Space, Time and Sovereignty: Literate Culture and Colonial Nationhood in New South Wales up to 1860

Abstract

The existence prior to Federation of one or more European settler nations on the Australian continent is a phenomenon which has yet to be fully explored by historians. This thesis traces and explains the growth of New South Wales to nationhood during the years leading up to 1860 and it searches for that development in the imagination of the people themselves. Nationhood is a vexed topic in current historiography. An examination of several of Walter Scott's popular works reveals three criteria for nationhood as it was apparently understood by people in the period of interest here – possession of a clearly defined extent of territory, the connectedness of succeeding generations across time and communal sovereignty over territory and destiny. The development from the 1820s of an increasingly inclusive literate culture in New South Wales fostered among its inhabitants a capacity to imagine their own community as a nation. Familiarity with cartography, including maps of the colony, enabled people to imagine the colony's territory within a broad spatial perspective, while exposure to narratives of the past and future encouraged a sense of belonging to a community stretching across time. Participation in the colony's literate culture similarly encouraged notions of sovereignty.