4. Settlement: Convicts & Pilgrims

Outline of Lecture
Introduction	Remarks on History and national mythology, drawing on the work of world historian William McNeill—how convict transportation and planned settlement figure in the mythistories of Australia and New Zealand.
Convict Transportation	For Americans, the Australian myth of national origin, convict transportation, seems like a counter-myth. Convict colonies are just about the opposite of Pilgrims and Puritans. The early colonization of Australia indeed was the product of the need to move criminals out of Britain and send them far away. Historians and the people of Australia have dealt with this founding chapter in their past in interesting ways.
Planned Colonization	Planned, systematic colonization was the ideal promoted for New Zealand (and for South Australia) by Edward Gibbon Wakefield. The idea was to replicate the English social order, only better—there was to be no frontier chaos. Planned colonization did take place, but it did not last; pastoralism and gold mining, along with individual ambition, overwhelmed it. Nevertheless, the story of planned colonization gives a peculiar cast to New Zealand’s national identity.
Revisionism and Mythistory	The problem with history as national mythology is that it requires maintenance. After a while, the mythistory begins to lose credibility. Historians get involved with trying to manage the revision of the story. Revisionists seek consciously to overturn established mythology. Other scholars, less confrontational, simply move the discussion to new subjects.

Resources
WWW	The Rocks – see what the site is like today
	"Botany Bay" – a ballad of convict transport (courtesy Hughes, Fatal Shore)
	Ideal Society? – Miles Fairburn’s revisionist history of New Zealand
	Invasion! Biological Consequences of Settlement – based on A.H. Clark, Invasion of New Zealand
Film	The Piano – the Jane Campion film
Recommended Reading	Robert Hughes, The Fatal Shore
	Miles Fairburn, The Ideal Society and Its Enemies
	James Belich, Making Peoples
	Geoffrey Blainey, The Tyranny of Distance
	Alan Frost, Botany Bay Mirages
	L.L. Robson, The Convict Settlers of Australia

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