Imagined Destinies: Aboriginal Australians & the Doomed Race Theory 1880–1939 - Softcover

McGregor, Russell

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0522847625 ISBN 13: 9780522847628

Publisher: Melbourne University Press, 1993

Synopsis

White Australians once confidently - if regretfullybelieved that the Aboriginals were doomed to extinction. Even in the 1950s, many Australian children were still being taught that the Australian Aboriginals were a dying race who would eventually disappear from the face of the earth.
In Imagined Destinies, Russell McGregor explores the origins and the gradual demise of the 'doomed race' theory, which was dominant in nineteenth-century European thinking and remained largely unquestioned until the 1930s. He shows that white perceptions of Australia's indigenous people and their future were shaped by Enlightenment ideas about progress, Darwin's new theories on the survival of the fittest, and other European philosophical concepts.
Imagined Destinies provides a challenging analysis and history of an idea that has exerted a powerful influence over white Australian attitudes to and policies for Aboriginal people. Indeed, is its long shadow still with us?

About this title

About the Author

Russell McGregor is a lecturer in the Department of History and Politics at the James Cook University of North Queensland.

Edition details

• Publisher: Melbourne University Press
• Publication date: 1993
• ISBN 10: 0522847625
• ISBN 13: 9780522847628
• Binding: Paperback
• Language: English
• Number of pages: 256