Colonialism in Ireland and Australia

Colonialism in Ireland and AustraliaA CRITICAL COMPARISON OF THE HISTORICAL GEOGRAPHIES OF COLONIALISM IN IRELAND AND AUSTRALIATable of Contents (Jump to)IntroductionBackgroundHistorical geographicsColonialismPost-Colonialism and Saids targetalismSimilarities between Australia and IrelandDifferences between Australia and IrelandThe notion of disco precise(prenominal)ConclusionWorks CitedIntroductionThis essay provide compare the historic geographies of compoundism in Ireland and Australia. First, it defines what we call back by historical geography as this is fundamental to how this analysis will be made. Second, it discusses what we mean by colonization and why it plays such a commutation role in historical geography. Third, it discusses the work of Edward Said, and in particular Orientalism. It compares and contrasts the compound experiences of Australia and Ireland within this context. Fourth, it explores the notions of exploration and conquering using early on single-valu ed functions of Australia and Ireland.Ireland and Australia are both post-colonial nations and in that respect is a batch of similarities in their historical geographies. Yet Ireland and Australia were fundamentally different places in the pre-colonialism era and remain so in the era of post-colonialism. This essay will compare and contrast the similarities and differences of their colonial histories.BackgroundHistorical GeographyFor the purposes of this essay, historical geography is defined as a division of geography that concerns itself with how cultural features of the multifaceted societies across the planet evolved and came into being (Wikipedia, 2006b). The discipline has traditionally considered the spatial- and place- focused orientation of geography, contrasting and combining the spatial interests of geography with the temporal interests of history, cr ingest a field touch on with changing spatial patterns and landscapes (Guelke, 1997 191). As Donald Meinig, peerless of the most influential Ameri tin historical geographers once stated I contain long insisted that by their very nature geography and history are analogous and interdep set asideent fields (1989 79).ColonialismAny discussion of colonialism also requires a definition of what we mean by the term. Colonialism is one of the most valuable features of modern history and, few(a) might argue, the undertaking that led to the birth of geography in the first off place. To define colonialism we must first define both other key terms in history empire and imperialism. The historian Michael Doyle defines empire as a relationship, formal or informal, in which one state controls the effective political sovereignty of another political society. It butt be achieved by force, by political collaboration, economic, social, or cultural dependance (in Said, 1993). Imperialism is broadly the practice, the theory and the way of thinking of a dominating centre that controls a far-off land (Said, 1993) as Doyle states, imperialism is simply the process or polity of establishing or go alonging empire (in Said, 1993). Within this context, colonialism can be defined as the implanting of settlements on distant territory and is virtual(prenominal)ly always a result of imperialism (Said, 1993).To essay out and contrast colonial experience, as closely as to understand why colonialism ensures so prominently in the word of historical geography, one must try to understand the sheer scale of colonial expansion. As Said (1993 1) explainsWestern power allowed the imperial and metropolitan centres at the end of the nineteenth century to grow and accumulate territory and subjects on a truly astonishing scale. Consider that in 1800, Western powers claimed fifty-five percent, but actually held approximately thirty-five percent, of the reasons surface. But by 1878, the percentage was sixty-seven percent of the world held by Western powers, which is a rate of increase of 83,000 square mile s per year. By 1914, the annual rate by which the Western empires acquired territory has risen to an astonishing 247,000 square miles per year. And Europe held a grand total of roughly eighty-five percent of the acres as colonies, protectorates, dependencies, dominions and Commonwealth No other associated set of colonies in history were as large, none so totally dominated, none so unequal in power to the Western metropolisThe scale of British colonialism in 1897 is visible in Map 1, marked in pink.Map 1. The British Empire acknowledgment http//en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_EmpireMap 2 shows all territories com bitd by the British Empire (1762-1984) and England (1066-1707) Ireland and Australia are coloured orange to signify that they were Dominions of the British Empire.Map 2. All territories ruled by England and the British EmpireSource http//en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_EmpirePost-Colonialism and Saids OrientalismOne of the most influential texts on post-colonialism discours e is doubtless Edward Saids loudness Orientalism, originally published in 1978. Orientalism is, in essence, the study of Near and Far Eastern societies and cultures by Westerners (Wikipedia, 2006c). Since the publication of Saids book, the term became (rightly) laden with ban connotations Saids book was at heart a critique of Orientalism as fundamentally a political doctrine that willed over the Orient because the Orient was weaker than the West, which elided the Orients difference with its weaknessAs a cultural apparatus Orientalism is all aggression, activity, judgment, will-to-truth, and knowledge. The book serves as the basis for one of the primary winding dichotomies in the study of human geography us and other (or the Orient/Occident distinction).Similarities between Australia and IrelandIt is in this context that we can identify the primary simile between the historical geographies of Ireland and Australia. If within this context we are meant to define the colonisers as us (i.e., those involved in Western geographical discourse) and the colonised as them or other, we reach a crucial problematic area with regards to the two nations at hand. Ireland and Australia are both nations left out of the post-colonial dialogue even though they are undeniably post-colonial. However, discussing these two nations within the dialogue of post-colonialism would ignore the fact that they are both relatively wealthy nations, members of the First World, with few similarities to the nations that are more frequently than not being discussed within the sphere. Yet, within the framework of other, they do share many similarities mainly because they are both peripheral from a Euro-centric viewpoint (Litvack, 2006 2) though this, economically at least(prenominal), is increasingly untrue concerning Ireland. Macintyre (1999 24) writes with regard to AustraliaThe Orient came to stand for a whole way of life that was inferior to that of the West indolent, irrational, despoti c, and decayed. Such typification of the alien and other, which the critic Edward Said characterizes as Orientalism, had a peculiar meaning in colonial Australia where geography contradicted history. Fascination and fear mingled in the colonists apprehension of the geographical zone that lay between them and the metropole. As a British dependency, Australia adopted the terminology that referred to the Near, Middle and Far East until, under threat of Japanese invasion in 1940, its prime minister suddenly recognized that What Great Britain call the Far East is to us the Near North.Slemon has argued for a discussion within post-colonial discourse of a Second World to accommodate those nations that cannot place themselves neatly on one side or the other of the colonizer/colonized double star (Kroeker, 2001 11). later all, both nations could be considered not just victim but also accomplice and beneficiary of colonialism (Litvack, 2006). Slemons idea is helpful in creating an alternati ve for the tough examples of post-colonial, white, settler cultures like that of Australia, New Zealand and Canada. Though Ireland is different, one could easily argue that the Second World is a better fit than the Third. In short, Ireland and Australias position in between these two very separate worlds of colonizer and colonized is an underlying similarity in their historical geographies of colonialism.Differences between Australia and IrelandThere is an important discrepancy within the context of Orientalism between Australia and Ireland. Abiding by the rules of historical geography, just as humans make their cultures and ethnic identities we also make our deliver histories. More often than not, memory is matched to history but as Collingwood (1970 in McCarthy, no date 13) states memory is not history, because history is a certain salmagundi of organized or inferential knowledge, and memory is not organized, not inferential at all. Though undoubtedly memory impinges on Irish h istory the same as any other, Irish history at least seems to have some type of consensus. On the other hand, there are two distinct versions of Australian history one that begins when the British landed in Botany Bay in 1788, and one that begins at least 40,000 (and possibly 120,000) geezerhood before that. Conventional Australian history to this day remains the version that begins with the arrival of the British as the old African proverb goes only when lions have historians will the hunters cease to be heroes. Key to the differences between Australia and Ireland in this context are issues of domination and race. The underlying argument here is that whilst the Irish were undoubtedly oppressed by British rule, it was a fundamentally different kind of oppression than that faced by Australias primordials.The domination and repression of the Irish during British colonial rule was done in the context of engagement. The native Irish were certainly disadvantaged by the British, and th is was a typical feature of colonialism Meinig has long drawn attention, within his geographical analysis of imperial expansion, to the employment of supreme political leave by the invaders over the invaded (Meinig, 1989). The relationship between the British and the Irish fits very neatly into Meinigs theories of subjugation. One of his arguments is that the goal of imperial expansion was to extract wealth and in doing so to forge new economic relationships to reach these ends. The political authority of the British (invaders) over the Irish (invaded) is illustrated by the manipulation of ethnic and religious identities that occurred in order to keep the subject population from uniting against the occupying power (Wikipedia, 2006a). frugal exploitation under British rule had an ethnic (and latently nationalist) dimension because it was expressed through religious discrimination (Komito, 1985 3). The legacy of this divide and rule strategy (as well as the link between religion an d nationalism) remains in Ireland today.The Great Irish Famine remains, to this day, the defining moment in Irishhistory (Kenny, 2001). betwixt 1840 and 1850, the Irish population was reduced from 8.2 million to 4.1 million including out-migration as well as deaths from starvation (Guinnane, 1998). Irish land was by and large owned by English landlords and worked by Irish tenants at the time of the famine, these peasants had to choose between paying the rent for the land with their other crops (and possibly starving), or eating their rent and being liable to eviction. The British government first ignored the famine and when relief effort was made it was erratic and unreliable. Many had died from starvation those who emigrated, and those who survived in Ireland, remembered the inadequate and uncaring response of Britain. More than any other single event in history, the Famine came to epitomize, for many Irish mickle, the quintessential example of British stances to its neighbour (Komito, 2006 3).On the other hand, the policy of the British towards the aboriginals in Australia was not one of subjugation but extermination. Whereas most of the Irish in Ireland (as well as the estimated 80 million Irish that live abroad) proudly claim Celtic ancestry, the natives in Australia suffered a dramatic decline with European settlement, brought on by the engagement of new diseases, repressive and often brutal treatment, dispossession, and social and cultural disruption and disintegration (Year Book Australia, 1994). Conservative estimates of the Aboriginal population pre-1788 place the figure at somewhere around 300,000, though many anthropologists now view there were probably closer to one million Aboriginals in 1788. Data from the Australian assurance of Statistics reveals that in 1966 (approaching the bicentennial of the founding of Australia that was so widely and rightly protested by the Aboriginal population) there were only 80,207 indigenous members of th e population. Even if one assumes (or accepts) a figure of zero population growth, this figure is still only about 26 percent of the original population. Whilst the Aboriginal population continued to expand at the end of the 20th century an estimated resident Indigenous population of 469,000 is projected for this year it is clear to see that it came close to being exterminated. This increasing number of indigenous people still represents only about 2.4 percent of the total Australian population (Australian Bureau of Statistics, 2006).And so comes the issue of race. Much of Saids work, for example, deals with the white mans oppression of the brown. Whereas the Irish were certainly subjugated, they were viewed simply as inferior. The Aboriginals, in contrast, were viewed as subhuman, and as animals they possessed no rights, nor any claim to piety (Pilger, 1989 27). Australia, here, seems to have more in common with the Dark Continent than with any imperialism within Europe. Some co lonial nations, often referred to as settler countries, had the same attitude towards the natives as that in Australia. In Canada, New Zealand, and even Latin American settler countries Argentina and Uruguay, trivial effort was made by the colonist to maintain the existing order, to establish commercial (or other) relations with the inhabitants, or even to recruit them as labour. Instead of involving themselves with the native populations, these lands were simply cleared and settled as tonal field of European endeavour (Macintyre, 1999 20). Again, this is not to argue that the Irish were not oppressed during English dominion but simply to state that they were at least acknowledged in a way that the Aboriginals were not. One might even venture to argue that the treatment of the Aboriginals in Australia was so horrific that it has led to their virtual writing out of traditional Australian memory and consequently history. In The Fatal Shore, Robert Hughes describes what he calls a na tional pact of silence (Pilger, 1989) over the Aboriginal issue. There is no topic more sensitive in Australia than that of the Aboriginals. This aspect of the British colonial legacy has certainly constructed a version of history that, as many Australians say, is missing something (Pilger, 1989). Burgmann and Lee make clear at the beginning of their book, A Peoples History of Australia, that their aim is not merely to avenge for past neglect, but to assert that we can only understand Australias history by analysing the lives of the oppressed (in Pilger, 1989 3). After all, a nation founded on bloodletting and suffering of others eventually must make peace with that one historical truth (Pilger, 1989 3).In short, the history of the colonizer and the colonized in Australia and Ireland is enormously different. Australia has, for the blend few decades, seemingly been coming to terms with their national past and incorporating the near total-destruction of Aboriginal life and culture into their accepted version of history. Ireland, of course, maintains a history as constructed as any other nations theirs, unlike that of the Australians, does not seem to be silencing any important truths.The notion of discoveryIn the early nineteenth century, the primary aims and concerns of Geography were to collect and publish new facts and discoveries, to develop instruments of use to travellers, and to accumulate geographical texts, in particular maps. Geography was, in many ways, an instrument of the empire, an impression that is illustrated well by the number of military men that were members of the Royal Geographic Society in the early nineteenth century. Topography and mapping by and large went hand in hand with notions of colonialism and expansion. Wood wrote that maps work because they give us reality, a reality that exceeds our vision, our reach, the span of our days, a reality we achieve no other way (1993 4-5). In short, maps manage to pass off for evident truth wha t is hard won, culturally acquired knowledge about the world we inhabit a reality unverifiable by the naked eye (Klein, 1998 1). This section will argue that early colonial maps of both Ireland and Australia used cartography to meet their colonial desires. The key difference was that early maps of Australia displayed a land undefeated and uninhabited whereas colonial maps of Ireland represented a land very much conquered.Early maps of colonial Australia and Ireland also illustrate another key difference the British believed they had discovered Australia, whilst they never assumed to have discovered the Emerald Isle. In reality, they had not discovered Australia each the very fact that Cook discovered Australia strikes many today as false as the British claim to sovereignty over it (Macintyre, 1999 25). After all, how can you find something that is already known? (Macintyre, 1999 25). The conception of unconquered and sluggish land figures very prominently in the geography of dis covery and colonialism. The sheer size of Australia allowed its settlers to believe they had found a previously unconquered, uninhabited landmass. Clearly, there is an element of sheer size. The Australian continent has an astronomical area of 7,682,300 square kilometres, compared to Irelands 70,300. Early maps of Australia often display an indeterminate continent, and decorated it with lush vegetation and barbarous splendour (Macintyre, 1999 25). Other maps often neglected the south coast entirely, and left a vacant (or unexplored and therefore non-existent?) centre, as seen in Map 3, which is believed to date from the 1800s. Part and parcel of colonial imagination has been to make out no territorial limits in its desire for the unknown and the unconquered.Map 3. Early Map of AustraliaSource MSN Encarta.Map 4. Early Map of AustraliaSource http//www.chr.org.au/earlymapsofaustralia/Images/Map%20before%20captain%20cook%201753%20Jacques%20Nicolas.jpgMap 4 further emphasizes the unconqu ered aspect by leaving great tracts of the continent blank on maps it was easier to believe that those very tracts were untouched and uninhabited. The vast emptiness of early Australian maps can also be viewed as a reactionary defensive mechanism. Numerically, the colonizers in Australia were (initially) a minority. In colonial theory in general, this was problematic because minorities were established as outsiders in society. It was doubly problematic in Australia because of its role as the dumping-ground for convicts (Macintyre, 1999 18) in its early English settlement. To conceptualise and construct a large vacant quad allowed for the idea of an uninhabited continent to flourish, and allowed the early colonizers to reject the idea of being a minority.In contrast, early maps of Ireland try to conceptualise a country that is controlled and conquered. In a study of the English construction of Irish space in a series of Elizabethan and Jacobean maps, Klein (1998 4) found that most do little to hide their involvement in the colonial politics of their historical moment. In gradually redefining the savage Irish wasteland as a territorial extension service of the national sphere, they are quite openly engaged in negotiating the political accommodation of Irish cultural difference into a British framework.Baptista Boazios Irlande (Map 5) is believed to be the first map of Ireland, dating from 1559. Today, this map does not meet with much approval the lavish ornamental flourish, the purely fictional character of some of the maps topographical details and the extravagant use of colour are all features that suggest that precise geographical information was not the maps principal objective (Klein, 1998 15).Map 5. Boazios IrlandeSource Klein, 1998.The Kingdome of Ireland (Map 6) was the standard delegation of Ireland for the first half of the 17th century. This map portrays a neat and short controlled area a peaceful and quiet expanse. The pictorial surface of the map achieves both homogeneity and balance, suggesting a spatial harmony devoid of conflict (Klein, 1998 17). Moreover, the wild men and women of Ireland depicted on the map seem to register a cartographic transfer of political authority in Ireland from native Irish to English colonizers (Klein, 1998 17).Map 6. Speeds Kingdome of IrelandSource Klein, 1998.In short, early maps of Ireland and Australia made great attempts to represent (and reaffirm) colonial truths. As Klein (1998 1) states, it should be noted that some eyes are as blind as others are observant, and contemporaries also recognized that the abstraction of geometric scale may quietly secrete rather than openly disclose geographical information. Representation of these two nations were different in that Australia was represented as unconquered and ready for the taking, whereas Ireland was represented very much as conquered. This had to do with both the differences in size of the two nations at hand, as well as with their proximity to England.ConclusionThis essay has assay to analyse the historical geographies of colonialism in Australia and Ireland. It has shown that though the two nations share some overriding similarities (many simply attributed to being post-colonial), there are also a multitude of differences in their historical geographies.The comparison was made in two basic contexts. First, the analysis was made within Saids Orientalism. It argued that both Ireland and Australia were stuck between the binary of us and other, between the First and Third Worlds. However, it argued that due to a variety of factors including, but not limited to, race, proximity, and area, their experience of Orientalism was fundamentally different.The second sections analysed the representation of colonialism in early maps of Australia and Ireland. Here the countries again displayed significant difference Australia was depicted as a land waiting to be conquered, and Ireland as neat and controlled.A further gene ral note can be made in that this essay demonstrated the power of memory and history on geography, and vice versa. Having analysed the historical geographies of Australia and Ireland, one would certainly agree that geography and history are analogous and interdependent fields.Works CitedAustralian Bureau of Statistics (2004) Yearbook Australia Population Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Population, forthcoming from www.abs.gov.auGuelke, L. (1997) The Relations Between Geography and History Reconsidered, History and Theory, 36 (2), pp. 191-234.Hughes, R. (1986) The Fatal Shore The epic of Australias founding, New York vintage Books.Klein, B. (1998) Partial Views Shakespeare and the Map of Ireland, Early Modern Literary Studies, Special Issue 3, 1-20.Kroeker, A. Separation from the World Post-colonial aspects of Mennonite/s wiring in Western Canada, Winnipeg, Manitoba University of Manitoba.Litvack, L. (2006) Theories of Post-Coloniality Edward W. Said and W.B. Yeats, availabl e from www.qub.ac.uk/en/imperial/ireland/saidyeat.htmMacintyre, S. (1999) A Concise History of Australia, Cambridge Cambridge University Press.McCarthy, M. (no date) Historico-Geographical Explorations of Irelands Heritages Toward a Critical Understanding of the Nature of Memory and Identity, available from http//www.ashgate.com/subject_area/downloads/sample_chapters/IrelandsHeritagesCh1.pdfMcCarthy, M. (2003), Historical geographies of a colonized world the renegotiation of New English colonialism in early modern urban Ireland, c. 1600-10, Irish Geography, 36(1), 59-76.Meinig, D. W. (1982) Geographical analysis of imperial expansion, in Baker, A. R. H. and Billinge, M. (eds.) peak and place Research methods in historical geography, Cambridge Cambridge University Press.Meinig, D. W. (1989) The Historical Geography of Imperative, Annals of the Association of American Geographers, 79, 79-87.Pilger, J. (1989) A Secret Country, Sydney Random House.Said, E. (1979) Orientalism, New York vintage Books.Said, E. (1993) Culture and Imperialism, lecture given at York University, Toronto, Canada, 10 February 1993.Wikipedia (2006a) British Empire, available from http//en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_EmpireWikipedia (2006b) Geography, available from http//en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GeographyWikipedia (2006c) Orientalism, available from http//en.wikipedia/org/wiki/OrientalismWood, D. (1993) The Power of Maps, London Routledge