Australia - Racism and Emigration
George Cruikshank
£454
Rare Books, Manuscripts, Maps & Photographs
Auction: 21 September 2023 at 10:00 BST
Description
Probable Effects of Over Female Emigration, or Importing the Fair Sex from the Savage Islands in Consequence of Exporting all our own to Australia!!!. Hand-coloured etching by George Cruikshank, 16 x 40.5 cm, pasted into a Victorian scrapbook with other lithographs, etchings, cartoons, some of Crystal Palace; includes large double page cartoon "The Australian Gold Diggings. A Stirling Picture. The Consequences of the Diggins over there", 33 x 49cm [n.d.]
Footnote
Note: From its first colonisation, men outnumbered women in Australia to a huge degree, resulting in grave social problems for the new colony. Active attempts to address the imbalance included drives for women in Britain to emigrate. Cruikshank's now very politically incorrect cartoon imagines that the supposed departure of women who took up offers of assisted passage to Australia has created a critical shortage of women in England. His dockside scene depicts a large gathering of Pacific Island women - all of whom are stereotyped as "savages" with exaggerated features, who have responded to the desperate call of the assembled pallid Englishmen, greeting them upon arrival.
The satirical etching is an example of 19th-century racist stereotyping.