title: Your memorialist humbly prays: Australian colonists' entreaties to colonial administrations, 1788-1810
Creators: name: Phelps, Narissa L
Publisher: name: Griffith University
Year: 2024
Subjects: subject: Australian colonial history
subject: memorials
subject: protest

description: This thesis extends our understanding of the willingness and determination of Australia's earliest colonists to engage with authority to further their own personal, economic and political interests. They did so to make requests and seek relief, but also to obtain redress and express resistance against perceived injustices. As such, this thesis makes a valuable contribution to the historiography of early Australian protest, revealing that settlers from all walks of early colonial society employed their right to memorialise those in positions of authority to improve their prosperity and stability, and to exercise conscious, non-violent protest in what was an autocratic penal settlement. This is the first time that memorials - petition-like documents written to the governor or others in positions of power - have been analysed as a document-set. This analysis reveals the diverse issues that were significant to colonists during the period 1788 to 1810, enabling greater insight into the social, economic and political climate of the period. Memorials are shown to have contributed actively to the discord and destabilisation that led to the 1808 rebellion, with colonists promoting and protesting their own political and social agendas, thereby contributing to the fractious subversion that led to the arrest of William Bligh. Memorials also reveal that societal unrest was further exacerbated by the significant upheaval and dislocation caused by the forced evacuation of Norfolk Island's first settlement. This thesis exposes the deep personal challenges associated with the island's closure, and the manner in which memorials were employed as instruments of legitimate appeal and protest against the loss of indulgences and rights. Indulgences obtained during the 1808-1809 interregnum were also threatened by Lachlan Macquarie's proclamation of 4 January 1810. Analysis of the wide-reaching implications of this declaration reveals that its intimidating tone and significant personal impact all but eliminated the population's willingness to protest the proclamation's unfairness, with memorialists reduced to humble entreaties in order to have their indulgences ratified. This thesis is also significant in revealing the extent and nature of women's property ownership during the settlement's earliest years, highlighting women's willingness to negotiate with authority in order to improve their social stability, foster their business capacity and therefore ensure a more rapid assimilation into colonial life. Finally, given that memorials are often deeply personal and expressive texts, this thesis analyses emotional responses to adversity, in particular floods and frontier encounters. It establishes links between hardship and suffering, analysing this in relation to the concept of colonial worthiness and the pioneer mythos. In so doing, it exposes the very different responses to losses associated with floods and those associated with frontier encounters, exploring the implications of the deep silences and the role of memorials as instruments of remembering. These divergent issues are consistent in demonstrating the willingness of early colonists to engage with authorities in order to preserve and further their own interests and attain a degree of security, prosperity and stability within the nascent settlement.