Aboriginal Protection and Its Intermediaries in Britain’s Antipodean Colonies

Samuel Furphy is Research Fellow in the National Centre of Biography, School of History, at the Australian National University.

This book explores how ideas of "protection" were applied to Indigenous peoples of Britain's antipodean colonies. Focusing on historical actors who were intermediaries of protection practices on the ground, it considers the critical role of protection policy in the making of colonial relations.

Part I: The Conception and Circulation of "Aboriginal Protection" 1. Imagining Protection in the Antipodean Colonies: Actors, Agency and Governance 2. Culture and Policies: Sir George Grey, Protection and the Early Nineteenth-Century Empire 3. "The British Government Is Now Awaking": How Humanitarian Quakers Repackaged and Circulated the 1837 Select Committee Report on Aborigines 4. Philanthropy or Patronage?: Aboriginal Protectors in the Port Phillip District and Western Australia 5. Protective Governance and Legal Order on the Colonial Frontier Part II: Interpreting Protection on the Ground: Actors and Practices 6. Spanning Two Worlds: Protection, Assimilation and the Role of Edward Meurant, Government Interpreter, New Zealand, 1840-1851 7. Edward Shortland and the Protection of Aborigines in New Zealand, 1840-1846 8. Systematic Colonisation and Protection in Western Australia: The Origin and Nature of John Hutt's Colonial Governance of Aboriginal People 9. Protecting the Protectors: Evaluating the Agency of Missionary-Protectors in the New Settlements of Adelaide and Melbourne, 1838-1840 Part III: Refashioning Protection 10. A Short and Simple Provisional Code: The Pastoralist as "Protector" 11. Lawful Conduct, Aboriginal Protection and Land in Victoria, 1859-1869 12. Robert John Sholl: Protection "Pilbara-Style" 13. "Protection Talk" and Popular Performance: The Wild Australia Show on Tour, 1892-1893