful operation. As well as helping to alleviate the financial difficulties of the colony at the time, these two mills provided a timely stimulus to local wheat growing. Ridley exerted a considerable influence upon the early development of South Australia's flour-milling industry, by virtue of the high standards for efficiency, operating reliability, and sound profitability he established in his own businesses. The competitors he attracted were forced to achieve similarly high standards in order to survive. His work was thus of importance in helping to secure a sound base for the future growth of the industry. (ii) In late-1843 Ridley invented, constructed, and demonstrated a unique mechanical harvester for gathering grain crops. This machine, later known as the "Ridley Reaper" or the "South Australian Stripper", was subsequently manufactured and used in thousands within the colony. For more than half a century the machine played a major part in stimulating wheat production in the region by providing the simplest and cheapest harvesting method in the world at that time. Ridley's invention embodied a principle of operation which was entirely novel at the time it was introduced. In the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries this same principle was incorporated into the designs of many other widely used grain harvesters. Ridley's machine therefore occupies an important place in the evolution of modern grain-harvesting machinery. The first two machines (both built by Ridley) were directly responsible for averting a serious harvesting crisis in South Australia at the 1843-44 season. Afterwards, when ever-increasing numbers of the machines went into service, a dramatic expansion of the colony's wheat-growing industry became possible. This in turn led to the development of a large export trade in wheat, and thus to an enviable economic prosperity for the colony. Whilst there is unanimous agreement that Ridley constructed and demonstrated the first successful machine of the "Stripper" type, his claim to have also invented the principle of its operation has been disputed. John Wrathall Full, another. pioneer South Australian settler, insisted that he and not Ridley originated the fundamental principle. In fact, he directly accused Ridley of stealing his idea and putting it into practice. The resulting controversy is examined in detail, and Bull's claim shown to be falsely based. Two further points of historical interest are also made and substantiated. Firstly, the "Stripper" was the first ever harvesting machine to successfully combine the operations of gathering and threshing the grain. And secondly, Ridley's "Stripper" was the first machine in the world to substantially displace hand-methods of cereal harvesting in its region. In the light of all the above considerations, it is suggested that Ridley's machine has not received either fair or sufficient notice in the histories of agricultural technology published to date. John Ridley's importance in the story of the development of mechanical harvesting has thus been unjustly neglected.
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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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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.