Settlers, War, and Empire in the Press: Unsettling News in Australia and Britain, 1863-1902 [Book review]

Abstract

Throughout the mid-to-late nineteenth century the British Empire rapidly expanded across the world, all too often bringing settlers and the British Army (and associated colonial forces) into conflict with indigenous peoples and other world powers. Within the Australian colonies, as that Empire expanded and conflict spread, a network of newspapers simultaneously worked to report on that conflict and make sense of it for their readership. In the long term, the nature of that reporting reinforced and consolidated settler sentiment and helped bind members of the colonies to a global imperial identity unified, to some extent, by common sentiments and attitudes. Those reports, and their impact on Australian colonial values and ideals, are the focus of Sam Hutchinson's Settlers, War, and Empire in the Press. As Hutchison notes, newspapers helped people 'make sense of their world' (p. 6) and they thus provide scholars with a great opportunity to assess ideas of Empire and identity, among other values and ideals, that were held by settlers at the time.