Imagining a Public: Anniversary Dinners and the Democratic Political Imaginary in Colonial New South Wales, 1788–1842

Abstract

<p>During the first half of the nineteenth century, the 26th of January was celebrated as the founding anniversary of the colony of New South Wales, typically with a 'public' dinner. A political faction of locally born 'natives' and former convict 'emancipists' used this invented tradition to rally around arguments for democratic rights. Moving beyond their role in political organising, I read these anniversary dinners, and their reporting in the press, as an expression of a democratic political imaginary. The dinners became a stage on which political ideas were debated and endorsed by a representative public in a performative ritual that scripted a vision of a democratic colony, before it was granted democratic institutions.</p>