Made in England: Australia's British Inheritance (Quarterly Essay 12) by David Malouf
Melbourne: Black Inc., 2003 ISBN 1863953957
There is something about David Malouf's writing: clear-eyed and lucid, with a calm thoughtfulness that resonates with truth. This is so in his fiction, poetry, and non-fiction. One gets the feeling that spending an afternoon in his company would be a wonderful mind-expanding experience. Failing that, we read him, and this essay, discussing the English heritage and what it means in Australia.
Being a writer, Malouf uses language as the pivot to look at how Australia developed from an outpost created by British strategic needs of the time to the independent polity of today. Intriguingly, he argues that the change in English language between the time of the Puritan settlement of America and the convict settlement of Australia flowed through to influence the different ways our societies developed. The hard, combative English of the 1600s created the fractious American polity, while the more reasoned thoughtful language of the Enlightenment created in Australia a polity that was more open to compromise and arbitration. This is not the only accident of history that Malouf notes: surely, he writes, if Australia was settled earlier than 1788 the workforce would have consisted not of convicts, but slaves, which would have added a layer of history that would have resonated down to the present day as it has in America. We dodged a bullet of history there, he is suggesting.
Malouf also mentions things that have been forgotten by today's opinion writers and journalists: Australia had a lot to do with America since our formation. From the early visits of whalemen, through to the back-and-forth during the Gold Rush era, Australians and Americans were sharing lives, visiting each other, influencing each other's societies, building on the British foundations of both countries.
For that is the nub of Malouf's essay - that the British inheritance of Australia is also the inheritance of much of the Empire - we, as Australians have a common inheritance with so many other countries. So much so that as Malouf travels the world of writer's festivals, he can have a conversation with writers from India, Africa, the Caribbean and Asia and find that they have the same literary touchstones as himself, which connect these diverse cultures with a common thread. The diaspora of Empire, so influenced by Britain in the past, now return the favour, by creating a new Britain, reflecting back to the centre the many different ways the British inheritance can shine.
That common inheritance was enabled by something unique to the British, compared to their European neighbours: the ability for the Britishness to be transported and live independently from the geographical Britain from whence it came. More so than in France, or Germany, Britishness could exist in Melbourne, Auckland or Toronto virtually in the same way it existed in Manchester, Birmingham or Sheffield (although perhaps not so much in Delhi or Mombasa). Malouf makes the point that, even though Australia was on the periphery of Empire geographically, we were much more a part of the inheritance than our location may suggest. In Australia particularly, we were treated generously by the British Government, and allowed very much to develop on our own lines: our connection to America influenced our coming together as a Federation, when we took the best of the U.S. system and Westminster to create our own government.
The Quarterly Essay series has its ups-and-downs as a literary and cultural journal, but when it produces something good, it's really good. Malouf's essay is good in a way all good essays should be: it makes you think.
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