« South Australia as a laboratory of settler political traditions: Angela Woolacott, ‘Radical roots in Fiji: The impact of colonialism on Don Dunstan’, Griffith Review, 55, 2017, pp. 103-112
The literacies of colonialism and settler colonialism: Emma Battell Lowman, ‘Mamook Kom’tax Chinuk Pipa / Learning to Write Chinook Jargon: Indigenous Peoples and Literacy Strategies in the South Central Interior of British Columbia in the Late 19th Century’, Historical Studies in Education, 2017 »

Settler anxiety and missionary pacification: Sean Carleton, ‘Settler Anxiety and State Support for Missionary Schooling in Colonial British Columbia, 1849 –1871’, Historical Studies in Education, 2017

02May17

Abstract: Indigenous peoples and settlers engaged in innumerable conflicts in the colonies of Vancouver Island and British Columbia between 1849 and 1871. The constant threat of violent Indigenous resistance to settler colonization in the Pacific Northwest—both real and imagined—produced feelings of anxiety for settlers, especially state officials, that shaped colonial strategy and statecraft. To buttress colonial security, the nascent state partnered with Christian missionaries in the hope that missionaries could use education to cultivate the goodwill of Indigenous peoples and train them to accept colonization. The state’s support for early missionary schooling in colonial British Columbia is examined in the context of settler anxieties regarding three instances of Indigenous resistance: a Lekwungen convergence at Fort Victoria in 1851, the Puget Sound War of 1855–56, and the 1864 Tsilhqot’in War. In different ways, settler anxiety over these conflicts acted as a catalyst, prodding the state to support missionary schooling as a financially expeditious way of trying to contain Indigenous resistance and safeguard colonial security.


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