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The Road to Botany Bay: An essay in spatial history
The Road to Botany Bay, first published in 1987 and considered a classic in the field of cultural and historical geography, examines the poetic constitution of colonial society. Through a far-reaching exploration of Australia's mapping, narrative description, early urbanism, and bush mythology, Paul Carter exposes the mythopoetic mechanisms of empire. A powerfully written account of the ways in which language, history, and geography influenced the territorial theater of nineteenth-century imperialism, the book is also a call to think, write, and live differently.
416 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1987
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About the author
Paul Carter
155 books90 followersPaul Carter was born in England in 1969. His father's military career had the family moving all over the world, re-locating every few years. Paul has lived, worked, gotten into trouble and been given a serious talking to in England, Scotland, Germany, France, Holland, Norway, Portugal, Tunisia, Australia, Nigeria, Russia, Singapore, Malaysia, Borneo, Columbia, Vietnam, Thailand, Papua New Guinea, Sumatra, the Philippines, Korea, Japan, China, USA and Saudi Arabia. Today he lives in Perth with his wife, baby daughter and two motorbikes.
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Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
May 19, 2016
The Road to Botany Bay is a classic of post-colonial and or post-modern history, and it has been well worth a return visit nearly 30 years after it was first published, and nearly 20 years since I last read it. It is a tribute to Carter’s writing skills that it retains a freshness, and a comment on the conservatism of national histories that it continues to challenge dominant tropes in Australian/Imperial/Colonial history.
Carter’s model of imperial history as a form that “reduces space to a stage, that pays attention to events unfolding in time alone” (p xvi) is, undoubtedly, reductionist but it still retains a powerful element of truth about the dominant forms of Imperial/Colonial history. If anything, the politically conservative force in the former settler colonies – Australia, New Zealand, Canada, the USA – reinforce this tendency, naturalising the heroic settler myth of making the nation. The histories of these still settler states rely on a specific form of what Nico Poulantzas in 1978 called “historicity of a territory and territorialisation of a history” (see State Power and Socialism). Carter’s point, his critique of Imperial History, centres on showing how Imperial forces and settler societies in Australia (my major critique is that he does not adequately distinguish these forces) invent Australia by writing and drawing it into existence.
He makes exceptional use of ‘explorer’ journals, of surveyors’ charts and maps and of urban developers and designers maps and charts of their intended settlements. There is a strong focus on South East Australia, but with a powerful presence of the central desert area as early European settlers in the south, sought the (non-existent) inland sea as well as paths across Australia. But more that drawing/charting the place, Carter explores the ways these newcomers wrote the space into existence, how they deployed metaphor and imagery/imaginary forms to make sense of the new place they were seeing and in doing so shaped and formed how we see the new land.
There have, undoubtedly, been many excellent piece of work shaped, influenced and inspired by this approach – for instance, I have found Giselle Byrnes’ Boundary Markers: Land Surveying and the Colonisation of New Zealand helpful in making sense of aspects of the invention of New Zealand. This is not the only way to approach spatialisation or spatial history in settler colonies, however, as can be seen in Hugh Brody’s (now nearly 40 year old) Maps and Dreams: Indians (sic) and the British Columbia Frontier exploring the tensions between indigenous and settler spatialisations/spatial histories.
Analyses of the kind Carter has developed have created space in colonial history to disrupt this Imperial History approach to trace more nuanced and subtle colonial cultural dynamics as well the explore ways that colonial space was made. Re-reading this in the light of 30 years of colonial history, however, reminds me just how powerful the imperial history model is, how imbued to dominant historical narratives of (new) nationhood and how far we’ve got to go in building historical analyses that recognise the transformations imposed by the conceptualisations of colonial space, and how much those narrative of (new) nationhood continue to marginalise and write out of the nation its first peoples. It remains a powerful challenge.
Carter’s model of imperial history as a form that “reduces space to a stage, that pays attention to events unfolding in time alone” (p xvi) is, undoubtedly, reductionist but it still retains a powerful element of truth about the dominant forms of Imperial/Colonial history. If anything, the politically conservative force in the former settler colonies – Australia, New Zealand, Canada, the USA – reinforce this tendency, naturalising the heroic settler myth of making the nation. The histories of these still settler states rely on a specific form of what Nico Poulantzas in 1978 called “historicity of a territory and territorialisation of a history” (see State Power and Socialism). Carter’s point, his critique of Imperial History, centres on showing how Imperial forces and settler societies in Australia (my major critique is that he does not adequately distinguish these forces) invent Australia by writing and drawing it into existence.
He makes exceptional use of ‘explorer’ journals, of surveyors’ charts and maps and of urban developers and designers maps and charts of their intended settlements. There is a strong focus on South East Australia, but with a powerful presence of the central desert area as early European settlers in the south, sought the (non-existent) inland sea as well as paths across Australia. But more that drawing/charting the place, Carter explores the ways these newcomers wrote the space into existence, how they deployed metaphor and imagery/imaginary forms to make sense of the new place they were seeing and in doing so shaped and formed how we see the new land.
There have, undoubtedly, been many excellent piece of work shaped, influenced and inspired by this approach – for instance, I have found Giselle Byrnes’ Boundary Markers: Land Surveying and the Colonisation of New Zealand helpful in making sense of aspects of the invention of New Zealand. This is not the only way to approach spatialisation or spatial history in settler colonies, however, as can be seen in Hugh Brody’s (now nearly 40 year old) Maps and Dreams: Indians (sic) and the British Columbia Frontier exploring the tensions between indigenous and settler spatialisations/spatial histories.
Analyses of the kind Carter has developed have created space in colonial history to disrupt this Imperial History approach to trace more nuanced and subtle colonial cultural dynamics as well the explore ways that colonial space was made. Re-reading this in the light of 30 years of colonial history, however, reminds me just how powerful the imperial history model is, how imbued to dominant historical narratives of (new) nationhood and how far we’ve got to go in building historical analyses that recognise the transformations imposed by the conceptualisations of colonial space, and how much those narrative of (new) nationhood continue to marginalise and write out of the nation its first peoples. It remains a powerful challenge.
February 19, 2008
This is the most tragically neglected book I can think of. Beautifully written, it explores the history of exploration and colonialism in Australia by examining representations of the landscape from the journals and maps of Captain Cook to the bureaucratic renderings of the Australian state. More than any other book I've read, it illuminates the nature of colonialism in general by showing us the specificities of settler colonialism. Representations of the Australian landscape had first to erase the presence of the Aborigines and then to render it as "home." Carter's brilliant depiction of what he calls the "spatial history" of Australia taught me not only about Australia's settler colonialism but also, by contrast, much about other forms of imperialism. I am dumbfounded by the fact that this book has received so little attention in studies of colonialism, and that it is out of print.
January 12, 2015
What in the actual fuck was Master Carter smoking?
February 16, 2014
Paul Carter's insightful book on early settlement in Sydney and he engages imaginative research to explore how the early settlers and Australian Aboriginals interacted and the differences in their relationship to land. Fascinating. His ideas and approach was really helpful for my MFA thesis.
The link on Goodreads to Paul Carter isn't the Paul Carter that wrote this book.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Car...
The link on Goodreads to Paul Carter isn't the Paul Carter that wrote this book.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Car...
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews