A Due Observance of Justice? Protectors of Aborigines in Britain’s Australasian Colonies, 1837-1857

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This project will be the first comparative study of the Protectors of Aborigines in early colonial Victoria, South Australia, Western Australia and New Zealand. Appointed by Britain's imperial government to shield Indigenous peoples 'from cruelty, oppression and injustice', the protectors held an ambiguous office, struggling to reconcile the conflicting aims of colonial ambition and humanitarian sentiment. They sat at the nexus of imperial, settler and Indigenous interests, negotiating a convergence of philanthropic enthusiasm and settler expansion. The lives of the protectors offer a unique insight into the human cost of colonial endeavour, its moral dilemmas and its lasting legacies.