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Rose’s letterbook and journal record much more the social aspects of expedition life: the importance of rank and class, the issue of appropriate dress, the protocols of official visits, as well as astute observations of the cultures the expedition encountered. Indeed the importance of these records is much more than their Australian content. This is a record of a major international Pacific scientific and exploring expedition – the voyage of the Uranie does not seem to have had geopolitical overtones – in which a major European power was attempting to define the Pacific region through science, documentation and art. Rose, for instance, also records important details about Timor (now a key ally of Australia but then still a Portuguese colony), Guam and the complex and fluid political situation in Hawaii. She also describes in some detail the baptism of Kalanimoku, a leading Hawaiian chief, into the Catholic faith. Kalanimoku was the first chief to be accepted into the Catholic church. It is a period in which Australia’s place in the Pacific was being written into a broader understanding of the region as a whole, and in this regard rich records such as this are not only internationally important, but also locally vital to a collection such as ours, as we document how our nation begins to be defined in European consciousness. Charles Duplomb’s edition of Rose’s journal, which is the basis of all recent editions of her work, omits significant proportions of the letter book, with many of the letters remaining completely unpublished. Duplomb based his work largely on the journal, incorporating material from the letter book only where there were gaps in the journal. While the two accounts are obviously similar, they present different emphasis and sometimes detail. Her letters about the expedition’s time in both Shark Bay and Sydney, for instance, are not published at all, and there is detail in them which is not in her Journal. |
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