Aborigines' Protection Society
The Aborigines' Protection Society (APS) was an international human rights organisation founded in 1837,
The Society published a journal variously entitled Aborigines' Friend, or Colonial Intelligencer, and Colonial Intelligencer and Aborigines' Friend, often abbreviated to Aborigines' Friend, from 1855 until its merger with BFASS in 1909. when the journals of the two societies were merged.[7][8]
Foundation
The
In 1835 Parliamentary MP
Around the same time, The Aborigines' Protection Society (APS) was established, "to ensure the health and well-being and the sovereign, legal and religious rights of the indigenous peoples while also promoting the civilization of the indigenous people who were subjected under colonial powers".[4] Other members brought experience from around the world: Saxe Bannister (Australia), Richard King (North America), John Philip (South Africa).[13] The founders were, on King's account, Buxton, Hodgkin, William Allen, Henry Christy, Thomas Clarkson, and Joseph Sturge.[14] Buxton, after the 1833 British abolition of slavery, had taken an interest in particular in the Cape Colony.
The Report of the APS in 1838 put the case that colonisation did not inevitably have detrimental effects on indigenous peoples, as conventional wisdom had it, even to the point of their extinction: if the effects were negative, that was a criticism of the plan and regulation for the colony.[15]
Activities
The Aborigines' Protection Society remained active for about 70 years.[13] It operated in Australia, New Zealand, Fiji, Canada, South Africa and the Congo. Its motto was Ab Uno Sanguine, meaning "Of One Blood" (from Acts 17:26). Its focus was on equal rights, as Equality before the law, for indigenous people, although it did not extend to the protection and preservation of the cultures of these peoples.[4] It aimed to achieve legislation that was not based on race, with "racial amalgamation". There was no commitment therefore to preserving the indigenous peoples as encountered.[16]
In 1840 the Society reported on the treatment of indigenous peoples of Upper Canada.[4]
The differing views of Buxton and Hodgkin on how to proceed caused some fundamental divisions in the early years. Hodgkin was interested in a forum for both scientific discussion (of early ethnology, a discipline that hardly yet existed separately from the study of language), and protective activities based on lobbying. Buxton shortly became caught up in the activist drive that led quickly to the Niger expedition of 1841, the failure of which was a huge personal blow and also drove missionary considerations into the background for a time. Hodgkin was unhappy with Buxton's published criticism of Elliott Cresson, and the general British disregard for Liberia as an abolitionist project. King issued a prospectus for the new Ethnological Society of London in 1842, following Hodgkin's view that the humanitarian and scientific objectives should from then on be pursued separately.[17]
In 1842 the purpose of the APS was restated: "to record the history, and promote the advancement, of Uncivilized Tribes".[18]
On Buxton's death in 1845, Samuel Gurney took over as President. Finances improved, and from 1847 Hodgkin had an assistant as Secretary on the payroll for a period, the activist Louis Alexis Chamerovzow.[19] Chamerovzow published on the rights of Māori in 1848, and worked on Charles Dickens as opinion-former,[20] with some success (as Dickens wrote to George Payne Rainsford James).[21] He was a perceptive analyst of the difficulties in reconciling the interests of indigenous people and settlers.[22]
Other campaigns included the case of a black man in the
In 1870 the APS bought
Publications
The Society published tracts, pamphlets, Annual Reports and a journal variously entitled The Aborigines' Friend, or, Colonial Intelligencer, Aborigines' Friend, or Colonial Intelligencer, Colonial Intelligencer and Aborigines' Friend, The Aborigines' Friend and the Colonial Intelligencer, also abbreviated to Aborigines' Friend, from 1855[7][19][24] until 1909.[8]
Hodgkin's concerns over the indigenous peoples in the
Merger
The Society continued until 1909, when it merged with the
See also
- Aborigines' Rights Protection Society
- Henry Fox Bourne
References
- ^ a b c Aborigines' Protection Society: Transactions,1837-1909 Archived June 18, 2008, at the Wayback Machine
- JSTOR 484052.
- ^ "ProQuest Database: Aborigines' Protection Society". ProQuest. Archived from the original on 9 September 2012.
- ^ a b c d e f g "Aborigines Protection Society". Quakers in the World. Retrieved 5 December 2020.
- ^ S2CID 146653844.
- ^ Joseph Foster (1872). A revised genealogical account of the various families descended from Francis Fox of St. Germans, Cornwall; to which is appended a pedigree of the Crokers of Lineham. pp. 3–.
- ^ a b "The Aborigines' friend and the colonial intelligencer[Catalogue entry]". National Library of Australia. Retrieved 4 December 2020.
Includes the Annual report of the Aborigines Protection Society, 1848-1867... Life date: Vol. 1, no. 1, n.s. (Jan./Dec. 1855)-
- ^ a b "The Anti-slavery reporter / under the sanction of the British and Foreign Anti-slavery Society [1846-1909] [Catalogue entry]". National Library of Australia. 3 September 2020. Retrieved 4 December 2020.
Volume title pages for 1846-1852 read: The British and Foreign Anti-Slavery Reporter.
- George W. Stocking, Jr., "What's in a Name? The Origins of the Royal Anthropological Institute (1837–71)", Man, New Series, Vol. 6, No. 3 (September 1971), pp. 369–390; Published by Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland. Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/2799027; PDF, at p. 372.
- ISBN 978-0-7546-3574-1. Retrieved 28 May 2012.
- ^ Amalie M. Kass and Edward H. Kass, Perfecting the World: The life and times of Dr. Thomas Hodgkin, 1798–1866 (1988), pp. 373–4.
- ISBN 9780665216800.
- ^ ISBN 978-0-8014-8876-4. Retrieved 24 April 2012.
- JSTOR 3014240.
- ^ William Binnington Boyce (1839). Notes on South-African Affairs. J. Mason. pp. 177–8. Retrieved 24 April 2012.
- ISBN 978-0-19-960415-9. Retrieved 29 May 2012.
- ^ Kass and Kass, p. 393, and pp. 402–3.
- ISBN 978-0-8248-1927-9. Retrieved 24 April 2012.
- ^ a b Kass and Kass, p. 377.
- ISBN 978-0-226-26163-8. Retrieved 24 April 2012.
- ISBN 978-0-19-812617-1. Retrieved 24 April 2012.
- ISBN 978-0-521-79283-7. Retrieved 24 April 2012.
- ISBN 978-0-7506-6446-2. Retrieved 27 April 2012.
- ISBN 978-1-84904-120-1.
- ISSN 1488-2353.
- ISBN 978-90-382-1340-8. Retrieved 24 April 2012.
- ISBN 978-0-415-99238-1. Retrieved 24 April 2012.
Further reading
- "Letters to the Aborigines' Protection Society". Letters to the Aborigines Protection Society. Growing database of letters written to the Society, includes photographs and transcripts.
- "British and Foreign Anti-Slavery and Aborigines' Protection Society (as filmed by the AJCP)". Trove. Date range: 2 May 1837–1895.
{{cite web}}
: CS1 maint: others (link) Includes many scanned manuscripts, freely available online. - Canada West and the Hudson's-Bay Company at Faded Page (Canada)
- Aborigines Protection Society: Report on the Indians of Upper Canada (London: W. Ball, Arnold, 1839)
- Thompson Chesson Scrapbooks From the Rare Book and Special Collections Division at the Library of Congress
- Documents and clippings about the Aborigines' Protection Society in the 20th Century Press Archives of the ZBW