The “Missing Link”

Abstract

Steel, F. (2015). The 'Missing link': Space, race and transoceanic ties in the settler-colonial Pacific. Transfers: interdisciplinary journal of mobility studies, 5 (3), 49-67.The 'Missing link': Space, race and transoceanic ties in the settler-colonial Pacific AbstractThe inauguration of a steamship route between Canada and Australia, described as the "missing link," was envisaged to complete Britain's imperial circuit of the globe. This article examines the early proposals and projects for a service between Vancouver and Sydney, which finally commenced in 1893. The route was more than a means of physically bridging the gulf between Canada and Australia. Serving as a conduit for ideologies and expectations, it became a key element of aspirations to reconfigure the Pacific as a natural domain for the extension of settler -colonial power and influence. In centering the "white" Pacific and relations between white colonies in empire, the route's early history, although one of friction and contestation, offers new insights into settler -colonial mobilities beyond dominant themes of metropole-colony migration. Disciplines Arts and Humanities | Law Abstract:The inauguration of a steamship route between Canada and Australia, described as the "missing link," was envisaged to complete Britain's imperial circuit of the globe. This

Nostalgia in Times of Uncertainty: (Re)articulations of the Past, Present, and Future of Globalization

“…In reality, however, resorting to a late-Victorian imaginary centered on the integration of Britain and its white settler colonies can never be a viable alternative to European integration, especially when it comes to trade and security (Dougall, 2023;Gamble, 2021;Steel, 2015). Despite its aims to restore its global influence in the world and its globalist outlook, at the heart of Global Britain are actually bilateral agreements (with individual countries) to compensate for the loss of EU ties (Major & von Ondarza, 2018).…”

Globalization: Past, Present, Future

“…In reality, however, resorting to a late-Victorian imaginary centered on the integration of Britain and its white settler colonies can never be a viable alternative to European integration, especially when it comes to trade and security (Dougall, 2023;Gamble, 2021;Steel, 2015). Despite its aims to restore its global influence in the world and its globalist outlook, at the heart of Global Britain are actually bilateral agreements (with individual countries) to compensate for the loss of EU ties (Major & von Ondarza, 2018).…”

Rethinking nineteenth-century literary culture: British worlds, southern latitudes and hemispheric methods

“…Examining the “more layered and complex subjectivities and attendant frictions and negotiations” encountered in transpacific routes challenges the “easy assumptions of inherent Anglo-unity” (2016: 270). Transoceanic routes in particular disrupted and “interrupted the British World by linking settler colonies via the dependent, nonwhite empire, as well as more ambiguous extra-imperial spaces” (Steel, 2015: 50). Many, if not most, of the trading and military networks “created” by the British Empire were, in fact, dependent on established interregional Indigenous and diasporic networks and routes.…”