Acclimatising settlers: Simon Farley, ‘”Their beneficial effect upon a people”: settlers, songbirds and civilisation in nineteenth-century Victoria’, Settler Colonial Studies, 2025 | settler colonial studies blog

Acclimatising settlers: Simon Farley, ‘”Their beneficial effect upon a people”: settlers, songbirds and civilisation in nineteenth-century Victoria’, Settler Colonial Studies, 2025

31Jan25

Abstract: Through the figure of journalist and philanthropist Edward Wilson (1813–1878), this article explores the settler-colonial dimensions of the mid-nineteenth century acclimatisation movement in Australia. In the latter half of the 1850s, Wilson became obsessed with the new science of acclimatisation, which promoted the transportation of plants and animals across the planet for a variety of purposes. By importing familiar wildlife, especially birds, to Australia from the metropole, Wilson and his fellow acclimatisers hoped to ‘improve’ Australian landscapes and, consequently, the humans dwelling within those landscapes. In doing so, they also aimed to create a likewise ‘improved’ emulation of metropolitan society. By drawing links between Wilson’s promotion of acclimatisation, his rejection of convict transportation, and his interest in ‘civilising’ the Aboriginal peoples of Victoria, this article adumbrates the extent to which settler colonialism has shaped settlers’ feelings towards and interactions with flora and fauna.

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