The Role of Foreigners at Eureka
The Role of Foreigners at Eureka
By Clare Gervasoni
From a talk delivered at the Reclaim the Radical Spirit of the Eureka Rebellion Annual Dinner, 03 December 2011
There is an interesting preoccupation with foreigners at Eureka. Governor Charles Hotham reports to Sir William Denison on 04 Dececember 1854 states ‘The insurgents are principally foreigners, well drilled, and said to be well commanded’. Were they principally foreigners? If not why did they stand out to the extent the posters and communications suggest?
Looking at the term foreigner in Colonial Victoria we could simply define a foreigner as non British. Many were non-English speakers, but English speakers such as Canadians and Americans also fell inside the 'foreign' description.
The Macquarie Dictionary includes definitions for the word foreigner in a number of ways. If you consider those involved with the Eureka Stockade against definition one on the screen it would be easy to state almost every person at the Eureka Stockade was a foreigner.
Definition 7 considers the word foreigner from a legal point of view, and uses the term Alien.
According to the Macquarie Dictionary an alien is a person from another country, who is not naturalised and is not therefore entitled to the privileges of a citizen, or, as definition 5 suggests, someone living under another government or in another country than that of one’s birth.
