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| Subject: Eureka letter | |
Author: Ian (Australia) | [ Next Thread |
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] Date Posted: 19:38:39 11/29/04 Mon We have just had the 150th anniversary of the Eureka uprising, in which gold miners in Victoria created a bit of a ruck because of the cost of mining licences and lack of representation, resulting in a relatively small amount of bloodshed. The event tends to be used to symbolise calls for a republic, as a chance to bash the evil colonising Brits, etc, etc, etc, so I stuck my oar in on the other side. Attentive readers will note facts pinched from Steph's posts. ============================ The main thing to be gained from comparing the Eureka conflict and the Boston Tea Party ("Time to reclaim this legend as our driving force", Herald, November 29) is an awareness of how much the British world had changed between the 1770s and the 1850s: American complaints about taxation without representation were rejected, while those raised at Eureka were swiftly addressed. The American conflict began in April 1775 and independence was not declared until July 1776, after more than a year of bloody struggle had failed to achieve the initial aims. Within a year of the Eureka uprising, on the other hand, Victoria, NSW and Tasmania had already achieved responsible government, with South Australia and Queensland following by the end of the decade. This helps to explain why it has never been necessary for Australia to break with Britain - the source of our independence, not its opponent - and why Australians were so prepared to fight to defend the old country in 1915. There is no need to establish a league table of national myths, with ANZAC and Eureka somehow at odds with each other: the two tales symbolise different aspects of the same story. ============================ The aim of these letters of mine is basically to try and reinforce Australia's connections with Britishness, rather than let mindless, parochial nationalism hold the field unopposed. My fellow Australians must remember that it is perfectly coherent to be proud of being Australian and proud of being part of the British world at the same time. I think this is a necessary step before talk of CANZUK can start to make any sense to them at all. [ Next Thread | Previous Thread | Next Message | Previous Message ] |
| [> Subject: Well done again! | |
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Author: Paddy (Scotland) [ Edit | View ] |
Date Posted: 10:52:18 11/30/04 Tue I fully agree that raising awareness of our common heritage, even on a small scale is very important. One thing that I have never understood is the attitude adopted by many in Aus & NZ (and perhaps Canada - but I don't know) where they blame the "British" for less savoury incidents in their history and say, almost in the same sentence, that their nation was built not by the British but by them. The latter is true, but they wish to pass on the bad aspects of history to the "British" without acknowleging that all of their political and legal systems and most of the things that have made these countries good places to live are also British in character. Perhaps it has something to do with Britain's near-catastrophic, Socialist-led collapse in the late twentieth century that people wanted to dissociate themselves away from Britain in decline. Also out in Oz, some people would tell me that they were "Norwegian" or anything else non-British when their name was "Ryan" or "Smith" and all of their relatives, except for one female grandparent, were of British descent. Please, can anybody from Australia, New Zealand or Canada explain my observations or tell me if it is not relevent to their experiences? [ Post a Reply to This Message ] |
| [> [> Subject: I think it has a lot to do with the wish to be exotic | |
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Author: Ian (Australia) [ Edit | View ] |
Date Posted: 16:06:49 11/30/04 Tue Ironically, it could be seen as reinforcing the fact that "British" is not an ethnicity, and that "britishness" is so fundamental to our society that we don't even refer to it. [ Post a Reply to This Message ] |
| [> Subject: Hehe | |
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Author: Ed Harris (Venezia) [ Edit | View ] |
Date Posted: 12:22:21 11/30/04 Tue Come on, you can't say that you haven't had exactly the same experiences in Britain itself! "Oh," says some posh chap with the name Sebastian Sacheverell Montpellier Smythe-Stewart, "I'm not rahly British, you know. No indeed. My great grandmother was from Azerbaijan, so you see." Everyone is bending over backwards to try and dig up something exotic in their ancestry. And the only people who don't are the immigrants. I, for example, descended from a bunch of Polish rabbis and Ukranian slug-farmers or some such ghastly thing, am happy to call myself British. Ditto my other half, who is Indian. Once again, the Yanks have stolen a march on us with an innovative solution to the problem: hyphen-culture. Long ago, they realised that immigrants who were completely integrated were in some way ashamed of themselves for being so integrated, and would call themselves all sorts of daft things which they were evidently not. Step in the Italian-Americans, African-Americans, Polish-Americans... Bravo. Might not work here, though, where we have a much more cultural rather than racial conception of nationality. [ Post a Reply to This Message ] |
| [> Subject: racial ancestry | |
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Author: Owain (UK) [ Edit | View ] |
Date Posted: 16:17:11 12/01/04 Wed For some rediculous reason every chav will claim that he/she is half Cipriot/Spanish/Portugese/Italian, its so stupid. My mother is English and apparently my grand mother is German by birth. Oh woopy doo. I am Welsh, British, no more no less. Here I was born and here I shall die. [ Post a Reply to This Message ] |
| [> [> Subject: Youngsters | |
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Author: Jim (Canada) [ Edit | View ] |
Date Posted: 16:37:20 12/01/04 Wed And hopefully, one day you will be able surf off the coast of Australia or fish in an Ontario lake without needing to take a passport to do either! [ Post a Reply to This Message ] |
| [> [> [> Subject: too right, Jim: broader vision is a good thing | |
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Author: Ian (Australia) [ Edit | View ] |
Date Posted: 16:45:42 12/01/04 Wed [ Post a Reply to This Message ] |
| [> [> Subject: Unfortunately, 'chavs' are usually patriotic about the wrong country | |
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Author: Roberdin [ Edit | View ] |
Date Posted: 16:45:16 12/01/04 Wed [ Post a Reply to This Message ] |
| [> [> [> Subject: very true | |
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Author: Owain (UK) [ Edit | View ] |
Date Posted: 16:48:39 12/01/04 Wed That they are. I remeber my scottish P.E teacher having to explain to some english chavs at my shcool that England and Scotland were united. [ Post a Reply to This Message ] |
| [> [> [> [> Subject: That is dispicable. The BBC should have a You and Your Country hour aimed at youngsters. | |
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Author: Roberdin [ Edit | View ] |
Date Posted: 22:56:57 12/01/04 Wed [ Post a Reply to This Message ] |
| [> [> [> [> [> Subject: Haha! | |
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Author: Ed Harris (Venezia) [ Edit | View ] |
Date Posted: 23:20:52 12/01/04 Wed Admirable as such a thing might be, it would be considered as absurd in this country as an oath of allegiance to the flag in schools. I think it more likely that Tony Blair were suddenly to reveal in parliament that he is actually a woman called Cissy Fairfax than that the BBC will ever embrace a policy which might be accused of patriotism! In the opinion of the left-leading media, patriotism is for new countries, propaganda-based despotisms and the USA - hardly places which exhibit much pukkah anti-narrow-nationalism. [ Post a Reply to This Message ] |
| [> [> [> [> [> Subject: agreed | |
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Author: Owain(UK) [ Edit | View ] |
Date Posted: 08:28:55 12/02/04 Thu I agree Roberdin. Though in all honesty why dont parents explain what the name of the country is and who the Queen is? My parnets did and I am all the better for it. [ Post a Reply to This Message ] |
| [> Subject: The Eureka uprising was the one I wrote this letter about, Owain | |
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Author: Ian (Australia) [ Edit | View ] |
Date Posted: 23:44:09 12/03/04 Fri [ Post a Reply to This Message ] |