We hear more and more frequently of "the Australian"

[Octavious]

So one of the distractions I've favoured during the Covid-19 silliness is reading through the archives of old newspapers to get a sense of changing perspective over the years. Obviously stories regarding the sinking of the Titanic and the start of the American Civil War are fascinating stuff, but even more so are the long forgotten everyday articles. One written in the 1920s talking about how Jane Austin novels (then 100 years old) feel remarkably modern as society has hardly changed was a real eye-opener.

This one, written in the late 1880s, is about the new fangled concept of "the Australian", as the English who had headed in that direction were beginning to be referred to. Enjoy!

We hear more and more frequently of "the Australian" and his separate characteristics, his courage, ambition, love of adventure, and peculiarities of hopefulness and cheeriness. The Englishman in Australia is becoming differentiated in physique, the usual or average man of the Southern Continent showing himself tall, sallow, or rather greyish, with a tendency to black hair, and a look in his eye of gazing at distance, that is not quite European, and all travellers begin to attribute to him a separate character. The usual conception of him may be wrong, probably is wrong, for the time has been insufficient ; but a conception is growing up of a very definite kind. The novelist or the dramatist who brought forward an Australian hero, he himself not knowing Australia, would depict him as an American, but with a trace in him of the joyousness, and breeziness, and freedom from the pressure of neighbours' opinions which the American is apt to lack. The Australian would display the tolerance in judgment and the largeness in design which distinguish his rival, but he would have neither the strength nor the strict limitations which the New Englander derives from his Puritan ancestry, would be a grower and drinker of wine, and would try most questions by a standard other than a painful conscientiousness. The Australian is more ready to spend than the American, though not more ready to give, and regards the possession of money more as a means to an end, and with less of the disposition to look upon "a pile" as a barometric test of success. Neither descendant has the English freedom from sensitiveness to criticism ; but where the American grows angry, not to say savage, the Australian is apt to develop a certain humorous scorn, as of one who is affronted, but is also too full of belief in his country to care much for verbal depreciation. Both " blow " tremendously, but the Australian has a vision of a happy, full-fed, and slightly careless population, when the American is thinking of a mighty community which no man may seriously oppose, but which is in no way free from "life's endless toil and endeavour," but is rather proud that it continues, and that life is nevertheless endurable. The best American does not repel the Englishman at all, is rather to him a subject of admiring study ; but the worst Australian attracts him somewhat, a difference curiously marked in the judgment passed on the American and the Australian criminal of the violent sort. Nobody in the world is worse than the Australian bushranger, usually a convict of the most evil type conceivable ; but the British public has not the feeling about him it has about the European or American brigand. It recognises something about him with which it quite involuntarily sympathises, some quality which entitles him to be shot in a skirmish instead of being hanged. Half-a-century hence, the Australian will be as thoroughly completed a figure in the popular imagination as the " Yankee " now is, and will be caricatured in Punch under as well defined a pictorial formula, which we venture to say will not strike Australians as displeasing.

[Octavious]

The Canadian, too, is becoming a definite figure to the British imagination, a little less real, we think, and lifelike than the Australian, but still distinct. Influenced by an instinct difficult to explain, the homestaying Briton, though he likes the French Canadian, taking him to be a simple, hard-working, feckless kind of being, given to cheerfulness and Catholicism, and wonderfully free from the American spirit of innovation, still insists on overlooking the French share in the Dominion, and pictures the Canadian to himself as a sort of frost-bitten Scotchman, intelligent, sober, good-humoured, but without the Yankee energy in going ahead. All novelists, so far as we know, draw the typical Canadian as fair—which he is not any more than the Englishman is—pleasant, and in his nature good, but reserved, cautions, and the least thing depressed, the latter, we feel sure, a traditional belief derived from Judge Haliburton's descriptions, once so universally known, and now suddenly and entirely forgotten. Canadians will write to us, we fear, entirely ridiculing this conception, and will probably have reason on their side; but it is the popular conception none the less, and one which has a definite influence on emigration. Our people expect kindliness in Canadians, and a kind of slow- footed judgment, and if they saw one on the stage, would look for him among the good people of the piece. A bad Canadian would seem to them somehow unnatural and unreasonable,—a fancy due, we believe, to the intense and, so far as our ex- perience teaches us, the well-founded impression that Arctic voyagers are exceptionally free from vice. The notion that Canada is a vast country, with ice for its chief product, is by no means extinct yet, and the qualities of Arctic voyagers are read into Canadians. The people have caught the truth that Canadians are a reasonable nation, free in the main from Southern defects, and have given them what would be, we suspect, their trite character if they were precisely what they wish themselves to be, and if they were not, as a people, so sharply and unmistakably divided.

[cdngooner]

This is typical of Victorian English thought - that foreigners' personality traits could be discerned just by their identification as "the Australian", "the Canadian", "the Hun" or "the Kaffirs." This train of thought could not conceive of these people as having individuality or free will.

[Octavious]

This train of thought could not conceive of these people as having individuality or free will.

Where do you get that idea? I don't see much difference between the tendency for people to make national generalisations then and now. The idea that such a tendency means foreign individuality and free will were beyond conception strikes me as a bizarre leap without any obvious foundation in evidence.

[cdngooner]

So is your position, based on your reading of Victorian history, that we today still talk about "The Hun" or "The Kaffir" as a monolithic generalized stereotype in the exact same way as the Victorians did? Or that the Victorians never used such language?

[dargorygel]

The Canadian, too, is becoming a definite figure to the British imagination, a little less real, we think, and lifelike than the Australian, but still distinct. Influenced by an instinct difficult to explain, the homestaying Briton, though he likes the French Canadian, taking him to be a simple, hard-working, feckless kind of being, given to cheerfulness and Catholicism, and wonderfully free from the American spirit of innovation, still insists on overlooking the French share in the Dominion, and pictures the Canadian to himself as a sort of frost-bitten Scotchman, intelligent, sober, good-humoured, but without the Yankee energy in going ahead. All novelists, so far as we know, draw the typical Canadian as fair—which he is not any more than the Englishman is—pleasant, and in his nature good, but reserved, cautions, and the least thing depressed, the latter, we feel sure, a traditional belief derived from Judge Haliburton's descriptions, once so universally known, and now suddenly and entirely forgotten. Canadians will write to us, we fear, entirely ridiculing this conception, and will probably have reason on their side; but it is the popular conception none the less, and one which has a definite influence on emigration. Our people expect kindliness in Canadians, and a kind of slow- footed judgment, and if they saw one on the stage, would look for him among the good people of the piece. A bad Canadian would seem to them somehow unnatural and unreasonable,—a fancy due, we believe, to the intense and, so far as our ex- perience teaches us, the well-founded impression that Arctic voyagers are exceptionally free from vice. The notion that Canada is a vast country, with ice for its chief product, is by no means extinct yet, and the qualities of Arctic voyagers are read into Canadians. The people have caught the truth that Canadians are a reasonable nation, free in the main from Southern defects, and have given them what would be, we suspect, their trite character if they were precisely what they wish themselves to be, and if they were not, as a people, so sharply and unmistakably divided.

Whispers: "cheerfulness"

[Octavious]

So is your position, based on your reading of Victorian history, that we today still talk about "The Hun" or "The Kaffir" as a monolithic generalized stereotype in the exact same way as the Victorians did? Or that the Victorians never used such language?

My view is that treating the Victorians as a monolithic generalized stereotype in order to criticise their apparent use of monolithic generalized stereotypes is an unusual stance to take in an argument. If it is a joke it's rather clever, although the internet may not be the best medium for it.

[North Sea]

Oh how I curse my slow-footed judgment, sometimes, but intelligent and good-humoured I will take.

[Tom Bombadil]

This was fascinating. Thanks for sharing.

[MajorMitchell]

Strewth, stone the crows and don't get yer tits caught in the mangle, some pommy joker had a kangaroo loose in his top paddock when he scribbled that note from the asylum.
Octavious our Oracle is correct, all Skippies are not the same. I'm old enough to have been raised a racist and although I've spent several decades fighting my own racism it's still a work in progress.
When I was a Scallywag knee high to a grasshopper, I was indoctrinated to believe that there were many types of naughty Germans.
There were, we were indoctrinated, the nasty Hun, the brutish Bosche, the schwinehund Kraut, the sadistic Prussian, the haughty Hessian, all of whom were responsible for the Great War, or WW1. There was also a litany of wicked Germans responsible for WW2.
All of these racist stereotypes are incorrect.
I now regard Germans as generally being intelligent, humane, decent and friendly. I have a newer stereotype of Germans & it's that a damn lot of them are hardworking brilliant engineering types.
Germany as a nation is today an outstanding example of what is possible imho. Their leadership in European politics and economics is exemplary and Angela Merkel is in my opinion a great German Leader.
If I had to choose a national leader I'd choose Angela Merkel ahead of both Trumptoad, Boris Johnson, Macron and Australian PM Scomo..in a heartbeat..
My two top current international leaders are Angela Merkel and Jacinta Arden (New Zealand)

[MajorMitchell]

Delete the both in second last sentence

[Wusti]

Having been a 10 pound pom, migrating in the late 60s on the good ship Fairstar, whilst being less than knee high to a grasshopper, there can be no denying that there is a significant difference in both temperament and outlook between your average Australian and your average Brit, and in honesty the Victorians weren't too far wrong.
I think the lifestyle and sheer volume of sunlight makes a massive difference, and I know that when I returned to the old dart and lived there (Skeggie, Edi and Bognor in the main) that I nearly weren't completely stir crazy by the greyness of the joint.
Australia is a young country with wide open spaces, an excess of sun, sand and beaches and this, to my mind contributes to a generally generous and sunny disposition in the main (recalcitrant pom immigrants excepted).
Having also lived in the US and Canada for a year each, there can be no doubting the kinship between Aussies and our Canuck friends, despite having come to it from opposite directions (climatically speaking). Yanks however, one cannot but help feel contempt for in their myopic "US-centrism", and overwhelming ignorance, and arrogance. I cite their current idiot president as my evidence, despite the large number of liberals and enlighened ones who are obviously too lazy to vote.

Disclaimer on the above: I delight in oversimplifications and generalisations, and the opinion stated above are based purely on my own experience.

[Jamiet99uk]

At first I thought this would be a thread complaining about the frequency of Major Mitchell's posts.

[MajorMitchell]

So did I Dipcomrade Jamiet99uk as it happens.

[MajorMitchell]

The clue is in the use of "of" & not "from"..
If it had been we hear more and more frequently from the Australian then I'd be a reasonable suspect.