A Chinese-hating American in Colonial Australia? Misconstruing 'Monitor Hall'

Abstract

The 1830s and 1840s have increasingly been attracting attention from scholars regarding their importance in formulating early attitudes to what later became known as the White Australia Policy. While in broad terms it was generally the influx of the Chinese during the gold rushes of the 1850s that was seen as most influential, it is now recognized that colonial settlers grappled with questions regarding the arrival of others during these earlier years. In particular, the use of Chinese and Indian 'coolies' in place of convict labour, as the era of criminal transportation to New South Wales (NSW) came to an end, was a source of at times quite heated debate. Ann Curthoys has shown how the colonists were intent on avoiding a repeat of the stigma of convictism and on preventing the creation of a new underclass in their place. Rose Cullen puts efforts to bring Indian coolies to the colony in an imperial perspective. Increasing links within the Empire, in particular the dissemination of information through newspapers, alerted colonists to the use of coolies in other countries and so they sought to emulate the precedent. Angela Woollacott situates the coolie question within the process of the quest by white employees to assert their own status and political authority — a quest intimately connected with the settlers' struggle for representative and responsible government in the Australian colonies.