Hostname: page-component-7479d7b7d-q6k6v Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-07-09T03:21:58.650Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

‘God being, not in the bush’: The Nundah Mission (Qld) and Colonialism

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  26 February 2016

Anna Johnston
Get access

Extract

Throughout the history of British colonies, the intermingling of commerce and ‘civility’ produced the kinds of colonies that Britain (like other imperial nations) most needed — colonies which not only produced raw materials or space for recalcitrant criminals, but also spaces in which imperialist discourses could educate, convert, and expand what was known of human consciousness. The imperial ‘duty’ was to civilise and conquer the unknown non-Western world for imperial consumption and ‘native’ edification. Through education, both religious and secular, European missionaries sought to inculcate native minds and bodies with the tenets of Western Christianity and culture. Whilst many recent studies have examined the ways in which imperial discourses conquered and codified ‘other’ cultures and peoples, the history of the missionary movement exemplifies a particularly overt form of the dissemination of imperial/Christian discourses. Through Christian teachings, which not only codified religious thinking but also appropriate social behaviour, imperial discourses shaped the manner in which life was experienced under Christian and imperial rule. This paper will explore the ways that missionary activity assisted and effected colonial control.

Type
Research Article
Information
Queensland Review , Volume 4 , Issue 1 , April 1997 , pp. 71 - 80
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Works Cited

Carey, Hilary 1995, ‘Companions in the Wilderness? Missionary Wives in Colonial Australia, 1788–1900’, Journal of Religious History, 19.2 (Dec), 227–48.Google Scholar
Cilento, Sir Raphael, & Lack, Clem 1959, comp. and eds, Triumph in the Tropics: An Historical Sketch of Queensland, Smith and Paterson for the Historical Committee of the Centenary Celebrations Council of Queensland, Fortitude Valley.Google Scholar
Comaroff, Jean & Comaroff, John 1989, Through the Looking-Glass: Colonial Encounters of the First Kind’, Journal of Historical Sociology 1.1 (March), 6–32.Google Scholar
Corkhill, Alan 1992, Queensland and Germany: Ethnic, Socio-Cultural, Political, and Trade Relations 1838–1991, Academia Press, Melbourne.Google Scholar
Eipper, , Reverend Christopher 1841, Statement of the Origin, Condition, and Prospects, of the German Mission to the Aborigines at Moreton Bay, Conducted under the Auspices of the Presbyterian Church in New South Wales, James Reading, Sydney.Google Scholar
Evans, Raymond, & Walker, Jan 1977, ‘“These Strangers, Where are They Going?”: Aboriginal-European Relations in the Fraser Island and Wide Bay Region 1770–1905’, Occasional Papers in Anthropology No. 8 (March), 39–105.Google Scholar
Evans, Raymond, Saunders, Kay & Cronin, Katheryn (1988), Race Relations in Colonial Queensland: A History of Exclusion, Exploitation, and Extermination, 2nd ed., University of Queensland Press, St Lucia.Google Scholar
Grope, L.B. 1989, ‘“How Bounteous are their feet”: The Story of Zion's Hill, the First Mission Station in Queensland’ in Outridge, 5–16.Google Scholar
Gunson, W.N. 1960–61, ‘The Nundah Missionaries’, The Royal Historical Society of Queensland Journal: Yearbook of Proceedings, 6.3, 511–39.Google Scholar
Gunson, Niel 1978, ‘A Missionary Expedition from Zion Hill (Nundah) to Toorbul, Moreton Bay District, in 1842–43: The Journal of the Reverend K.W.E. Schmidt’, Aboriginal History 2.2, 114–121.Google Scholar
Horne, C. Silvester 1894, The Story of the L.M.S. 1795–1895, London Missionary Society, London.Google Scholar
Lang, Rev. John Dunmore 1847, Cooksland in North-Eastern Australia; The Future Cotton-Field of Great Britain: Its Characteristics and Capabilities for European Colonization. With a Disquisition on the Origin, Manners, and Customs of the Aborigines, Longman, Brown, Green, and Longmans, London.Google Scholar
Lang, Rev. John Dunmore187∗, ‘How the People of England Were Tricked Out of Their Noble Inheritance in the Waste Lands of Australia’, Ch. 4, Vol., 2 of Historical and Statistical Account of NSW, from the Founding of the Colony in 1788 to the Present Day, Low, Marston, Low, and Searle, London.Google Scholar
Mansfield, Sir Alan 1963, ‘A Brief Historical Survey of Queensland's First Free Settlement, and the Beginnings of the Lutheran Church in Queensland’, Commemoration of the 125th Anniversary of Queensland's First Free Settlement, held at Nundah on Sunday November 10 1963, under the auspices of the Queensland District of the United Evangelical Lutheran Church, Downs Printing.Google Scholar
Neill, Stephen 1964, A History of Christian Missions, The Penguin History of the Church, No. 6. Penguin, Middlesex.Google Scholar
Outridge, Margaret 1989, 150 Years: Nundah Families, 1838–1988, Nundah Historical Cemetery Preservation Association, Brisbane.Google Scholar
Pratt, Mary Louise 1992, Imperial Eyes: Travel Writing and Transculturation, Routledge, London and New York.Google Scholar
Sparks, H.J.J 1938, Queensland's First Free Settlement 1838–1938, Smith and Paterson, Fortitude Valley, Qld.Google Scholar
Swain, Tony, and Rose, Deborah Bird (eds) 1988, Aboriginal Australians and Christian Missions: Ethnographic and Historical Studies, Special Studies in Religions, No. 6, Australian Association for the Study of Religions, South Australian College of Advanced Education Sturt Campus, Bedford Park, SA.Google Scholar
Thiele, F. Otto 1938, One Hundred Years of the Lutheran Church in Queensland, Publication Committee of the Queensland District of the United Evangelical Lutheran Church in Australia.Google Scholar
Thomas, Nicholas 1994, Colonialism's Culture: Anthropology, Travel, and Government. Melbourne University Press, Carlton, Vic.Google Scholar
Thorpe, Bill 1996, Colonial Queensland: Perspectives on a Frontier Society, University of Queensland Press, St Lucia.Google Scholar
Woolmington, Jean 1988, ‘“Writing on the Sand”: The First Missions to Aborigines in Eastern Australia’, in Swain and Rose, 77–92.Google Scholar