Issue Details: First known date: 2023... 2023 Caroline’s Dilemma. A Colonial Inheritance Saga
The material on this page is available to AustLit subscribers. If you are a subscriber or are from a subscribing organisation, please log in to gain full access. To explore options for subscribing to this unique teaching, research, and publishing resource for Australian culture and storytelling, please contact us or find out more.

AbstractHistoryArchive Description

'What did it mean to be widowed in Australia in the 1860s? Bettina Bradbury explores this question through a close examination of the extraordinary plight of English-born Protestant Caroline Bax. Caroline, at age nineteen, married Irish-born Catholic Edward Kearney in 1853. Kearney, aged thirty-four at the time of the marriage, was an ambitious man, hoping to make good on a sheep station in South Australia. Clearly a hard-working wife and children would help supply the labour to back his grand plans. Bradbury’s close examination of one family story provides a model of how to highlight the larger structures that governed women’s lives, across continents, in the nineteenth century.' (Introduction)

Publication Details of Only Known VersionEarliest 2 Known Versions of

  • Appears in:
    y separately published work icon Australian Historical Studies vol. 54 no. 3 2023 26769573 2023 periodical issue

    'In our first article, Mark Finnane and Jonathan Richards write in response to the provocation of Henry Reynolds that leading figures in the history of colonial Australia – some honoured in the naming of universities, for example – should be held to account for their conduct. Investigating how one such figure – Samuel Griffith, Attorney-General 1874–78, Premier of Queensland 1883–88 and both Attorney-General and Premier 1890–93 – could be held morally responsible for his part in the violent dispossession of Aboriginal people, Finnane and Richards acknowledge the proximities between history writing and the more overtly political work of ‘truth telling’. They test the accusation that in both his political and legal offices, Griffith failed to condemn several well-publicised killings of Aboriginal people including those carried out by Native Police, thus with the apparent endorsement of the state. By examining a series of cases in which Griffith’s decisions and policies are documented, they portray Griffith as both ‘lawmaker’ and ‘war-maker’ – responsible for ‘policies and prosecutions that both harmed and protected Aboriginal subjects of the Crown’. The difficulties of bringing violence – both among and against Aboriginal people – under the rule of British law were not his alone. The ‘politics of memory’ will determine whether this singularly commemorated man will now be singularly condemned.' (Publication summary)

    2023
    pg. 583-584
Last amended 1 Sep 2023 09:22:52
583-584 Caroline’s Dilemma. A Colonial Inheritance Sagasmall AustLit logo Australian Historical Studies
Review of:
Newspapers:
    Powered by Trove
    X