'In this compelling study, Anna Johnston shows how colonial knowledge from Australia influenced global thinking about convicts, natural history and humanitarian concerns about Indigenous peoples. These were fascinating topics for British readers, and influenced government policies in fields such as prison reform, the history of science, and humanitarian and religious campaigns. Using a rich variety of sources including natural history and botanical illustrations, voyage accounts, language studies, Victorian literature and convict memoirs, this multi-disciplinary account charts how new ways of identifying, classifying, analysing and controlling ideas, populations, and environments were forged and circulated between colonies and through metropolitan centres. They were also underpinned by cultural exchanges between European and Indigenous interlocutors and knowledge systems. Johnston shows how colonial ideas were disseminated through a global network of correspondence and print culture.' (Publication summary)
'In her new book, Anna Johnson investigates how the exchange of ideas from the late eighteenth century between the Antipodes and the British Empire were to have a profound influence on the global constitution of knowledges, enabled by the rise of popular print culture. Her premise is that the Australian colonies, and New South Wales and Tasmania in particular, opened up new metaphorical and literal sites for British social experimentation, notably about the human condition, Indigenous peoples, and the natural environments of the new southern world.' (Publication summary)
'In her new book, Anna Johnson investigates how the exchange of ideas from the late eighteenth century between the Antipodes and the British Empire were to have a profound influence on the global constitution of knowledges, enabled by the rise of popular print culture. Her premise is that the Australian colonies, and New South Wales and Tasmania in particular, opened up new metaphorical and literal sites for British social experimentation, notably about the human condition, Indigenous peoples, and the natural environments of the new southern world.' (Publication summary)
