I thought that the authors made it exceedingly clear in the book that having been deprived of slave labor, the British then turned to an equally disturbing practice of indentured labor. This new abomination of humanity gave an sudden threat to European wages and an enduring threat to colonial white rule (Reynolds). I thought that the book showed the thought-provoking process of how when colonial lawmaking organizations hit back by struggling to prevent immigrants, or by rejecting to publicize the rights of residency on the grounds of race, they stumbled upon objection from the British imposing interests.
I learned that in response to all of that, British colonists hired a strategy fostered in the American South. The authors did an in-depth job depicting this policy by first showing us that the Cape and then Natal accepted the Mississippi Literacy Test as a means of prohibiting, and it was this test that transformed into the infamous Dictation Test that powers that be employed to exploit the White Australia policy.
Other things that caught my attention in the book was learning that the downfall of the Russian Imperial navy by the Japanese in 1905 further reinforced the partnership between advocates of the color line in the United States and those in the British Territories. It was even more attractive to understand that when President Roosevelt sent off an impressive American battle fleet to the Pacific to show off their strength, Alfred Deakin personally asked Roosevelt to send 'the great white navy' to Australia to establish Anglo-Saxon cooperation in the face of the Asiatic danger. I thought that the authors showed full consideration...
This happened when old associates from the United States at the League of Nations functioned behind the settings to influence success for Prime Minister Billy Hughes's repeated refusal to approve a clause acknowledging the fairness of races to be entered into the charter (Reynolds). This was an event which I think ruthlessly embarrassed the British Regime and exasperated their wartime ally the Japanese.
In conclusion, I think that Lake and Reynolds tell this story meticulously. Employing a series of vibrant biographies to intertwine the lives of the advocates of a global color line with the lives of their aggravated adversaries, they are able to pursue a thought-provoking case by way of an appealing narrative. For the most part, I think that they are skillful at preserving narrative stability through diverse national sites, but in a scram for the finish, they quickly stitch together a bunch of subjects in the time between the world wars, which is much less convincing. That Lake and Reynolds guarantee more than they can offer is perhaps to be expected in such a positive and pioneering piece of work and should not fade from the importance of what they have accomplished. In Drawing the Global Colour Line, I think these two main intellectuals of Australian national history sufficiently demonstrate the strong promises of reading that history into an international context.
Works Cited
Reynolds, Marilyn Lake and Henry. Drawing the Global Colour Line: White Men's Countries and the Question of Racial Equality. Sydney: University Press, 2008.
