Travel Writing And The Perception Of Continental Australia From Britain In Eighteenth Century

The eighteenth century was the period when the British Empire developed and transformed.Yet it was also the time when British began to explore and travel overseas.Wherein Britain's adventure to the South Pacific and Australia was an important historical event which worth noticing.It came with abundant appearances of travel writings,which represented as journals,colonial narratives and letters,and showed the attitudes for Australia from various travellers.From another level,Travel writing became an important medium for the British awareness of Australia,which was also closely linked to the the expansion of the British Empire towards the South Pacific.Under the eyes of Britain,the image of Australia changed rapidly.Britain's own subjectivity had also been represented.During the early modern peroid,Hypothesis of the Southern Continent was still thriving in Europe,Spain and the Netherlands had launched sailing exploration to the South Pacific,at which moment British was still in absence.From the beginning of the early eighteenth century,some British privateers began to depict the curiousness and exoticness of the South Pacific,which attracted great attention from the British public.William Dampier,who was the only British privateer that ever landed on the Australian Continent,described the landscape of New Holland at the atmosphere of a classical geographical concept and world view.In his eyes,the land was very barren,the animals were very weird,and the aboriginals just looked like beasts.In the exotic world presented by these British privateers,New Holland was connected with the Southern Continent,and they jointly formed the image of Australia,which was semi-unknown and semi known,semi-realistic and semi-fabulous.Besides,the British privateers emphasized the narratives of looting the Spanish towns and ships.They also hoped to enhance the international status of Britain.After 1740s,the British public held fanaticism about the Southern Continent.They read the journals written before,and compiled new maritime travel writings and historical geography books,and hoped to increase the glory of the British Empire by colonizing this continent.As echoes,George Anson led the Royal Navy to sail across the South Pacific,and began to plan and promote the British official exploration toward this ocean.With the development of empirical science during the second half of the the eighteenth century,navigators began to depict the exotic world in a new way.They described the coastlines of the new world accurately with the quantitativ spirits,and the prevalence of the natural history also influenced these Europeans' attitutes toward the exotic botany,animals and races.Under the conspiracy of science and politics,James Cooks and H.M.S Endeavour came into the South Pacific and discovered the east coast of Australia.Captain Cook and his crew used the empirical eyes to examine this continent.They mapped the shape of the coastline,recorded the geography informations,collected the specimens,and generalized the Australian landscape into the resources which have potential economic values.They also examined the indigenous body,culture and society.The Southern Continent Myth faded,and a real Australian image came into the scene of knowledge of the Empire.The life of Captain Cook had linked with the destiny of the British Empire,and the discovery of the Australia had became his precious heritage.With a series of opportunistic changes happened in the Empire,Britain finally choosed New South Wales as a new penal colony.In 1788,The First Fleet landed in Australia,and colonists from Britain began to establish new colonies.At this moment,the British Government regarded New South Wales as an extention part of local prison.But colonizers held different opinions.From 1788 to 1792,when Governor Philip ruled the colony,the colonizers' travel writings can be seen as colonialist narrative.It devided the Australian space with a boundary of daily activities.Outside the border,it was the uncivilized and alluring natural wilderness.Inside the border,it was the British settlement.The British colonizers watched and explored the static nature of Australia outsider,and made a Dynamic,civilized,rapid developed European Image insider through depicting the work and establishment of the British.On the one hand,Australia can be regard as a dark continent which was full of savages and convicts,whereas it can also be seen as the Promised Land on the other hand.In short,what this dissertation wants to discuss about is,How did Britain in the eighteenth century recognized Australia through travel writing under imperial context,How did Britain put Australia into the imperial hegemony step by step,and represent the subjectivity at the same time.Under these imperial perspectives,the unknown continent hidden in the myth,began to break away from the classical context,and turned into the knowledge object under scientific observation,and finally became a modern colonial space.It all became the fundament of the Australian notion with which we are familiar today.