Publications – Imperial Minerals

Race, Postcards, and the Visual Politics of Chinese Indenture in South African Gold Mines

Sarah Comyn — Tue, 20 Jan 2026 08:36:09 +0000

Dr Gigi Tang’s article, ‘Race, Postcards, and the Visual Politics of Chinese Indenture in South African Gold Mines’ has just been published in Victorian Studies! In this article, Gigi compares how three South African postcard publishers represented the arrival of the first indentured Chinese workers imported by the British Transvaal colony for the Witwatersrand mines following the Anglo-Boer War (1899–1902). Given the prevailing anti-Chinese sentiment, their arrival garnered considerable attention and scrutiny within South Africa, across the British empire, and beyond. Foregrounding Golden Age postcards as mass-produced collectibles and their publishers’ pursuit of profits, she argues for an ambivalent relationship between South African postcard and mining industries. While Frank A. Stauber’s use of border scenes in advertisements and Braune, Franssen & Co.’s selection and retouching of photographic images only subtly played on the controversy over the importation of Chinese labourers to South Africa, Sallo Epstein & Co. exploited the ongoing debates in a way that risked jeopardising the public image of the Transvaal government and its so-called Chinese experiment

Review of Anna Johnston and Elizabeth Webby’s Eliza Hamilton Dunlop: Writing from the Colonial Frontier

Alex — Mon, 02 Oct 2023 16:29:10 +0000

Abstract
Review of Eliza Hamilton Dunlop: Writing from the Colonial Frontier edited by Anna Johnston and Elizabeth Webb (Sydney University Press, 2021)

Review of Nikki Hessel’s Sensitive Negotiations

Alex — Mon, 02 Oct 2023 16:28:21 +0000

Review of Nikki Hessel’s Sensitive Negotiations: Indigenous Diplomacy and British Romantic Poetry (SUNY Press, 2021)

‘A vast field in itself’: Acclimatisation, Phrenology and Salvage Ethnography in the Goldfields Mechanics’ Institutes

Alex — Mon, 02 Oct 2023 15:01:46 +0000

Abstract
This article investigates the dual project of colonial improvement and settlement shaping the identity and purpose of Victorian goldfields mechanics’ institutes in their pursuit of colonial knowledge and their participation in networks of imperial science. Focussing on three institutes established during the first decade of the Australian gold rush—the Sandhurst Mechanics’ Institute (SMI, est. 1854), the Beechworth Athenaeum (est. 1856) and the Ballaarat Mechanics’ Institute (BMI, est. 1859)—this article examines the institutes’ support of acclimatisation societies and their interest in developing local natural histories; their fascination with and encouragement of debates surrounding phrenology; and their practices of collecting ethnographic material that shaped their involvement with the evolving theories of racial science in the Australian colonies. In studying these social and scientific activities, this article demonstrates how the institutes promoted and embodied a local settler identity and ideology that worked to alleviate the moral and social anxieties accompanying the gold rush. In doing so, this article also reveals the imperial reach of regional literary institutions and elucidates the scholarly benefits of treating these institutes as significant participatory nodes in imperial networks as we shift our focus from traditional metropole-colony exchanges.