Precarious subjects : Picturing Indigenous British subjecthood in mid-nineteenth-century Australia

Journal article


Nettelbeck, Amanda. (2023). Precarious subjects : Picturing Indigenous British subjecthood in mid-nineteenth-century Australia. Australian Historical Studies. 54(2), pp. 330-353. https://doi.org/10.1080/1031461X.2022.2130380
AuthorsNettelbeck, Amanda
Abstract

Recent discussion in Australia has highlighted how Indigenous citizenship remains troubled by the denial of Indigenous sovereignty. This article takes up a pre-history to these discussions, returning to a transitional period (1830s–1850s) in the Australian colonies when governments worked to activate Indigenous people's newly-clarified legal status as British subjects. How, in this period, did settler colonial culture envisage Indigenous people's relation to the law as citizens-to-be of the empire? Focusing particularly upon visual vocabularies of policing and civic order, the article considers how vacillating colonial visions of Indigenous people as ‘new’ British subjects reflected a wider tension between settler culture's non-recognition of Indigenous law and jurisdiction, and its running disquiet about the insecure terms of British sovereignty.

Year2023
JournalAustralian Historical Studies
Journal citation54 (2), pp. 330-353
PublisherRoutledge
ISSN1031-461X
Digital Object Identifier (DOI)https://doi.org/10.1080/1031461X.2022.2130380
Scopus EID2-s2.0-85159661503
Page range330-353
Publisher's version
License
All rights reserved
File Access Level
Controlled
Output statusPublished
Publication dates
Online04 May 2023
Publication process dates
Deposited19 Jul 2023
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https://acuresearchbank.acu.edu.au/item/8z560/precarious-subjects-picturing-indigenous-british-subjecthood-in-mid-nineteenth-century-australia

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