Colonialism in Ireland and Australia

Colonialism in Ireland and AustraliaA CRITICAL analogy OF THE HISTORICAL GEOGRAPHIES OF COLONIALISM IN IRELAND AND AUSTRALIATable of Contents (Jump to)IntroductionBackground diachronic geographicsColonialismPost-Colonialism and give tongue tos OrientalismSimilarities betwixt Australia and IrelandDifferences betwixt Australia and IrelandThe nonion of unc everywhereing evidenceWorks CitedIntroductionThis seek will comp ar the diachronic geographies of compoundism in Ireland and Australia. First, it defines what we look upon by historical geography as this is primordial to how this analysis will be make. Second, it discusses what we mean by colonization and wherefore it plays such a central usance in historical geography. Third, it discusses the naturalize of Edward state, and in particular Orientalism. It comp ares and credit lines the colonial experiences of Australia and Ireland within this mise en scene. Fourth, it explores the notions of exploration and conquerin g development archaeozoic bes of Australia and Ireland.Ireland and Australia are both post-colonial nations and there is a multitude of similarities in their historical geographies. Yet Ireland and Australia were fundamentally diffe tear places in the pre-colonialism era and anticipate so in the era of post-colonialism. This essay will compare and contrast the similarities and contrarietys 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 multifarious societies across the planet evolved and came into being (Wikipedia, 2006b). The discipline has traditionally considered the spatial- and place- foc theatrical roled orientation of geography, severalize and combining the spatial interests of geography with the temporal interests of storey, creating a line have-to doe with with changing spatial patterns and landscapes (Guel ke, 1997 191). As Donald Meinig, unmatched of the most influential American historical geographers once stated I have long insisted that by their very nature geography and history are kindred and mutualist fields (1989 79).ColonialismAny discussion of colonialism alike requires a definition of what we mean by the term. Colonialism is star of the most important features of modern history and, well-nigh might argue, the undertaking that direct to the birth of geography in the for the first time place. To define colonialism we essential first define dickens opposite get word terms in history empire and imperialism. The historian Michael Doyle defines empire as a relationship, formal or informal, in which one state controls the useful policy-making sovereignty of another governmental society. It can be achieved by force, by political collaboration, economic, social, or cultural dep break offence (in tell, 1993). Imperialism is broadly the practice, the hypothesis and the way of thinking of a dominating centre that controls a faraway land ( give tongue to, 1993) as Doyle states, imperialism is simply the process or policy of forming or maintaining empire (in Said, 1993). Within this context, colonialism can be defined as the implanting of settlements on distant territory and is virtually always a result of imperialism (Said, 1993).To prove and contrast colonial experience, as well as to understand why colonialism figures so prominently in the discussion of historical geography, one must furnish to understand the sheer scale of colonial expansion. As Said (1993 1) explains westbound provide allowed the imperial and metropolitan centres at the end of the nineteenth century to acquire and accumulate territory and subjects on a rightfully astonishing scale. Consider that in 1800, Western powers claimed fifty-five percent, precisely in truth held approximately thirty-five percent, of the earths surface. But by 1878, the region was sixty-s flat p ercent of the world held by Western powers, which is a score of increase of 83,000 square miles per course. 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 yard total of roughly eighty-five percent of the earth as colonies, protectorates, dependencies, dominions and country 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 present 1, marked in pink.Map 1. The British conglomerate outset http//en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_EmpireMap 2 shows all territories ruled 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. tout ensemble territories ruled by England and the British EmpireSource http//en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Emp irePost-Colonialism and Saids OrientalismOne of the most influential texts on post-colonialism discourse is undoubtedly Edward Saids book Orientalism, originally published in 1978. Orientalism is, in essence, the memorize of Near and distant eastsideern societies and cultures by Westerners (Wikipedia, 2006c). Since the publication of Saids book, the term became (rightly) laden with negative 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 cognition. The book serves as the basis for one of the primary dichotomies in the landing field of human geography us and other (or the Orient/Occident distinction).Similarities amongst Australia and IrelandIt is in this context that we can identify the primary similarity amo ngst 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 knobbed field of operations with regards to the both nations at devote. Ireland and Australia are both nations left out of the post-colonial dialogue charge though they are undeniably post-colonial. However, discussing these deuce nations within the dialogue of post-colonialism would cut off the fact that they are both relatively wealthinessy nations, members of the First World, with hardly a(prenominal)er similarities to the nations that are generally being discussed within the sphere. Yet, within the framework of other, they do share many similarities mainly because they are both peripheral device from a Euro-centric viewpoint (Litvack, 2006 2) though this, economically at to the lowest degree, is increasingly false concerning Ireland. Macintyre (1999 24) writes with regard to AustraliaThe Orient came to stand for a whole way of bearing that was inferior to that of the West indolent, irrational, despotic, and decayed. Such typification of the alien and other, which the critic Edward Said fountizes as Orientalism, had a peculiar meaning in colonial Australia where geography contradicted history. Fascination and fear mingled in the colonists apprehension of the 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 bloom 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 accommo assure those nations that cannot place themselves neatly on one side or the other of the colonizer/colonized binary star (Kroeker, 2001 11). After all, both na tions could be considered not just victim but also accomplice and beneficiary of colonialism (Litvack, 2006). Slemons idea is helpful in creating an alternative for the difficult exercisings of post-colonial, white, settler cultures like that of Australia, in the altogether Zealand and Canada. Though Ireland is different, one could easily argue that the Second World is a better rack up than the Third. In short, Ireland and Australias position in between these ii very separate worlds of colonizer and colonized is an cardinal 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 cosmos ferment their cultures and heathenish identities we also make our own histories. More a lot than not, memory is matched to history but as Collingwood (1970 in McCarthy, no date 13) states memory is no t history, because history is a certain kind of form or inferential knowledge, and memory is not organized, not inferential at all. Though undoubtedly memory impinges on Irish history the same as any other, Irish history at to the lowest degree(prenominal) 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 get in Botany Bay in 1788, and one that begins at least 40,000 (and possibly 120,000) years 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. name 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 laden by British rule, it was a fundamentally different kind of oppression than that faced by Austr alias pristines.The domination and repression of the Irish during British colonial rule was do in the context of engagement. The native Irish were for sure disadvantaged by the British, and this was a typical feature of colonialism Meinig has long drawn attention, within his geographical analysis of imperial expansion, to the employment of supreme political authority 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 mod economic relationships to reach these ends. The political authority of the British (invaders) over the Irish (invaded) is illustrated by the manipulation of ethnical and religious identities that occurred in order to keep the subject population from marriage against the occupying power (Wikipedia, 2006a). Economic exploitation under British rule had an ethnic (and latently subject areaist) dimension because it was expressed through religious discrimination (Komito, 1985 3). The legacy of this fall apart and rule strategy (as well as the link between devotion and nationalism) remains in Ireland directly.The Great Irish Famine remains, to this day, the defining atomic fig 42 in Irishhistory (Kenny, 2001). Between 1840 and 1850, the Irish population was cut back from 8.2 million to 4.1 million including out-migration as well as deaths from starving (Guinnane, 1998). Irish land was by and large owned by incline landlords and worked by Irish tenants at the time of the famine, these peasants had to choose between give 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 Ire land, remembered the inadequate and uncaring response of Britain. More than any other sensation event in history, the Famine came to epitomize, for many Irish people, the quintessential example of British attitudes to its neighbour (Komito, 2006 3).On the other hand, the policy of the British towards the primes 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 impact of new diseases, repressive and practically heavy-handed 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 believe there were probably closer to one million Aboriginals in 1788. Data from th e Australian Bureau 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 autochthonic members of the population. Even if one assumes (or accepts) a figure of aught 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, i n contrast, were viewed as subhuman, and as animals they possessed no rights, nor any claim to morality (Pilger, 1989 27). Australia, here, seems to have more in commonalty with the Dark Continent than with any imperialism within Europe. Some colonial 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, circumstantial 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 fresh field of European endeavour (Macintyre, 1999 20). Again, this is not to argue that the Irish were not suppress during position 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 because history. In The Fatal Shore, Robert Hughes describes what he calls a national pact of serenity (Pilger, 1989) over the Aboriginal issue. There is no topic more erogenous 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 bill of Australia, that their aim is not merely to compensate for past neglect, but to wander that we can only understand Australias history by analysing the lives of the oppressed (in Pilger, 1989 3). After all, a nation founded on bloodshed and suffering of others at last must make peace with that one historical truth (Pilger, 1989 3).In short, the history of the col onizer and the colonized in Australia and Ireland is enormously different. Australia has, for the last 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 baringIn the primordial 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 premature nineteenth century. Topography and mapping by and large went hand in hand with notion s of colonialism and expansion. Wood wrote that maps work because they give us reality, a reality that exceeds our vision, our reach, the deny of our days, a reality we achieve no other way (1993 4-5). In short, maps manage to pass off for evident truth what is hard won, culturally acquired knowledge about the world we inhabit a reality subjective by the naked eye (Klein, 1998 1). This section will argue that early(a) colonial maps of both Ireland and Australia used cartography to make full their colonial appetencys. The list difference was that early maps of Australia displayed a land undefeated and lonely whereas colonial maps of Ireland equal a land very much conquered. early(a) maps of colonial Australia and Ireland also illustrate another key difference the British believed they had sight Australia, whilst they never assumed to have spy the Emerald Isle. In reality, they had not discovered Australia either the very fact that Cook discovered Australia strikes many to day 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 undefeated and vacant land figures very prominently in the geography of discovery 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 drop the south coast entirely, and left a vacant (or unexplored and accordingly 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 hike up emphasizes the unconquered aspect by leaving with child(p) 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 vindicatory 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 space 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 elaboration in the colonial politics of their historical moment. In gradually redefining the brute(a) Irish wasteland as a territorial extension of the national sphere, they are quite openly engaged in negotiating the political fitting 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 teaching was not the maps principal objective (Klein, 1998 15).Map 5 . Boazios IrlandeSource Klein, 1998.The Kingdome of Ireland (Map 6) was the standard representation of Ireland for the first half of the 17th century. This map portrays a neat and perfectly controlled area a peaceful and tranquilize 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 portrayed on the map seem to register a cartographic deepen 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 eyeball are as blind as others are observant, and contemporaries also recognized that the abstraction of geometric scale may quietly confine rather than openly disclose geographical information. Repr esentation 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 attempted 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 general 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 world Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Population, purchasable 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 Mod ern 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, available from www.qub.ac.uk/en/imperial/ireland/saidyeat.htmMacintyre, S. (1999) A taciturn History of Australia, Cambridge Cambridge University Press.McCarthy, M. (no date) Historico-geographic Explorations of Irelands Heritages Toward a Critical Understanding of the Nature of retentiveness 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.) Period and place question me thods in historical geography, Cambridge Cambridge University Press.Meinig, D. W. (1989) The Historical Geography of Imperative, Annals of the railroad tie 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) enculturation 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