Cultivating an Australian sentiment : John Christian Watson's narrative of white nationalism | Macquarie University ResearchOnline

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Title: Cultivating an Australian sentiment : John Christian Watson's narrative of white nationalism
Related: National identities, Vol. 9, Issue 4, p.351-368
DOI: 10.1080/14608940701737375
Publisher: Routledge
Date: 2007
Author/Creator: Hearn, Mark
Description: Contemporary observers and historians have interpreted Australia's first Labor Prime Minister, John Christian Watson, as an ideal leader for Labor's early participation in nation-building following the inauguration of the Commonwealth of Australia in 1901. Little attention has been paid to the values Watson brought to Labor's participation in nation-building. Race, defence and the 'cultivation of an Australian sentiment' formed the recurring themes of Watson's national narrative. Compelled by a need to fix an identity from the peripheral territories of empire as a British subject and the leader of white Australians in a nation, as he claimed, that 'we have made our own', Watson's narrative provides insights into the anxieties of racialised white identity in the federation period - an identity tested by conflicting class and national loyalties.
Description: 18 page(s)
Subject Keyword: defence
Subject Keyword: narrative theory
Subject Keyword: nationalism
Subject Keyword: race
Subject Keyword: White Australia policy
Resource Type: journal article
Organisation: Macquarie University. Dept. of Modern History

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