- Title
- The Great Divide: Property Relations and the Foundational Dynamics of Settler-Colonial Society
- Creator
- Morris, Barry
- Relation
- Class in Australia p. 40-57
- Relation
- https://publishing.monash.edu/product/class-in-australia/
- Publisher
- Monash University Publishing
- Resource Type
- book chapter
- Date
- 2022
- Description
- The political foundations of Australia were of a totalising character. The early settler-colonial states took an extreme form as a penal colony, occupying territory under the doctrine of terra nullius, land owned by no-one. Political and economic power emerged from a colonial exploitation that took the form of dispossession through the wholesale expropriation of Indigenous lands. This chapter examines the emergence of colonial class dynamics in this context, focusing in particular on the emergence of a male and white elite capitalist class in relation to male convict labour. Rather than just focus upon pastoral expansion as a largely economic imperative, this chapter also brings attention to the moral and ethical mores of emergent social class relations. The penal colony existed as a hierarchical, disciplinary society, whereby governance was able to determine, effectively unchallenged, the social and legal conditions of the existence of all inhabitants. Privilege and power became concentrated in the patronage networks of a colonial governor, who oversaw appointment to official positions and land grants.
- Subject
- political foundations; Australia; early settler-colonial; penal colony
- Identifier
- http://hdl.handle.net/1959.13/1449615
- Identifier
- uon:43715
- Identifier
- ISBN:9781922464903
- Language
- eng
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