Limits reaffirmed: new wheat frontiers in Australia, 1916–1939

At the opening of the twentieth century, it was apparent that good agricultural land was getting scarce even in the New World. There was still a strong political need, especially in countries that owed their existence to an agricultural frontier, to open new land and increase farming population. During the 1920s, Isaiah Bowman in the United States devised what he called “scientific settlement”, a form of social planning. In the countries that had already embarked on extending their farm land, their initiative was something less than scientific settlement. As an illustration, South Australia and New South Wales legislated the resumption of certain pastoral areas for re-allocation as primarily wheat-based farmlands that would provide the heavier rural population sought by politicians. The need to reward soldiers for service in the First World War became a major stimulus to expansion. Whereas there was ample evidence of the unreliability of conditions in most of the areas chosen, the authorities dispatched settlers to relatively small properties and provided only disjointed and tardy support. When the new wheat frontier proved to be expensive and rife with failures, the authorities blamed the settlers. In the circumstances, however, the performance of the settlers was more praiseworthy than the weight of historical opinion has suggested. Even the soldier settlers, who were put at a disadvantage by the high cost of their land and interest, ultimately achieved a success rate comparable to that of civilian ‘closer’ settlers who generally had better land and easier terms of purchase.     

Notes on the Cameroon province (with special‐reference to the Bamenda division)

The location decisions of settlers to Upper Canada, 1782‐1851, are related to several factors. Initial settlement cores resulted from the previous pattern of French occupation and the need to strengthen the border with the United States. The availability of surveyed land influenced location decisions throughout the period. Of less significance were the land‐granting procedure and the various official policies which prompted land speculation and resulted in areas of reserved land.     

Asian migration to Australia: Changing trends and implications

International migration between Asia and Australia has undergone profound change in the last two decades. This paper outlines the major changes which have occurred in this movement. The proportion of Australia's resident population born in Asia has increased from 1.1 % in 1976 to 5.5 % in 2001. Asians now make up more than a third of new settlers to Australia but there has been an increased diversity in the flow of Asian settlers to Australia as well as the substantial increase in numbers. Australian international migration has entered a new era since the mid‐1990s with a greatly increased flow of temporary workers to Australia. The inflow of these workers is less dominated by Asia‐born people than is the permanent flow except for student migration. There is also an increasing flow of movers from Australia to Asia. Much current knowledge and research remain focused on Asian permanent settlement in Australia. While this is important and worthwhile, there is a need to broaden the work to encompass the full range of population movements between Asia and Australia if the impact of international migration is to be adequately assessed.     

Submergence,Persistence and Identity: Generations of German Origin in the Barossa and Adelaide Hills,South Australia

This paper examines settlers of German ancestry and their cultural resilience in the Barossa Valley, Light and Adelaide Hills districts of South Australia. After five to seven generations of local settlement, cultural persistence has resulted from: the strong religious reasons for the original migration; early congregational exclusivity; maintenance of German as the liturgical language for over 80 years; and rural community self-sufficiency. The excoriating public and State Government rejection of integration during World War One reinforced their cultural assertion. This was manifested in religion, family and place identity, musical events, traditional and hybrid cuisines and festivals, and has continued despite counter-urbanisation into these German-settled areas. Therefore the landscape and community consequences of persistence, resistance and reinvention have survived far longer than most inter-generational models of socio-cultural change would otherwise have predicted.     

The First Mallorcans: Prehistoric Colonization in the Western Mediterranean

The paper aims to elucidate the first human colonization of the western Mediterranean island of Mallorca by answering such questions as: What was the cultural identity of the first archaeologically identifiable human settlers? What was the chronology of colonization? Where did the colonizers originate? And what were their contacts during the initial phase of settlement? It is based on recently acquired chronological data and on a review of the classical sources. A precise chronology for the first colonization event is proposed, supporting the idea that human settlement on Mallorca started within the period 2350–2150 cal BC. The coast of Languedoc, between the rivers Vidourle and Rhône, is the most probable source region. Whether the first settlers were derived from an Early Bronze Age or a Late Copper Age mainland culture remains unresolved. A rapid initial population growth following initial colonization is proposed. The available evidence points to the development of an essentially isolated population on Mallorca, developing an autochthonous culture with only limited contacts to mainland regions.     

Colonising Italians: Italian Imperialism and Agricultural ‘Colonies’ in Australia, 1881–1914

The historiography of Australian imperialism before the First World War has often neglected a context wider than the relationship with Great Britain. Yet this era also implicated non-British governments and their emigrants. Despite their small numbers, Italian settlers are significant for highlighting Italy's empire-building and Australia's struggles for national and imperial unity. Italy's foreign policies after 1901 opened commercial opportunities across its diasporic networks, which included subsidising agricultural ‘colonies’ in Australia. The contemporary discourses of sectarianism and racism voiced before Federation articulated political and popular resistance against Italian immigrants. The rhetoric shifted after Federation as state governments examined the issue of land tenure for closer settlements (small agricultural farms), appealing to an argument about serving unemployed Australians before approving foreign settler schemes. The history leading up to two Italian projects in Western Australia and Queensland in 1907 allows reflections on Italy's diaspora colonisation and Australian responses to foreign imperialism.     

Large game, agricultural land, and settlement pattern change in the eastern Mimbres area, southwest New Mexico

The 12th-century depopulation of large villages in the Mimbres region of the US Southwest has been attributed to a number of causes, including resource stress. This study combines archaeological evidence and models of environmental conditions in the eastern Mimbres area of southwest New Mexico to assess the magnitude and timing of food stress from a combination of a period of reduced precipitation and the effects of prolonged hunting and farming activities on the landscape. Results indicate that large game in the area was quite sensitive to hunting pressure, and was locally depleted long before settlement reorganization occurred. Access to arable land was somewhat reduced around the time of settlement reorganization, but productive land remained locally plentiful. Although the settlement reorganization did not improve access to large game or arable land, farmers’ perceptions of below-average conditions for agriculture relative to their expectations and past experience would have contributed to decisions to move.     

Millenarism and agricultural settlement in the Holy Land in the nineteenth century

The pioneers of modern agricultural settlement in the Holy Land were Christians. Foremost among these were several Americans who came in the 1850s and 1860s to settle—ignoring warnings from local experts and from representatives of the United States government. The leaders of the settlers were inspired by millenarist ideas and by faith in the Return to Zion—rife among fundamental Protestant sects in the early nineteenth century. The personal accounts of these visionaries provide insights into what drove them to attempt to migrate to remote and backward Palestine and also throw light on the economic concepts and practical plans for implementing their schemes. Despite their failure, these attempts were very important in the history of agricultural settlement in nineteenth-century Palestine. The settlers maintained a wide range of international contacts through letters, pamphlets, sermons and publicity in the press in America, England, Germany and Palestine. In addition, many people who heard indirectly about these ventures, took an interest in their ideology and practice. Millenarist schemes influenced early preachers and founders of Jewish societies for agricultural settlement in Palestine. The Jewish forerunners of the Hovevi Zion and Zionist movements promoted remarkably similar ideas. Millenarist and Jewish visionaries alike spoke of the hour being propitious for the coming of the Messiah and favourable for settlement in the land of Israel. Both groups established schools to teach the lore of the land and to educate youth in agricultural pursuits. Many years after the disappearance of American settlers from Palestine, their story reverberated in Jewish polemic literature.     

Experiencing Waterholes in an Arid Environment,with Particular Reference to the Lake Eyre Basin,Australia: a Review

The distribution and permanence of waterholes have dictated human activity and settlement patterns in the arid zone for millennia. At a fundamental level, waterholes are vital to survival in a harsh climate. The recreational value and use of waterholes are widely recognised; however, the less tangible aspects of ‘waterhole experience’ have received scant attention. This review, written whilst compiling an inventory of permanent waterbodies across the Lake Eyre Basin of Queensland and South Australia, aimed to provide a deeper understanding of the interaction of humans with water in an arid land, primarily from a settler perspective. A large body of literature pertaining to waterholes was reviewed, including Aboriginal histories, explorer journals, accounts of early settlers, and numerous fictional and factual accounts of life in inland Australia. It becomes apparent that human appreciation of arid-zone waterholes runs deeper than the survival imperative, and can be enriched by considering landscape aesthetics and psychology. This attraction has spawned a rich mythology centred on waterholes – permanent features in an otherwise harsh and variable environment.     

The Scale and Impact of Viking Settlement in Northumbria

DISCOVERIES AT the Viking winter camp at Torksey indicate that the armies that invaded Anglo-Saxon England in the late 9th century were much larger than is often assumed, and that a literal reading of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle’s assessment of the size of Viking fleets may, after all, have been correct. Furthermore, study of the Torksey metalwork assemblage has allowed the identification of the archaeological signature of the Viking Great Army, and when applied to Cottam, it confirms the identification of an initial phase of raiding by an element of the Army, followed shortly thereafter by settlement represented by the development of a hybrid Anglo-Scandinavian culture. Taken together, over 25 categories of non-ferrous artefacts are diagnostic of Viking or Anglo-Scandinavian activity in Northumbria. Applying this model to sites, largely known only from metal-detecting, we can observe a common pattern. At the majority of sites, a large and fairly standardised middle Anglo-Saxon finds assemblage is succeeded by just a few Viking finds, which we attribute to raiding following Halfdan’s return to Northumbria with part of the Great Army in AD 876. At a smaller number of sites, assemblages of Anglo-Scandinavian finds relate to the establishment of settlements by the new landowners. The overall picture is of major settlement disruption and dislocation of existing land holdings and populations in the late-9th century. This demonstrates, for the first time from archaeological evidence, the scale and impact of Viking activity in Northumbria.     

The Viking Age settlement pattern of Langholt,North Iceland: Results of the Skagafjörður Archaeological Settlement Survey

An archaeological survey of the Viking Age settlement pattern in the Langholt region of North Iceland suggests that being early in this sequence conferred tremendous advantages to the settlers of this previously uninhabited landscape. Many of the farms established during the settlement of Iceland (which began about a.d. 870) are in use today. However, accessing the Viking Age landscape is difficult. In Langholt the earliest layers of most farmsteads are buried under a thousand years of occupational debris, while the abandoned sites have been covered by extensive soil deposition. Here we report on our coring and test excavation results that outline Viking Age farmstead location, establishment date, and maximum size by the end of the Viking Age. There is a strong correlation between farmstead size and establishment date. This correlation suggests that during the rapid settlement of Iceland, the farmsteads established by earlier settlers were wealthier and that wealth endured.     

A Landscape Map of the Northwest of the Russian Plain at 1:1,000,000

The author discusses the natural environment and problems of settlement of the Far East by the Russians in the period 1870–1917, with special emphasis on the characteristics of Cossack overland settlement and the maritime transport of peasant settlers from European Russia. The locational pattern of cities, urban growth and the sequence of rural settlement are analyzed. Pokshshevskiy discussed his general approach to the geographic study of migrations in his paper at the 18th International Geographical Congress in Rio de Janeiro. His views on the historical-geographic treatment of migration study were given in his 1951 book on the settlement of Siberia, to which the present paper is related.     

The Role of Surface Water Drainage in Environmental Change: a Case Example of the Upper South East of South Australia; an Historical Review

The role of surface water drainage in environmental change in Australia is rarely appreciated. Drains can modify surface water hydrology, not only altering flow regimes but also rapidly dispersing contaminants and altering the natural hydrological balance of associated flora and fauna. Yet drainage continues to be considered a viable management strategy rather than as a cause of land degradation. The impact of surface water drainage in an inherently saline area of South Australia, the Upper South East, is investigated. Surface water drains were constructed by developers in an attempt to increase the area of land available and viable for agricultural land use. Drainage strategies altered the natural direction, magnitude and frequency of surface water flow. The Upper South East has experienced periods of both increased surface water and flooding, and surface water deficit, in the past one hundred years. The region now receives less surface water than under pre‐European conditions, but local runoff is channelled into and through the wetlands more rapidly than before European settlement. Future management strategies are likely to continue this trend, to the detriment of remnant natural wetlands.     

Official land disposal policies and European settlement in southern Africa 1860–1960

Land disposal by southern African administrations to European settlers between 1860 and 1960 was pursued on a more extensive scale than in the previous two centuries. This reflected the increased ability of local governments to seize land occupied by the indigenes. African land rights received scant attention as most of the sub-continent was taken by conquest, thereby offering governments the opportunity to settle Europeans upon the land. By 1860 the local European settler communities had achieved control over their own land policies, which were framed under political pressure from the rapidly growing rural European population. Land settlement policies were, however, severely constrained by existing practices, which emphasized extensive pastoral farming to the detriment of the development of crop farming and plantation agriculture.     

Thorium-230 coral chronology of a late prehistoric Hawaiian chiefdom

Documenting the history of settlement in Hawaii during the last few centuries before European contact, is crucial to charting the evolution of the most complex chiefdom in Polynesia. It is precisely this period that Hawaii, and many Polynesian societies, underwent their most rapid changes in political, economic and social organisation. The last ∼500 to 300 years in the ¹⁴C calibration curve is problematic with wide fluctuations often rendering large age spans that do not precisely date single events, especially troubling with a culture-historical record of ∼1000 years duration. Here we present an extremely high precision ²³⁰Th chronology for archaeologically constrained coral samples from a range of occupancy sites. Our high precision dates allow the time of site use to be clearly demonstrated. They also provide the first dates for habitation sites in Hawaii that clearly show contemporaneous occupation—the major problem in settlement pattern archaeology. We demonstrate that two sites were occupied within the same year. Our refined chronology, provides new and exciting opportunities for tracking sociopolitical and economic developments during the last few centuries—the crucial period in the evolution and transformation of Polynesian societies.     

县域尺度下交通对乡村聚落景观格局的影响研究——以宿州市埇桥区为例

聚落景观格局及其影响因子的研究历来是乡村地理学研究的热点,而交通对聚落的空间分布格局影响日益加深。以皖北的埇桥区为研究对象,基于土地利用现状图,运用GIS技术和景观分析软件,在县域尺度定量分析不同类型、不同等级交通对乡村聚落景观格局的影响。结果表明:交通运输用地是乡村聚落景观斑块之间和乡村聚落景观与其它类型景观进行物质和信息传递的景观廊道;乡村聚落景观面积和交通运输用地面积在数量上存在正相关关系;交通是影响乡村聚落景观格局的重要因子,且不同类型、不同等级的交通与乡村聚落景观空间分布的相关性不同;国道、省道和县道与乡村聚落景观空间分布有正相关性,铁路、高速公路和农村道路与乡村聚落景观分布则呈负相关。     

Closer settlement in the Western District of Victoria: a case study in Australian land use policy, 1898–1914

The promotion of closer settlement in the Australian state of Victoria between 1898 and 1914 was viewed as a panacea to many of the problems that beset the state. The region known as the Western District of Victoria was seen as particularly suitable for the application of land re-settlement policy. The study of this region highlights several important features of the closer settlement experiment in Victoria. First, it illustrates how the basic principles of closer settlement were used to further the interests of particular groups. Second, it highlights the flaws in foundations of the Closer Settlement Act which impacted on the settlers chances of success. And thirdly it points to the disastrous implications of policy implementation that paid little attention to the geographical and economic parameters governing the outcome of farming enterprises.     

The archaeological and linguistic reconstruction of African history : and (Eds), (Berkeley and London: University of California Press, 1983. Pp. xi + 299. $22.50)

Land disposal by southern African administrations to European settlers between 1860 and 1960 was pursued on a more extensive scale than in the previous two centuries. This reflected the increased ability of local governments to seize land occupied by the indigenes. African land rights received scant attention as most of the sub-continent was taken by conquest, thereby offering governments the opportunity to settle Europeans upon the land. By 1860 the local European settler communities had achieved control over their own land policies, which were framed under political pressure from the rapidly growing rural European population. Land settlement policies were, however, severely constrained by existing practices, which emphasized extensive pastoral farming to the detriment of the development of crop farming and plantation agriculture.     

Interpreting umeewarra mission

Abstract

Indigenous occupation of Australia for at least the last 60,000 years, was followed by European settlers in 1788. Christian missions and government reserves established at this time, often removed Aboriginal children from their parents, families and land. These children are ‘the Stolen Generation’. One such mission was Umeewarra Mission at Port Augusta in South Australia, which was established by the Brethren church in the 1930s and operated until recently. Some of the former children who were raised at the Mission have established a committee, the Umeewarra Nguraritja (meaning ‘place’ or ‘home'), to oversee the Mission site. The Umeewarra Nguraritja wants to establish an Interpretive Centre to tell the Aboriginal and missionary history of the Mission. It needs to preserve and interpret the mission culture in a way which maintains the integrity of that history and presents the material culture, the oral histories and stories from former children of the mission, sensitively to visitors. This paper reports on the research process being used for strategic planning of site management and interpretation. The paper addresses in particular the need for the researchers to be sympathetic to both indigenous and missionary cultures, playing both supportive and leadership roles in order to give something back to the ‘stolen generation’.     

Peasant Settlers and the ‘Civilising Mission’ in Russian Turkestan, 1865–1917

This article provides an introduction to one of the lesser-known examples of European settler colonialism, the settlement of European (mainly Russian and Ukrainian) peasants in Southern Central Asia (Turkestan) in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. It establishes the legal background and demographic impact of peasant settlement, and the role played by the state in organising and encouraging it. It explores official attitudes towards the settlers (which were often very negative), and their relations with the local Kazakh and Kyrgyz population. The article adopts a comparative framework, looking at Turkestan alongside Algeria and Southern Africa, and seeking to establish whether paradigms developed in the study of other settler societies (such as the ‘poor white’) are of any relevance in understanding Slavic peasant settlement in Turkestan. It concludes that there are many close parallels with European settlement in other regions with large indigenous populations, but that racial ideology played a much less important role in the Russian case compared to religious divisions and fears of cultural backsliding. This did not prevent relations between settlers and the ‘native’ population deteriorating markedly in the years before the First World War, resulting in large-scale rebellion in 1916.