School of Historical and Philosophical Studies - Theses
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ItemFactory girls: gender, empire and the making of a female working class, Melbourne and London, 1880-1920( 2007)Between 1880 and 1920, something remarkable happened among the women and girls who worked in the factories of the British Empire. From being universally represented as the powerless victims of industrial capitalism, women factory workers in the cities of Melbourne and London burst onto the stage of history, as bold, disciplined and steadfast activists and demanded their rights, not merely as the equals of working-class men, but as the equals of ladies. The proletarian counterpart of that other subversive fin de siecle type, New Woman, the factory girl became visible at a time when the nature of femininity was being hotly contested, and coincided with the growing militancy of the organised working-class. Her presence in the streets, economic autonomy and love affair with the new mass culture, represented a radical challenge to conventional bourgeois ideas of how women should behave. Her emergence as a new social actor also coincided with a crisis of confidence in Empire, radical disillusionment with the project of modernity and a growing unease about the consequences of urban poverty. As middle-class anxieties proliferated, so surveillance of the factory girl intensified. In this way, female factory workers came under the scrutiny of missionaries, medical men, demographers, social workers, socialists and sociologists. This study traces the role of female factory workers in the emergence of a transnational movement for working-class women's rights. As more women entered the factories in search of independence, their shared experience of exploitation emboldened and empowered them to demand more. During this period, increasing numbers of female factory workers in both cities thus confounded the stereotype of female workers as submissive, shallow and innately conservative, by organising and winning strikes and forming unions of their own. Such explosions of militancy broke down trade unionist prejudice against women workers and laid the foundations of solidarity with male unionists. They also forged of a new model of working-class femininity; based not on the pale imitation of gentility, but one which expressed a profoundly modern sensibility. In the process, women workers fashioned a new political culture which articulated their common interests, and shared identity, as members of a female working class. Yet the rise of working-women's militancy also coincided with the mature articulation of a racialised labourism and the rise of male breadwinner regimes. As the white populations of Empire were re-configured as one race with a common imperial destiny, the corresponding preoccupation with the white settler birth rate, increased hostility and suspicion of women workers. The first decades of the twentieth century thus saw the solidification of a regulatory apparatus which sought to police and discipline young working women in preparing them for their racial destiny as mothers. The contemporaneous demand of the labour movement for a family wage worked to further marginalise wage-earning women, and ultimately reinforced the sexual division of labour.
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ItemA hidden history: the Chinese on the Mount Alexander diggings, central Victoria, 1851-1901( 2005)This thesis interrogates the history of the Chinese on the Mount Alexander gold diggings. Viewing the diggings as a cultural landscape, it argues that goldfields Chinese were more than simple sojourners. It reframes their place in local and national histories as 'settlers' rather than 'sojourners'. In so doing the thesis contends that Chinese-European relations on the goldfields were more complex than orthodox historical interpretations have acknowledged, and that the Chinese were active parties in the international mid-nineteenth century gold seeking phenomenon. A key aim of this thesis is to locate the Chinese gold seekers within the polity of a dynamic expanding imperial British society on the periphery of the settled world. It also considers the enduring Chinese role, albeit on a smaller scale, in these Pacific Rim neo-European settler societies after the gold rushes as the goldfields communities consolidated themselves from the 1860s onwards. While it is true that many returned to China either voluntarily or as a result of state pressure, the initial objective was to examine the continuing history of the goldfields generation of Chinese and their descendants in Australia. That history continued well beyond Federation into the twentieth century. The raison d'etre of this thesis is to challenge the historical neglect of the role of the Chinese in diggings society. This thesis has three complementary themes. The first examines the need to refine the concept of sojourner, and add to it the concept of Chinese 'settler' experience. The second is to portray the Chinese as socially active, politically engaged participants in goldfields life society and the third is to contextualise the experience the Castlemaine Chinese in broader national and international histories of the gold seeking era.
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Item"Most humble homes": slum landlords, tenants, and the Melbourne City Council's health administration, 1888-1918( 1987-07)The thesis examines the relationship between public health and questions of housing and poverty, in Melbourne, 1888- 1918. It is concerned with the way that with certain groups of people - local council workers, tenants of houses referred to as ‘slums’, and the owners of those houses - represented their experiences. And it seeks to place those representations in the context of the late nineteenth and early twentieth-century concern about the ‘housing problems’. It compares the public rhetoric of the housing reformers and politicians with letters written to the Melbourne City Council by landlords and tenants, and in doing so seeks to show that there were a whole range of housing ‘problems’ not addressed by the public discourse. The first half of the work seeks to place the housing issue into a late nineteenth-century context, and concentrates on public and official discourse. First it considers the City itself, and examines dominant myths about wealth and poverty in 'boom' Melbourne. It argues that these myths shaped contemporary discussion of and responses to housing questions. It then suggests that housing was to a great extent a public health issue for contemporaries, and therefore proceeds to examine the nature of public health administration in the city, both at a central and at a local level. The emergence of housing as a discrete issue in public health discourse is also considered. The thesis then seeks briefly to examine the concept of the 'slum' and to relate it to Melbourne's inner city rental housing market. It then considers in more detail two inner city wards renown for their 'slum' housing. Finally it considers the housing debates which gathered momentum in Melbourne between 1910-1913 and which culminated in the appointment of a Royal Commission to enquire into the housing of the people of the metropolis. It also considers the results of that inquiry. The second half of the work, using an ethnographic and cultural approach looks at slum tenants, landlords and council-workers in an attempt to explore how they perceived their worlds. The correspondence files of the Melbourne City Council are extensively used to consider how these people represented housing issues. Tenants' descriptions of their houses, their concepts of health and disease, their relationships with their landlords and the Council workers, their descriptions of the housing market, and their sense of community and neighbourhood networks are all considered. In turn the thesis considers landlords' representations of their financial positions, and their relationships with Council officials and tenants. Finally, the daily work of the Melbourne City Council's health workers is re-examined in the context of the evidence given before the Royal Housing Commission by the Chairman of the Council's Health Committee, Alderman William Burton.
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ItemStriking it rich: material culture and family stories from the Central Victorian goldfields( 2007)This thesis examines family and community experience on the central Victorian goldfields. Using a series of case studies, it creates narratives about particular and connected individuals who arrived in the goldmining communities of Creswick and Maldon during the 1850s and 1860s and who became longstanding residents in their respective townships. The stories begin with the material traces of these goldfields settlers. Houses, photographs, paintings and a trade union banner become touchstones for exploring goldfields history. These examples of material culture provide tangible connections to past lives; however, as historical resources they must be interpreted, if they are to inform our understandings of the past. Contextualization is the key. Combining public history approaches - such as material culture, vernacular architecture and cultural landscape study - with traditional social history methodologies, it becomes possible to embed objects in space and place and then link them to particular individuals. As a collection of historical narratives about the experiences of families, this thesis challenges prevailing characterizations of the goldfields as individualistic and masculine places. The case studies reveal a lost landscape of family settlement, and they demonstrate that family is an appropriate and useful frame for the study of goldfields history. Furthermore, they contribute to the interpretations of goldfields heritage as public history by suggesting a practical means by which lived experience can be made visible. Storytelling is a powerful tool for both the historian and heritage professional. This thesis offers a practical means of exploring not only the vibrant historical tapestry that is the central Victorian goldfields; it also serves as a test case of the manifold ways material culture and narrative interpretations can enrich community history.
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ItemHow the south-east was held: aspects of the quadripartite interaction of Mount Gambier, Portland, Adelaide and Melbourne 1860-1917( 1977)This thesis examines aspects of the "perennial theme of discussion", acknowledging the involvement of four participants, viz., Mt. Gambier, Portland, Adelaide and Melbourne. The assertion of regional generality was supported by the fact that between 1866 and 1921 the Mt. Gambier district rarely contained less than 39% of the total population of the South-East of South Australia. Indeed, in 1911, over 48% of the region's population lived in the vicinity of Mt. Gambier. Furthermore, as Hirst noted, Mt. Gambier was the only old South Australian country town to maintain a steady rate of growth between 1870 and 1917. These facts contributed to the belief, to be longheld by both Adelaide and Melbourne, that Mt. Gambier was the key to the South-East of South Australia. The holding of Mt. Gambier was then thought to be a necessary precursor to the holding of the South-East. Learmonth and Logan have each produced very useful studies of the Victorian port of Portland and its hinterland. Their perceptions, however, remain essentially "Victorian". While the proximity of the border between Victoria and South Australia was acknowledged, no rigorous attempt was made to study historically its regional influence. This thesis also aims to remedy that situation. (From introduction)
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ItemIndigenous representation in Australia's frontier and foreign wars( 2005)This thesis investigates the evolving perception of Australian identity and its impact on the commemoration of Indigenous soldiers. Structured around three case studies, this thesis follows a chronological timeline of commemorative practices characteristically colonial in its presentation of Indigenous Australian communities. The first chapter focuses on colonial constructions of national identity and its influences on the legacy of Captain Reginald Saunders, the first Aboriginal Australian to be commissioned as an officer in the Australian Army. Referencing his 1960s biography and textual memorial, The Embarrassing Australian by Harry Gordon, this thesis argues that it is only through the language of assimilation that Saunders was accepted as an "Australian" and appropriately commemorated for his military achievement. The second chapter highlights evolving perceptions of Australian history and national identity and the impact of Indigenous soldier commemoration within the Australian War Memorial. While the Memorial initially disregarded the Indigenous Australian contribution to the war effort, it has since evolved to acknowledge their role within its galleries. The final chapter looks at museums and their representation of Indigenous soldiers during the Frontier Wars. The portrayal of Indigenous soldiers, either as savages or warriors, among the museum displays and storyboards reflect how the nation chooses to publicly commemorate them. The methods adopted by museums reveal their rejection or acceptance of the Indigenous story of European colonization. By showing how forms of representation are tied to historical moments in regards to Indigenous soldiers and linking these commemorative trends with Australian national identity this research both adds to the body of literature on Australian commemoration and foreshadows an evolving trend where perceptions of "nation" are increasingly willing to embrace an Indigenous past into its definition.