Abstract
This chapter considers Trollope’s examination of the tensions between indigenous and introduced species in his travelogue Australia and New Zealand (1873). Examining his engagement with “ecological imperialism,” it discusses his representation of Australian native animals, which Trollope frequently depicts as lacking in vigor, and the difficulties that they often faced when confronted with predatory species introduced from Europe. The chapter addresses what it means to be a “pest” in nineteenth-century Australia, while considering how discussions of native animals became conduits for wider debates surrounding invasion and guilt. The chapter considers the animal as a commodity, while engaging with questions of exoticism and domestication, seeking to situate Trollope in relation to the work of regional Acclimatization Societies within Australia.
I gratefully acknowledge the support of the Australian Research Council (Project CE110001011) and the Centre of Excellence for the History of Emotions.
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Notes
- 1.
See Fullerton (2009) for a thorough account of the background to Trollope’s trip and his characteristically energetic approach to describing Australian settler culture. Fullerton notes, “few visitors to Australia have ever worked so hard at seeing everything, learning about Australian institutions and customs, observing locals at work and at play, and covering so much ground, as did Anthony Trollope” (41). Trollope (1947) writes about his visit to Australia in Chapter 19 of his Autobiography, where he details relentless travel across Australia, and his surprise at the travelogue’s success.
- 2.
Flinders’s predecessor, the explorer James Cook, seems to have been more skeptical about the use value of native animals, commenting of his “endeavours for stocking this Country with usefull [sic] Animals” and bemoaning the fact that indigenous Australians killed and ate creatures intended as breeding pairs (quoted in Withey 1989, 242).
- 3.
See, for example, Lawson’s “The Bush Undertaker” and “In a Dry Season” (Lawson, Penguin Henry Lawson).
- 4.
A “selector” was a person who obtained lands held by the Crown in order to settle on them and engage in agricultural activities. According to Davidson, the arrival of the European rabbit in 1861 created additional problems for sheep farmers, as its rapid spread—and burrowing—rendered land unsuitable for flocks. While little is known about how sheep selectors managed to sustain themselves between 1860 and 1880, Davidson contends that some kept afloat by working as farmhands for squatters on their enormous sheep stations, while others lived on the crops they grew and animals they farmed. For a detailed discussion of sheep farming in Australia, see Davidson (1991), 56–76.
- 5.
Trollope (1873, 118); hereafter cited parenthetically in the text as A&NZ followed by volume and page number.
- 6.
Trollope seems to have at least partially reconsidered his position in the years following his visit, presenting a critique of the despoliation of the land during the gold rush in John Caldigate (Trollope 1879).
- 7.
We know from Grossman and Wright (1976) that Trollope owned eight books on Australia, which he later culled from his library (52).
- 8.
According to Pople and Grigg (1999), “during 1877–1907, almost eight million kangaroos and wallaroos were presented for bounty payments in Queensland”; however, they also observe that these attempts to “manage” the kangaroo population coincided with a rise in the trading of its skins. It would therefore seem that through representing the kangaroo as a pest, settler society was able to justify its slaughter.
- 9.
Towards the end of the autobiographical chapter devoted to his time in Australia, Trollope (1947) informs his reader, “my mind was full of hunting as I came back” (216).
- 10.
Lever (1992) notes wryly that the “innate conservatism of the British palate” presented major difficulties for those wishing to promote colonial wildlife as an alternative food source (97).
- 11.
See, for instance, the Advertisements page in The Athenaeum, December 26, 1868, 868.
- 12.
The term “Country” is almost ineffable and encompasses not only the land, but all of its inhabitants, regardless of whether they are native to the climate or introduced. Rose emphasizes the multidimensionality of Country and its many interconnections across species and time (8).
- 13.
As historians including Bill Gammage have outlined, indigenous Australians did “manage” the land, but in a way that was sensitive to its climate—fire, for example, was used in a controlled manner to clear land and to allow native trees to seed. See Gammage (2011) for an account of pre-invasion interactions between humans and flora and fauna.
- 14.
An anonymous reviewer in the Sydney Morning Herald expressed great surprise at Trollope’s assessment of the nation’s ophidiological life, observing, “What our friend Mr. Gerard Krefft, F.L.S., will say to this St. Patrick of letters, who has, by a magic stroke of his pen effected the emigration of nineteen out of the twenty-one ‘venomous snakes,’ of which, according to Mr. Krefft, we were the possessors, we are at a loss to conceive” (March 31, 1873, 2). While the review’s author enjoys many aspects of Trollope’s travelogue, he is somewhat scathing in his assessment of Trollope’s attitudes towards the Australian natural world.
- 15.
The St Paul’s Magazine did not publish any articles on Darwin during Trollope’s tenure as editor, but Henry Holbeach (1873) wrote a long piece in response to On Expression in Man and Animals in February 1873.
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Moore, G. (2017). Beasts, Birds, Fishes, and Reptiles: Anthony Trollope and the Australian Acclimatization Debate. In: Mazzeno, L., Morrison, R. (eds) Animals in Victorian Literature and Culture. Palgrave Studies in Animals and Literature. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-60219-0_4
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