Colonial and Provincial Separation Movements in Australia and New Zealand, 1856–1865

This article examines separation movements in Britain’s Australasian colonies during the first decade of responsible government, 1856–65. Separation movements sought to carve new colonies from the territory of existing ones or, in the case of a number of New Zealand movements, to create new provinces within that colony’s quasi-federal system. Their demands rested upon assertions that a colonial or provincial government neglected large and prosperous hinterlands from which considerable revenue was collected. Only one colonial separation movement achieved its goal, but four provinces succeeded. I argue that responsible government played a major role in the success or failure of these movements. Responsibility concentrated authority in a remote capital; colonial separatists desired to exercise this privilege within a smaller new colony that they controlled, but its operation within the larger existing colony provided London with justification to reject most appeals. Further, it allowed New Zealand’s parliament to frame a mechanism that enabled discontented regions to become provinces without referral to local or imperial legislatures. Thus, I provide new insights into the formation of colonial polities and the influence of responsible government on settler political campaigns.     

Management and the Free-Standing Company: The New Zealand and Australia Land Company c. 1866–1900

The scholarly reappraisal of the British imperial system as the ‘British World’ has given scholars the opportunity to examine anew the financial, commercial and industrial ties which held the empire together. This article examines the experience of one such tie, the New Zealand and Australian Land Company, a Scottish-based agricultural and land company which operated in late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Australasia. This company contributed to the colonies' economic development directly, opening up new farming lands and initiating wool and protein exports, as well as influencing the development of the communities which grew up around its stations and factories. The article details the strategic development of the company until c. 1900 in the wider context of Australia and New Zealand's economic development, demonstrating that studying the evolution of commercial organisations can contribute to the wider debate around the role of British capital in development.     

The North American Folk Revival: Nation and Identity in the United States and Canada, 1945–1980

The Secret of the Totem. By Andrew Lang. Longmans, Green &; Co. London, 1905. 10/6 Net. By F. B. Jevons.

The Origin of Worship : A Study in Primitive Religion. By Rafael Karsten. An Academical Dissertation. Wasa: F. W. Unggren. 1905. viii., 143 pp. By R. R Marett. Bantu Folk Lore. By Matthew L. Hewat, M.D. Cape Town: T. Maskew Miller. By Bertram C. A. Windle.

The Czech Ethnographical Review, vol. xi. Published by the Society of the Cech Ethnographical Museum. Prague, 1905. By Francis P. Marchant.

Der Sagenkreis vom Geprellten Teufel. Von Aug. Wünsche. Leipzig Und Wien, Akademischer Verlag, 1905. By E. Sidney Hartland.

Religionsgeschichtliche Versuche und Vorarbeiten, herausgegeben von Albert Dieterich und Richard Wünsch. Gieszen: J. Ricker. I. Attis: seine Mythen und seine Kult, von Hugo Hepding. (1903.) M. 5. II. 2: De Mortuorum Iudicio, scripsit Ludovicu0s Ruhl. (1903.) M. 1.80. II. 3: De Poetarum Romanarum doctrina magica quaestdones selectae, scripsit Ludovicus Fahz. (1904.) M. 1.60.

The Little Black Princess : A True Tale of Life in the Never-Never Land. By Jeannie Gunn. Alexander Moring, Ltd.

Animism: The Seed of Religion. By Edward Clodd, London: A. Constable &; Co. 1905. By R. R. Marett.

Anthropos: International Zeitschrift für Völker- U. Sprachenkunde. Edited By P. W. Schmidt. Band I, Heft 1, 2. Salzburg: Zaunrith'sche Buch- Kunst- Und Steindruckerei. 15 kr. p. a. By Charlotte S. Burne.     

Immigration Reform in Canada and the United States: How Dramatic,How Different?

In contrast to recent policies in the United States, immigration reform in Canada, during the past decade, has resulted in one of the most transformative periods in Canada’s immigration history. This article examines these changes, against the comparative backdrop of American inaction. These include changes affecting the three classes of legal permanent residents—economic, family, and refugee—as well as temporary foreign workers and foreign students. Canadian citizenship rules have also been refocused from citizenship as a “right” to citizenship as a “responsibility.” The article illustrates the advantages of the Canadian system, but cautions against overmanagement, centralization of decision-making power, and the loss of Canada’s welcoming reputation. The Canadian system, while not perfect, is efficient and should be able to successfully adjust to future problems that arise, provided that the Canadian public has sufficient input in policy decisions. Given a more complex and cumbersome US immigration policy system, comprehensive immigration reform is not likely to occur if partisanship prevails.     

‘Vague Native Rights to Land’: British Imperial Policy on Native Title and Custom in New Zealand, 1837–53

What is often referred to as a common law doctrine of aboriginal or customary title neither underpinned imperial policies towards Māori property rights in the 1830s and 1840s nor was it viewed as a settled or broadly accepted legal doctrine. Rather, critics of imperial policies applying to New Zealand deployed these legal sources in order to challenge and influence the workings of imperial policy on British settlement within New Zealand. The particular emphasis of such policy was on disciplining the extent of such settlement and providing a land fund from crown grants. Imperial policy-makers did not endorse these legal sources despite their use in the decision of the New Zealand Supreme Court in Regina v Symonds (1847). In this context, there was no consensual legal view or approach as to the nature or content of indigenous property rights. Ultimately, in the face of disagreement, diverse views of the nature and extent of Māori property rights persisted. The perceived non-justiciability of such rights meant that political spaces rather than the courts were of ongoing significance to characterising and debating such rights.     

Reconstruction,Segregation, and Miscegenation: Interracial Marriage and the Law in the Lower South, 1865–1900

On the eve of Congressional Reconstruction, all seven states of the Lower South had laws against interracial marriage. During the Republican interlude that began in 1867–68, six of the seven states (all but Georgia) suspended those laws, whether through judicial invalidation or legislative repeal. Yet by 1894 all six had restored such bans. The trajectory of miscegenation laws in the Lower South between 1865 and 1900 permits a reconsideration of the range of possibilities the Reconstruction era brought to public policy. More than that, it forces a reconsideration of the origins of the Jim Crow South. Legally mandated segregation in public transit, as C. Vann Woodward observed in 1955, took hold late in the century. But such segregation in public education, as Howard R. Rabinowitz pointed out with his formula ‘from exclusion to segregation,’ originated during the first postwar years. Segregation on the marital front – universal at the start of the period and again at the end, but relaxed in most Lower South states for a time in between – combined the two patterns into yet a third. Adding another layer of complexity was the issue of where the color line was located, and thus which individuals were classified on each side of it.     

International Celebrities and Irish Identity in the United States and Beyond, 1840–1860

This article uses Antonio Gramsci's theory of cultural hegemony to analyze how a relatively small Irish-American bourgeoisie legitimated its authority over the broader Irish ethnic community during the antebellum era. As part of the massive wave of immigrants that left Ireland during and after the Great Famine of the mid-1840s, the Irish Catholic middle class was saddled with a dually marginal status. On the one hand, its members maintained only tenuous authority over the hundreds of thousands of peasants and laborers that made up the bulk of the Irish-American community. On the other hand, they were deeply distrusted by important elements of native American society that associated them with the supposed superstition, laziness, and violence of their lower-class fellow countrymen. The bourgeoisie responded by using the celebrity status of Irish political exiles to achieve the twin project of simultaneously obscuring intra-ethnic class tensions while proving its suitability for American domestic politics. Famous personalities and the editors who lauded them employed celebrity to consolidate their leadership status in America.     

Reflections of the “Roving Britishers”: British Travel Writing on Canada 1900–1915

This article analyzes a selection of travel accounts by nine British authors who journeyed across Canada between 1900 and 1914. The monographs, all published in London, purported to present authentic and up-to-date observations of Canada, the eldest Dominion in the Imperial “family,” to British and Canadian audiences. Additional goals of their narratives, and less clearly acknowledged, were to convince English Canadians of the value of strengthening a British–Canadian identity and remaining within the British Empire. To that end, the narratives explore strikingly similar themes, including anxieties surrounding immigration and the United States threat to Canada, while reinforcing notions of Empire as an indissoluble family. The article illustrates how travel narratives reflect psychological as well as physical journeys and are thus valuable windows on complex cultural encounters among the British and Canadians in this period.