Grand Design on the Fringes of Empire: New Towns for British North America

There was an increasing elaboration of a town model introduced by British authorities to the new American colonies in the second half of the eighteenth century. The simplest versions, in Nova Scotia (from 1749), gave way to 'classic' Charlottetown (1768) and eventually to excesses in Ontario (ca 1790). The model and its elaboration are clarified, the circuitous route for the planning inspiration is traced, and an explanation is offered for the over-ambitious model bestowed on Ontario. Themes include late Renaissance ideas for new towns, the impact on colonial peripheries of a sophisticated imperial administration, 'landscape by committee,' and the diffusion of ideas.
Pendant la deuxième moitié du dix-huitième siècle, il y eut dans les nouvelles colonies américaines une elaboration croissante du modele urbain introduit par les autoritCs britanniques. Les expressions les plus simples de ce modirle, en Nouvelle Ecosse (de 1749), cédèrent au style « classique >> de Charlottetown (1768) et menirrent éventuellement aux excirs en Ontario (ca 1790). Nous clarifierons ce modele et son évolution; nous tracerons les multiples influences qui inspirerent cet urbanisme; et nous expliquerons le modele par trop ambitieux qui se manifesta en Ontario. Les themes de cet article incluent les idées sur les « new towns >> qui eurent cours vers la fin de la Renaissance; l'impact d'une administration impenale raffinee sur les périphéries coloniales; la fabrication « par comité>> du paysage urbain; et la diffusion des idtes.     

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.     

Logging,Women and Submarines: Some Changes in Kamula Men's Access to Transformative Power

In this paper I describe how, for the Kamula, the productive elicitation of both familiar and modern things often requires access to the transformative capacities of ‘bush spirits’. The Kamula narratives I deal with outline how elements of modernity (such as money, logging, guns) are relocated into the domain of these spirits. By the mediation of these spirits, sometimes disturbing, even dangerous, aspects of modernity are transformed and then productively transferred to Kamula men such that they can apparently more effectively negotiate the new forces that now structure their lives. Through these narrative and magical definitions of agency, Kamula men become complicit in a modernity that is increasingly both the source and negation of their power.