Abstract
IN ONE OF THE BACKHANDED compliments for which Mark Twain was famous, he
observed ‘in memory of the Greatest man Australasia ever developed or ever will
develop, there is a stately monument to George Augustus Robinson, the Conciliator, in
– no, it is to another man, I forget his name’.1 As a critic of imperialism and colonialism,
Twain saw Robinson as a like-minded being who was on the right side of history. As far
as Twain was concerned, this humanitarian hero and critic of colonial expansion was
forgotten in the gilded age of 1890s high imperialism. In Twain’s time, stately
monuments were devoted to the imperial heroes of empire – and Twain had little regard
for those carpetbaggers. Nevertheless a stately bust of Robinson did exist. Sculpted in
1835, it was a commercial endeavour that proved unpopular and remained forgotten for
at least 100 years.
observed ‘in memory of the Greatest man Australasia ever developed or ever will
develop, there is a stately monument to George Augustus Robinson, the Conciliator, in
– no, it is to another man, I forget his name’.1 As a critic of imperialism and colonialism,
Twain saw Robinson as a like-minded being who was on the right side of history. As far
as Twain was concerned, this humanitarian hero and critic of colonial expansion was
forgotten in the gilded age of 1890s high imperialism. In Twain’s time, stately
monuments were devoted to the imperial heroes of empire – and Twain had little regard
for those carpetbaggers. Nevertheless a stately bust of Robinson did exist. Sculpted in
1835, it was a commercial endeavour that proved unpopular and remained forgotten for
at least 100 years.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Article number | 3 |
| Pages (from-to) | 37-52 |
| Number of pages | 15 |
| Journal | The La Trobe Journal |
| Publication status | Published - Dec 2010 |