Abstract
The faith in progress was accompanied by a new pocket watch. It conceived of time in a different way, seeing it as a smooth line of progress from barbarism to civilisation. Moreover, time was no longer marked in centuries but in millenia. Just as the exciting future now extended countless centuries ahead, so the pitiable past lay far back in time.
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Notes
A. R. Wallace, ‘On the Progress of Civilization in Northern Celebes’, Transactions of the Ethnological Society of London, 1866, vol. 4, esp. p. 66.
‘Man only in Australasia’:cited in Bernard Smith, European Vision and the South Pacific 1768–1850 (London, 1960) p. 203.
Leichhardt’s observations: M. Aurousseau (ed.), The Letters of Ludwig Leichhardt (Cambridge, 1968) vol. 2, pp. 675, 757.
An Australian geography book: Alexander Sutherland, A New Geography for Australian Pupils (Melbourne, 1885) P. 8.
McLennan’s view: cited in Fred W. Voget, A History of Ethnology (New York, 1975) p. 256.
Melville and South Seas: Lee C. Mitchell, Witnesses to a Vanishing America: The Nineteenth-Century Response (Princeton, 1981 ) pp. 194, 196, 202.
Tylor: cited in Fred W. Voget, A History of Ethnology, p. 181; D.J. Mulvaney, ‘Discovering Man’s Place in Nature’, The Australian Academy of Humanities: Proceedings 1971 (Sydney, 1971) pp. 50–1.
The Russian zoologist: E. M. Webster, The Moon Man: A Biography of Nikolai Miklouho-Mackay (Melbourne, 1984) see p. 340 for Darwin, and p. viii for return to Russia.
Cuvier’s theory: John C. Greene, The Death of Adam (Iowa, 1959) esp. pp. 128–9, 235.
Peter Marris, Loss and Change (London, 1974) p. 6.
Primitive men like wild animals: John Lubbock, Pre-Historic Times (London, 1865) pp. 484–5.
Ages and stages of man: T. K. Penniman, A Hundred Years of Anthropology, London, 1952, pp. 69, 222
David Whitehouse in Andrew Sherratt ed., The Cambridge Encyclopedia of Archaeology (New York, 1980) pp. 18–19.
Morgan’s views: Whitehouse, p. 18; Lee C. Mitchell, Witnesses to a Vanishing America, 182; C. M. Hinsley Jr., Savages and Scientists (Washington, 1981 ) p. 135–6.
Engels misunderstands Morgan: Marvin Harris, The Rise of Anthropological Theory (New York, 1968) p. 246.
Marx and Engels on primitive society: Alfred G. Meyer, Marxism: The Unity of Theory and Practice (Harvard, 1970 ), pp. 55–7
Lewis S. Feuer, (ed.), Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels: Basic Writings (London, 1969)esp. p. 49n.
A Universal Gazetteer, (ed.) G. Landmann (London, 1840)see Terra del Fuego (sic).
European glass: J. C. Beaglehole (ed.), The Endeavour Journal of Joseph Banks 1768–71 (Sydney, 1961) vol. 1, p. 228.
Engraving depicts shapely furs: Sydney Parkinson, A Journal of a Voyage to the South Seas (London, 1773) opp. p. 7.
While I see this engraving as highly romanticised, it is interpreted as realistic and a stark comment on the savage by R. Joppien and B. Smith (eds), The Art of Captain Cook’s Voyages (Yale, 1985) vol. 1, pp. 16–17. The engraver was Thomas Chambers of London.
Glyndwr Williams, in Historical Studies (Melbourne, No. 77, October 1981) p. 510.
Survey of living anthropologists on warfare: Moni Nag, ‘Anthropology and Population’, Population Studies, 1973, vol. 27, p. 61.
Macaulay and classics: G. O. Trevelyan, The Life and Letters of Lord Macaulay (Oxford, 1932) vol. 1, p. 396–7, vol. 2, p. 139.
Macaulay’s 160 years of progress: Macaulay’s History of England (Everyman edn, 1957) vol. 1, p. 2.
Illiad locomotives: Richard Jenkyns, The Victorians and Ancient Greece (Oxford, 1980) p. 194.
Australian bishop: H. H. Heaton, Australian Dictionary of Dates (Sydney, 1879 ) p. 102.
Paris and punishment: Owen Chadwick, The Secularization of the European Mind in the Nineteenth Century (Cambridge, 1975) p. 259.
Strauss on Jesus: Albert Schweitzer, The Quest of the Historical Jesus: A Critical Study (London, 1911) ch. 7, 8.
Stanley’s sermon: Arthur P. Stanley, The Persian King: A Sermon Preached in Westminster Abbey… Sunday, June 22nd, 1873, pamphlet (London, 1873 ) p. 3.
Malthus’s influence: Arthur Koestler, The Act of Creation (London, 1966) pp. 140–3.
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© 1988 Geoffrey Blainey
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Blainey, G. (1988). A Pocket Watch for Progress. In: The Great Seesaw. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-10086-6_4
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-10086-6_4
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