Exploring Australian National Identity

Heroes, Memory and Politics

Jed Donoghue, Bruce Tranter

• Publisher: Emerald Publishing Limited
• Year: 2018
• Print ISBN: 9781787565067
• eBook ISBN: 9781787565050
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Personality in Psychology
• Index: Social Sciences

This book explores the attitudes and values of Australians, analysing how Australian national values are promoted and reflected by heroic figures (both living and dead) who are identified as important and influential. 

Who are the 'heroes, saints and sages' that exemplify the Australian national character? Who do Australians, as citizens of a settler society, nominate as their contemporary heroes? What is the role of colonial and post-colonial figures regarding contemporary Australian identity? This book reassesses the influence of convicts, bushrangers, Ned Kelly, the ANZACS, sporting heroes, and the nation's most 'important people' in terms of national identity. 

Sporting 'heroes' such as Don Bradman, and historical figures like Ned Kelly might be expected to feature prominently but the authors identify other nationally important Australians, and gauge how well they symbolize Australian national identity. While collective 'heroes' such as the Anzacs are acclaimed in popular conceptions of national identity, Australians also identify with particular 'heroic' individuals who personify practical aspects of the national character and 'mythscape', including well known federal politicians, surgeons and scientists.

CHAPTER 1

CONVICTS

1.1. INTRODUCTION

What counts here are not blood ties, real or alleged, but a spiritual kinship, proclaimed in ideals that are allegedly derived from some ancient exemplars in remote eras. The aim is to recreate the heroic spirit (and the heroes) that animated ‘our ancestors’ in some past golden age; and descent is traced, not through family pedigrees, but through the persistence of certain kinds of ‘virtue’ or other distinctive cultural qualities, be it of language, customs, religion, institutions or more general personal attributes (Smith, 1999, p. 58).

In this chapter, we examine claims of convict ancestry, which we argue are at least partly, identity claims. Our survey data show that those who lay claim (or reject) convict ancestry differ according to their social background, particularly in terms of their, age, social class location and political affiliations. In earlier research, we found that ‘younger, left-leaning, working-class Australians are most likely to identify as convict descendants, while older, high income, educated, city dwellers are least likely to identify’ (Tranter & Donoghue, 2003, p. 555). We interpreted these findings as indicating more than an attachment via direct blood ties to the early transportees, and suggested that claims of convict ancestry constitute a form of identity claim for many Australians.

In this chapter, we extend our earlier research in two ways. First, we draw upon the recent survey data to examine whether the proportion of Australians claiming to have convict ancestors has changed over time, and whether the social background associations we found almost a generation ago are still apparent in contemporary Australia. Second, we add an international comparative element. In addition to asking whether Australians are descended from convicts, we also asked British citizens whether they have ancestors who were transported to the former British colonies as convicts. Our expectations are that similar to Australians in our earlier study, contemporary Australians and Britons will exhibit differences in social background in terms of who claims convict ancestry and who does not.

1.2. CLAIMING CONVICT ANCESTRY

The celebrations marking the bicentennial of Australian white settlement in 1988 saw a resurgence of interest in Australia’s colonial past. These celebrations gave scant recognition to indigenous Australians or early settlers, but amidst all the flag waving and self-congratulatory back slapping, brought to the fore those early ‘white’ Australians who did not arrive by choice – the convicts.

The transportation of convicts to Australia, according to Blainey (1966, p. 149), was in essence a form of compulsory, assisted migration, with approximately 162,000 convicts transported (Alexander, 2010, p. 1). However, convict heritage was often hidden and considered a ‘stain’ by later generations. For example, families developed fictional family trees and it was common for ‘aging ex-convict couples to be ostracised by their families’ (Hay, 2000, p. 3).

Attitudes began to change in the early 1960s and, as Horne (2008 [1964], p. 60) argued, ordinary people who ‘could claim an early arrival in the colony as an ancestor – even a convict’ gained some slight prestige. During the last decades of the twentieth century, it became more acceptable to acknowledge Australia’s convict heritage, rather than conceal it in the manner of previous generations (Fletcher, 1992).

Re-enactments were the order of the day during the bicentennial celebrations of 1988, including convict trials and floggings, sanitised and romanticised for the consumption of younger Australians (Fletcher, 1992; Sayle, 1988). It became fashionable to uncover a convict ancestor. Early arrivals, especially on the first fleet, were particularly welcome finds (Sayle, 1988, p. 45), with convict ancestry ‘one of the most sought-after prizes of genealogical inquiry’ (Bennett, 1988, p. 41).

The significance of convict identity in Australia is linked to what Hughes calls the ‘twin pressures to forget and mythologise’ (1987, p. 158). In the United Kingdom, Australians are often referred to as ‘convicts’ and prisoners of Her Majesty, yet the transportation of their own family members from the United Kingdom is downplayed. According to Smith, ‘genealogy and presumed descent ties, popular mobilisation, vernacular languages, customs and traditions are the elements of an ethnic conception of the nation’ (1991, p. 12).

Smith (1996, 1999) identifies three key features of ‘myth and memory’ necessary for the renewal and resurgence of nationalism: a golden age, an elect ethnic group or chosen people and a promised land. The original Australian golden age has been related to the convicts, free settlers and gold miners who carved out the British colonies. Foundation myths, concerning these convicts, bushrangers and gold miners, form an element of the national history and provide a shared memory.

In this instance, the emigrant-colonists who were the ‘chosen people’ (Smith, 1999, p. 137) were predominantly English, Irish and Scots, and a small number of Welsh (Ward, 1978 [1958], p. 47), who ‘subdued’ the indigenous population and repelled ‘external enemies’ such as the French (Phillips, 1996, p. 108). The ‘promised land’ was a great southern continent, dry and hot, but ripe for European exploration, colonisation and development.

In contrast to the early convict arrivals, who could scarcely have regarded the continent as their ‘God-given’ homeland, contemporary Australians are tied by ‘an egalitarian myth’ and their ‘continued freedom and prosperity’ (Smith, 1999, p. 135). Although Horne (2008 [1964]) used his subsequently well-worn phrase in an ironic sense, in popular culture Australia is frequently referred to as the ‘lucky country’. Claiming convict heritage taps directly into the foundation myths and collective memory of Australia, and links contemporary citizens with the ‘chosen’ (and in this case ‘chained’) few who helped to establish the modern Australian nation.

The topic presented in this chapter is situated within a body of research that examines aspects of national identity in Australia (e.g. Jones, 1997; Pakulski & Tranter, 2000a, 2000b; Phillips, 1996, 2000), and cross-nationally (e.g. Jones & Smith, 2001; Pakulski & Tranter, 2002) using quantitative, survey-based approaches. For example, for Jones (1997, p. 291), ‘Australian nativism’ is a form of identity that ‘looks backward to a vision of Australia that is fading’, while ‘civic culture’ is ‘a more abstract and open concept, looks forward to a future already in the making’. Similarly, Pakulski and Tranter (2000b) mapped the social background of their ‘ethno-national’ and ‘civic’ national identity types. Their ‘ethno-nationals’ stressed ‘the importance of more ‘‘primordial ties’’ acquired by birth and long residence, the ties that bind us to the ethnically defined and culturally circumscribed nation’ while ‘civic’ identity was characterised by ‘the centrality of voluntary ties, interdependence and shared commitments to the core institutions of a society’ (Pakulski & Tranter, 2000b, p. 218). Pakulski and Tranter (2000b) found that the tertiary educated, baby boomers and middle classes were more likely to associate with a ‘civic’ form of identity. On the other hand, their ‘ethno-nationalists’ were more likely to be born before World War II and tended to be less educated, more religious (particularly Anglican) and to be married or partnered (2000b, p. 213).

Our research differs from earlier Australian quantitative research on national identity in at least one important way. Earlier studies (e.g. Jones, 1997; Pakulski & Tranter, 2000b; Phillips, 1996) based their findings upon attitudinal survey questions constructed by researchers to tap various aspects of national identity. By contrast, our research relates to actual historical events – in this case the transportation of convicts to former British colonies, to what later became states of Australia. By considering the characteristics of those who claim to have convict ancestors, we attempt to examine a more grounded identity claim, although a form of identity that is not necessarily essentialist. Nevertheless, claiming convict ancestry may constitute a claim to (mainly) British or Irish ethnic identity of a particular type, because as Lambert (2002, p. 119) p...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title Page
• Introduction
• Chapter 1 Convicts
• Chapter 2 Free Settlers
• Chapter 3 Ned Kelly
• Chapter 4 Anzacs
• Chapter 5 Sporting Heroes
• Chapter 6 Influential and Important Australians
• Conclusions
• References
• Index