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‘Contested Territory’: Colonial Queensland in the Writings of the Late Bill Thorpe (1943–2009)

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  26 February 2016

Denis Cryle
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Extract

This article provides an overview of the contribution to colonial Queensland studies by the late Bill Thorpe, explaining the reasons for his enduring association with Queensland, and reviewing his long-standing collaborations with former PhD supervisor Raymond Evans and members of the Ipswich Aboriginal community. It argues that the belated appearance of his doctoral thesis on the subject was a significant intellectual event in seeking to theorise colonialism in Queensland, drawing upon interdisciplinary insights and examples. The article spans his career, from the ambitious class analysis of his early writing to an assessment of his local study of the Deebing Creek Reserve in late career, in order to identify his strengths as a social and economic historian, and to situate his work in the context of generational change and the reconceptualisation of Queensland studies.

Type
Research Article
Information
Queensland Review , Volume 17 , Issue 1 , January 2010 , pp. 1 - 10
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 

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References

Notes

1 Evans, Raymond, ‘History on the Edge’, in Munro, Craig (ed.), The Writer's Press 1948-1998 (St Lucia: University of Queensland Press, 1998), pp. 187–89.Google Scholar

2 Thorpe, Bill, Colonial Queensland: Perspectives on a Frontier Society (St Lucia: University of Queensland Press, 1996).Google Scholar

3 Thorpe, Bill, Remembering the Forgotten: A History of Deebing Creek Aboriginal Mission in Queensland 1887-1915 (Adelaide: Seaviev, Press, 2004).Google Scholar

4 See, for example, Thorpe, Bill and Evans, Ray, ‘“;Frontier Transgressions”: Writing a History of Race, Identity and Convictism in Early Colonial Queensland’, Continuum 13(3) (1999), pp. 325-32; Ray Evans and Bill Thorpe, “'Commanding Men”: Masculinities and the Convict System’, Journal of Australian Studies 56 (1998), pp. 17–24.Google Scholar

5 Thorpe, Colonial Queensland, p. 186Google Scholar

6 Evans, Raymond, Sanders, Kay and Cronin, Kathryn, Race Relations in Colonial Queensland: A History of Exclusion, Exploitation and Extermination, 3rd ed. (St Lucia: University of Queensland Press, 1993).Google Scholar

7 Thorpe, Colonial Queensland, pp. 27–30.Google Scholar

8 Connell, R.W. and Irving, T.H., Class Structure in Australian History: Documents, Narrative and Argument (Melbourne: Longman Cheshire, 1980).Google Scholar

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10 Thorpe, Colonial Queensland p. 148.Google Scholar

11 Thorpe, Colonial Queensland, Table 2.1, p. 70.Google Scholar

12 Fitzgerald, Ross, A History of Queensland: From the Dreaming to 1915 (St Lucia: University of Queensland Press, 1982) and Ross Fitzgerald, A History of Queensland from 1915 to the 1980s (St Lucia: University of Queensland Press, 1984).Google Scholar

13 Thorpe, Colonial Queensland, p. 197.Google Scholar

14 Thorpe and Evans, “'Frontier Transgressions'”, pp. 325–32.Google Scholar

15 Evans and Thorpe, “'Commanding Men'”, pp. 17–24.Google Scholar

16 Thorpe, Bill, ‘“;Frontiers of Discourse”: Assessing Revisionist Australian Colonial Contact Historiography’, Journal of Australian Studies 46 (1995), pp. 34–45.Google Scholar

17 Richard Broome, ‘Aboriginal Victims and Voyagers: Confronting Frontier Myths’, Journal of Australian Studies 42 (1994), pp. 70–77.Google Scholar

18 Thorpe, ‘Frontiers of Discourse’, p. 36.Google Scholar

19 Thorpe, ‘Frontiers of Discourse’, p. 41.Google Scholar

20 Thorpe, ‘Frontiers of Discourse’, p. 39.Google Scholar

21 Evans and Thorpe, ‘Commanding Men’.Google Scholar

22 Thorpe and Evans, “'Frontier Transgressions'”, p. 325.Google Scholar

23 Evans, Raymond, A History of Queensland (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2007).Google Scholar

24 Thorpe, Remembering the Forgotten, p. v.Google Scholar

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27 Thorpe, Remembering the Forgotten, p. ix.Google Scholar

28 Thorpe, Remembering the Forgotten, p. ix.Google Scholar

29 Thorpe, Remembering the Forgotten, p. 67.Google Scholar

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31 Thorpe, ‘Frontiers of Discourse’, p. 45.Google Scholar