The Enlightenment, Philanthropy and the Idea of Social Progress in Early Australia: Creating a Happier Race? by Ilya Lazarev

Author:Ilya Lazarev [Lazarev, Ilya]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: History, General, Australia & New Zealand, Modern, Social History
ISBN: 9780429818080
Google: G0ZnDwAAQBAJ
Goodreads: 40986098
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2018-07-24T00:00:00+00:00

IV. The Missions: Genesis, Evolution and Demise

Marsden’s, Scott’s and Broughton’s disenchantment with the Aboriginal improvement should not obscure the fact that their pessimism was far from being universally shared. In the period between 1820 and 1850 the directors of principal Protestant missionary societies refused to accept that Indigenous Australians were incapable of “moral improvement”, undertaking several major attempts to Christianise and civilise the Aborigines. Our discussion of the civilising efforts in Australia would be incomplete without a closer examination of their efforts.

Jean Woolmington pointed out that “[f]rom the first time of the official mission established by the Wesleyan Missionary Society in 1821 until the closure of Buntingdale in the Port Phillip District in 1848, only a handful of Aborigines, mostly infants, were baptised”.99 Missionaries, on the whole, manifestly regarded baptism as the ultimate embodiment of moral improvement and a victory of “true” religion over “false prejudice”, which allowed fresh converts to join the ranks of their more “civilised” Christian brethren. Protestant European countries, while being in the vanguard of industry and commerce, also professed a version of Christianity, which “embodied the peak of religious perfection”.100 Their missionaries willy-nilly carried with them the spirit of modernity as part of their cultural baggage wherever they went, becoming in this respect, disseminators of the Enlightenment as well as of Christianitian civilisation.

The 11 missionaries of the London Missionary Society, who arrived in Sydney from the strife-ridden Tahiti in May 1798, were the first to try their hand at converting the Aborigines. In September of the same year, as they were still trying to find their feet in the colony, the missionaries had already given the subject of Aboriginal conversion some thought. In a letter to their directors they outlined their basic strategy, which hinged on their acquisition of the Aboriginal language prevalent in the immediate area of Port Jackson;

many of them (Aborigines) who frequent the towns are considerably civilized, and can speak tolerable English, from whom we expect to get a vocabulary of the language, and through whose medium we hope shortly to be able to do something towards their own instruction, and the instruction of other natives.101

A year later the missionaries seem to have lost all enthusiasm for missionary work in the colony. They admitted that their initial “views (about the success of the mission) had been too beclouded and not so sanguine”.102 It is impossible to be completely sure, but it is very likely that the missionaries did not take any concrete steps implement their initial plan. One of the missionaries soon informed the secretariat that they had been, perhaps, too optimistic their ability to Christianise the Aborigines, as “at the time they knew but little about their manner of life, customs, and dispositions”. Their superficial knowledge of Aboriginal culture and languages, argued the missionaries, “render[ed] their being useful to them … almost impossible at present”.103 The letter from the directors of LMS, where the latter urged the missionaries to “find opportunity of attempting conversion of the Aborigines”, apparently did little to

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