The White Man under Siege: New Histories of Race in the Nineteenth Century and the Advent of White Australia
Author(s)
Lake, Marilyn
Abstract
James Bryce and Charles Pearson were liberal English historians whose discussions of race relations and global demographic patterns and trajectories found a receptive audience in some of the most influential men of their time, including Theodore Roosevelt and the elite politicians responsible for founding the Commonwealth of Australia. Bryce’s The American Commonwealth (1888) examined race relations in the United States in the wake of the Civil War, while Pearson’s National Life and Character (1893) focused on the sharp growth in the populations of nonwhite races and forecasted changes in the political relations between these populations and the colonial powers. This “racial” historiography informed some of the policy debates at the Australian constitutional conventions during the 1880’s-90’s, including the extent to which immigration from the Pacific islands would be restricted.
