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.