'The ordered behaviour of the individual himself' : Cecil Cook's biological politics

By examining the thinking of a major public health bureaucrat, Dr Cecil Cook, this article contributes to our understanding of the relationship between racial thought and liberalism in Australias administration of Aboriginal affairs. In Cooks appraisal of the health problems of northern Australia, 2 kinds of distinction were significant: racial (whites, Asiatics, Aborigines) and capacity for hygienic living. We argue that over the span of Cooks career as an administrator and commentator (192569) distinctions of capacity were more fundamental, for he assumed that both whites and Aboriginals could be brought to standards of conduct required of a healthy population. We review Cooks ideas about what made the Northern Territory different from the 6 states and about the potential of miscegenation and absorption. We argue that Cooks nationalism was not simply ethnic but also significantly civic and that he was fundamentally a liberal assimilationist, albeit cautious and at times coercive in his application of public health ideas to the program of civic equality. In the course of our argument, we comment on other historians conceptions of Cook.