Book Review: Paul Carter's The Road to Botany Bay: An Exploration of Landscape and History.
The Skinny: Buy this out-of-print book right now before they are all gone. Who? Everyone, but especially anyone who works with narrative, history, landscape, colonialism, empire, and even linguistic theory.
This masterful work by Paul Carter revisits Australia's beginnings. Carter rejects previous Australian histories because they fail to understand the founding and exploration of Australia as one of the primary mechanisms of the colonial enterprise. Reframing Australian history in terms of the how explorers experienced (and dealt with their experiences of) Australia, Carter is able to show how even the simple act of naming attempted to incorporate Australia into the European imagination. Thus, explorers of the inner continent used imported Western geographical terms to describe Australia's unique environments. Early narratives of exploration, such the famous voyage of Capt. James Cook, demonstrate this point very well and are extremely enjoyable to read. Take this passage as an example:
Almost the greatest barrier to Australia's spatial history is the date 1788. On the one side, anterior to and beyond the limits of Australian 'history', lies a hazy geo-historical tradition of surmise, a blank sea scored at intervals down the centuries by the prows of dug-outs, out-riggers and, latterly, three-master; it is a 'thick horizon', a rewarding site of myth and speculation. But it lacks substance....
Carter is talking about Cook's journey--and suggesting that Australia's history prior to its discovery by the west is largely unrecoverable in historical terms--but it is lyrical and playful. This is probably because Carter also happens to write poetry, which is fairly evident throughout the text because of his sensational metaphors. His writing is sometimes repetitive, but he attacks Australian history from multiple angles, which often means revisting earlier material in creative ways. Creativity is the key here, for this work has too many intriguing theoretical contributions to list here. This volume is jam-packed with insights and observations that specialists and generalists will enjoy. Let me highlight what I believe is the most significant theoretical contribution that can easily be taken away from this volume: the distinction between explorers and taxonomists. Explorers approach a new land as something new and outside their experiences. When the map says "Here be dragons," they are eager to find out if they're there. Explorers are open to discovery, finding something genuinely new. Taxonomists, on the other hand, hope to incorporate whatever new items they find into their pre-existing taxonomy. This is, of course, the central point of Carter's text. Taxonomists are locked into seeing the world through European eyes. They fail to account for the new on its own terms. They can only bring what they already know. Australia is not a "new place," but one which has merely been extended into the West's geography. In other words, taxonomists are cheeky little monkeys who don't play nice with Australia.
Carter frames this history through an analysis of landscape and space, which makes this work essential reading for anyone who wants another work of theory to build from. If you've already read Keith Basso's Wisdom Sits in Places: Landscape and Language Among the Western Apache, then this should be next on your list. Carter's contribution will change the way you think about history, landscapes, places, names, colonization, empire, exploration, and Australia. Grab a copy of this seminal out-of-print book before they all disappear!
