School of Historical and Philosophical Studies - Theses
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ItemAn imperial partnership: the marriage of Henry and Alice Northcote( 2011)This thesis examines the lives of two Victorian era aristocrats, Henry (Harry) Stafford Northcote and Alice Stephen Northcote, who married in 1873, and in 1900 began an eight-year career in colonial government. It reviews in particular their negotiation of the system of imperial power that they represented, first in Bombay (1900-1903) and then in Australia (1904-1908). The combination of attention to biographical specificities and the various social and political contexts of the Northcotes' engagements allows the details of their lives to illuminate issues of wider historical significance. The study encompasses two different biographical challenges: interpreting the various correspondences that make up the main source of information about Harry; and discovering Alice despite a paucity of primary source material. Harry, scion of a minor aristocratic dynasty, first served in British politics what proved to be an apprenticeship for colonial service, while Alice, as the adopted daughter of a self-made millionaire, was a socially aspiring society hostess and little else. The couple experienced a dramatic life change at the end of the century: the means of resolving a painful predicament gave both Northcotes the opportunity to find personal renewal and professional fulfilment. They performed in the colonies with a measure of grace and humanity but, imbued as they were with the values of their era and class, Harry and Alice delivered what the British Empire required; they never questioned the ethos or mode of delivery. What the Empire required was always and everywhere the political, economic and social domination of others, particularly those of cultural and racial difference, for the ultimate benefit of the Mother Country and British colonials. In India Harry and Alice made separate but related efforts to impose Western standards of sanitation and medicine. Harry's administration was principally concerned with providing immediate relief for catastrophic famine, and the implementation of Western methods of dealing with epidemics of plague and smallpox. Alice's work involved raising revenue for the Dufferin Fund, a charitable venture characteristic of Victorian era philanthropy: a combination of culturally specific assistance and control. Harry's job description changed when he became governor general of the newly federated Australia. He moved from autocratic rule in a colony of extraction to performing a leading role in a constitutional monarchy in an increasingly self-governing settler society. Harry fulfilled both jobs with judgement and diplomacy, and in Australia he steered the ship of state through turbulent political waters. Alice, having found her metier as governor's "incorporated" wife, and having discovered considerable organisational skill, master-minded the First Australian Exhibition of Women's Work in 1907, an event designed to support fragile federation. On the couple's return to England Harry was active in the campaigns to prevent reform of the House of Lords and female suffrage, indicating that his conservative political views had not changed. Harry died in 1911 and Alice lived out a long widowhood until 1934, creating no new persona, but engaging in activities informed by Harry's legacy.
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ItemRoger Barlow: Tudor trade and the Atlantic world( 2008)This thesis is about Roger Barlow. He was born near Colchester, sometime between 1480 and 1496, into a family with connections to the woollen cloth trade, and he died in Pembrokeshire in 1553. Barlow lived and traded in Seville during the 1520s as a member of a community of English merchants who prospered there. When Sebastian Cabot sailed from Seville in search of a route to the Moluccas or Spice Islands, Barlow accompanied him and joined in his exploration of the Rio de la Plata. He returned to Castile in late 1528 before returning to England around 1530 and marrying the daughter of a Bristol merchant. In the mid 1530s, Barlow moved to Pembrokeshire and cooperated with his brothers to further the Crown's policy for Wales while building up an estate around the dissolved commandery of the Hospitallers of St John of Jerusalem at Slebech. He retained his links with trading networks in London and Bristol and in 1541 presented the king with a cosmography, subsequently titled A Brief Summe of Geographie, and a proposal, initially developed with fellow merchant, Robert Thorne. The crux of the proposal was that the English should undertake exploratory voyages to establish a trade route to the East via the Northwest Passage. As Barlow had inserted his personal account of the Rio de la Plata, including a description of a Tupi cannibal feast, into his cosmography, this would have been the first personal account of the Americas to appear in English, had Henry supported its publication. The contention of this thesis is that Roger Barlow's story is significant because it reveals the complex and influential role of guilds and informal merchant networks during the Henrician period, the nature of England's trading relationship with Spain and its Atlantic settlements before the Reformation, and the reactions of merchants, power brokers and monarchs to the New World during the first half of the sixteenth century. As well as connecting a myriad of geographical locations, Barlow's story links the mercantile world with that of the landed gentry and the clergy at a time when both social structures and forms of belief were being challenged. Barlow accumulated a knowledge of the world and its opportunities that was extraordinary for an Englishman in the first half of the sixteenth century. Such knowledge was the bedrock of the exploration, settlement, colonization and mercantile developments that gained momentum in the century that followed.
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ItemImage is all: Lt-Colonel William Farquhar, Sir Stamford Raffles, and the founding and early development of colonial Singapore( 2012)In popular memory, Sir Stamford Raffles is hailed as the far-sighted founder of the British settlement at Singapore. This thesis challenges that image of Raffles, arguing that it obscures and undervalues the role played by Lieutenant Colonel William Farquhar. The thesis re-examines Farquhar’s role, along with that of Raffles, and analyses why Farquhar has been belittled and Raffles so glorified in Singapore’s conventional founding narrative. The thesis challenges three widely held beliefs which form the basis of Raffles’ dominance of that narrative. These are: that Raffles chose Singapore as a site for a new British trading post; that he was responsible for its rapid rise to a successful entrepôt port, and that he was responsible for Britain’s acquisition of Singapore. This research validates Farquhar’s competing claims that he was owed much credit in Singapore’s founding and early commercial success. The study breaks new ground. For the first time, an ongoing and positive link between Farquhar’s activities in Malacca and in Singapore is demonstrated. Moreover, evidence provided by Raffles’ biographers to aggrandise Raffles and criticise Farquhar is refuted by documentary evidence. Previously uncited material reveals the inaccuracy of two other popular beliefs: first, that Farquhar was an incompetent and disobedient official and, secondly, that Raffles was a highly principled and efficient administrator. This thesis also presents the first analysis of Raffles’ dismissal of Farquhar, and of Farquhar’s subsequent steps to obtain redress for what he considered was harsh and unjustified treatment by Raffles. Looking beyond Farquhar and Raffles, this research demonstrates how history can be tainted by subjective works, unsound memories and misinformation. It sheds more light on how and why particular men are immortalised, and how the pathways from historical records to myth making are created, as the cult of the great man obscures the achievements of other individuals. In addition, the research reveals how popular memory can create a simplistic, linear narrative, obscuring the complexities of history. This revisionist interpretation of the roles and characters of Farquhar and Raffles in Singapore’s founding and early development, based on new, as well as re-examined data, clarifies a misunderstood period in Singaporean history.
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ItemCharles Joseph La Trobe: the making of a governor( 2002)The central argument developed in this thesis is that Charles Joseph La Trobe was a highly distinctive individual whose background and experiences during the first four decades of his life to 1839 shaped his character and informed his administration, firstly as Superintendent of the Port Phillip District of New South Wales until 1851, and then as Victoria's first Lieutenant-Governor from 1851 to 1854. His Huguenot descent isolated him from the traditional British mould, and yet, for all that, he was very much the typical Englishman with all the attitudes then prevailing in the educated middle-class. His Moravian faith and the advanced Moravian school system in which he was nurtured set him apart from the norm of those recruited to the Colonial Office as representatives of the imperial power of Great Britain. He was altogether, in fact, an unusual choice as administrator of a valuable and remote colony, having none of the administrative experience, military training or aristocratic background usually sought in vice-regal envoys. La Trobe came from a deeply religious and highly intellectual family whose evangelicalism and social consciences dominated their lives. He was drawn to the outdoor life and to the landscape wherever he went in his extensive travels, seeing it as God's creation, and he described what he saw and experienced fully in his four published books and in his works of art. From his youth, he developed a lifelong passion for Switzerland, the country where he formed his closest friendships. Acknowledging the seriousness with which he regarded his Australian posting as a representative of the Crown, La Trobe's every action was governed and, to a certain extent, hampered by his allegiance to the Governor in Sydney and the Colonial Office in London. La Trobe's actions, ideas, assumptions and behaviours during his fifteen years in office in Melbourne may, however, be best understood by an examination of the way his character was shaped, especially by the influences on him of the Moravian faith and education, by his passion for travel, and by the devotion and support of his family and friends in England and in Switzerland. La Trobe departed from office a wearied and disappointed man whose contribution to the development of the colony was not immediately recognised. His was a vision of a cultured, economically viable and Christian society, with equality of opportunity for all. Any recognition of his achievements eluded him, the obvious negativities of his administration, especially regarding the Aboriginal people and the goldfields administration, obscuring his successes. Charles Joseph La Trobe was a complex man of striking contradictions: he was capable of great courage, yet he often appeared timid and self-effacing; he was charming and sociable at times, yet he loved nothing better than to escape the weight of his duties by riding into the 'bush'; he had strong views, but often came across as unassertive.