The first dual biography of Bennelong and Governor Arthur Phillip, two pivotal figures in Australian history – the colonised and coloniser – and a bold and innovative new portrait of both.
'Bennelong and Phillip were leaders of their two sides in the first encounters between Britain and Indigenous Australians, Phillip the colony’s first governor, and Bennelong the Eora leader. The pair have come to represent the conflict that flared and has never settled.
'Fullargar’s account is also the first full biography of Bennelong of any kind and it challenges many misconceptions, among them that he became alienated from his people and that Phillip was a paragon of Enlightenment benevolence. It tells the story of the men’s marriages, including Bennelong’s best-known wife, Barangaroo, and Phillip’s unusual domestic arrangements, and places the period in the context of the Aboriginal world and the demands of empire.
'To present this history afresh, Bennelong & Phillip relates events in reverse, moving beyond the limitations of typical Western ways of writing about the past, which have long privileged the coloniser over the colonised. Bennelong’s world was hardly linear at all, and in Fullagar’s approach his and Phillip’s histories now share an equally unfamiliar framing.' (Publication summary)
'Kate Fullagar’s striking new book is guaranteed to jump right off the shelf at any Australian historian happily meandering their way around the bookshop. Appearing under Simon & Schuster’s very appealing literary non-fiction imprint Scribner Australia, it grapples with one of Australia’s foundational narratives, the relationship between the first British governor, Arthur Phillip, and the First Nations leader Bennelong. The names of these men have been long etched into the national consciousness. Yet, as Fullagar explains, despite the many works of history and art dealing with their lives and doings, nobody has attempted to bring their ‘entangled lives’ together in one historical study – until this book.' (Introduction)
'The story of the extended encounter between Eora Aboriginal man Bennelong and Arthur Phillip, first governor of the British colony at Sydney, has often been told as both emblematic and predictive of the history of British possession of Australia, and of Aboriginal dispossession. Historians such as Grace Karskens and Keith Vincent Smith have peeled back the layers of this narrative to find ways of telling more complex, contextualised, and open-ended stories. Fullagar reaches a new stage in this journey, and the journey of Australian history more generally. She offers a fresh perspective on Bennelong and Phillip, on the nature of their exchange and the broader currents in which they swam.' (Introduction)
'Despite the inherent chance and coincidence of Australian history, there’s a certain sense of inevitability when we trace our national narrative in hindsight. The sequence of chapters in our textbooks and syllabuses seems logical and coherent. Colonisation follows European imperialism and exploration. Suffrage follows the discovery of gold. Federation is realised after a growing national consciousness.'
'The story of the extended encounter between Eora Aboriginal man Bennelong and Arthur Phillip, first governor of the British colony at Sydney, has often been told as both emblematic and predictive of the history of British possession of Australia, and of Aboriginal dispossession. Historians such as Grace Karskens and Keith Vincent Smith have peeled back the layers of this narrative to find ways of telling more complex, contextualised, and open-ended stories. Fullagar reaches a new stage in this journey, and the journey of Australian history more generally. She offers a fresh perspective on Bennelong and Phillip, on the nature of their exchange and the broader currents in which they swam.' (Introduction)
'Kate Fullagar’s striking new book is guaranteed to jump right off the shelf at any Australian historian happily meandering their way around the bookshop. Appearing under Simon & Schuster’s very appealing literary non-fiction imprint Scribner Australia, it grapples with one of Australia’s foundational narratives, the relationship between the first British governor, Arthur Phillip, and the First Nations leader Bennelong. The names of these men have been long etched into the national consciousness. Yet, as Fullagar explains, despite the many works of history and art dealing with their lives and doings, nobody has attempted to bring their ‘entangled lives’ together in one historical study – until this book.' (Introduction)
