Colonial Adventure

Ken Gelder, Rachael Weaver
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Colonial Adventure

Published

8 October 2024

ISBN

9780522879544

Pages

192

Imprint

Melbourne University Press

Colonial Adventure

Ken Gelder, Rachael Weaver
Australian narratives of colonial discovery
Adventure was one of the grand narratives of colonisation, which saw European powers sending agents off to new and distant worlds. Their journeys didn't always follow a straight line. Some were shipwrecked, lost or marooned; adventure turned into misadventure. Others left the colony as soon as they arrived. Convicts fled to Timor, China, and South America, while bushrangers roamed the country, antagonising colonial authorities. But when adventurers directly served the interests of colonisation, they could be violent, ruthless, and brutally racist, rapaciously seeking profit and property. Many adventurers went wherever ambition took them, killing and dispossessing Aboriginal people and claiming ownership of their lands. By examining colonial adventure narratives in all their rawness and complexity, this book asks us to reflect on the continuing legacies of colonisation in Australia today.
Adventure was one of the grand narratives of colonisation, which saw European powers sending agents off to new and distant worlds. Their journeys didn't always follow a straight line. Some were shipwrecked, lost or marooned; adventure turned into misadventure. Others left the colony as soon as they arrived. Convicts fled to Timor, China, and South America, while bushrangers roamed the country, antagonising colonial authorities. But when adventurers directly served the interests of colonisation, they could be violent, ruthless, and brutally racist, rapaciously seeking profit and property. Many adventurers went wherever ambition took them, killing and dispossessing Aboriginal people and claiming ownership of their lands. By examining colonial adventure narratives in all their rawness and complexity, this book asks us to reflect on the continuing legacies of colonisation in Australia today.

Ken Gelder

Ken Gelder

Ken Gelder is an Emeritus Professor of English at the University of Melbourne. His books include Uncanny Australia: Sacredness and Identity in a Postcolonial Nation (1998, with Jane M Jacobs), Popular Fiction: The Logics and Practices of a Literary Field (2004), Subcultures: Cultural Histories and Social Practice (2007), After the Celebration: Australian Fiction 1989–2007 (2009, with Paul Salzman) and, with Rachael Weaver, Colonial Australian Fiction (2017) and The Colonial Kangaroo Hunt (2020).

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Rachael Weaver

Rachael Weaver

Rachael Weaver is an ARC Future Fellow in English at the University of Tasmania and a 2024 Visiting Scholar at the State Library of New South Wales. She is the author of The Criminal of the Century (2006) and, with Ken Gelder, The Colonial Journals, and the emergence of Australian literary culture (2014), Colonial Australian Fiction: Character Types, Social Formations and the Colonial Economy (2017), and The Colonial Kangaroo Hunt (2020).

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Paperback
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Other formats available