Longlisted for the 2024 Mark & Evette Moran Nib Literary Award
In the nineteenth century, collectors and museum curators in Europe were fascinated by the antipodean colony of Tasmania. They cultivated contacts in the colony who could supply them with exotic specimens, including skeletons of the thylacine and the platypus. But they were not just interested in animals and plants. The belief that the original people of the colony were an utterly unique race and facing possible extinction had the European scientific community scrambling for human exhibits.
Many eminent colonial figures were involved in this clandestine trade, among them four colonial governors, several key politicians and even Lady Jane Franklin. In Britain, Sir Joseph Banks, the Duke of Newcastle and Professor Thomas Huxley were among many eminent men who solicited human specimens from the colony. Worse still, the men responsible for the care and protection of the few original people who had survived the ravages of disease and the infamous Black Wars were prominent in the trade.
Cassandra Pybus has uncovered one of the darkest and most carefully hidden secrets in Australia's colonial history. It is time we all knew the truth.
'Truth-telling is every Australian's responsibility. Reading this book will help you to walk with us.' - Thomas Mayo
'A deeply ethical, and deeply disturbing, historical reckoning - a model of truth-telling for white Australians. In spell-binding prose, Cassandra Pybus reveals the continuing legacies of colonial dispossession ...' - Professor Warwick Anderson
'Exhaustively researched and arrestingly told' - Professor Mark McKenna
By:
Cassandra Pybus
Imprint: Allen & Unwin
Country of Publication: Australia
Dimensions:
Height: 234mm,
Width: 153mm,
Weight: 387g
ISBN: 9781761066344
ISBN 10: 176106634X
Pages: 336
Publication Date: 30 April 2024
Audience:
General/trade
,
ELT Advanced
Format: Paperback
Publisher's Status: Active
Maps Preface PART ONE 1 Desire lines 2 Not ignorant of evil himself, he learned to pity the wretched 3 King Billy is dead PART TWO 4 Mr Hunter's collection of human miseries 5 The land is good . . . well calculated in every degree for a settlement 6 Well-watered, beautiful country PART THREE 7 It was more as specimens of natural history that they were regretted 8 One of the remnant of a people about to disappear from the face of the earth 9 An intelligent man and one who knows natural history PART FOUR 10 The last one of a doomed race 11 Pacificator of the Tasmanian Aborigines 12 Why in the name of Christianity cannot her wish be granted? Appendix 1 The Worshipful Society of Body-Snatchers Appendix 2 First People at Oyster Cove Station Sources
Cassandra Pybus is an award-winning author and a distinguished historian. She is the author of thirteen books including the bestselling biography, Truganini and has held research professorships at the University of Sydney, Georgetown University in Washington DC, the University of Texas and King's College London. She is descended from a colonist who received the largest free land grant on Truganini's traditional country of Bruny Island.
Reviews for A Very Secret Trade: The dark story of gentlemen collectors in Tasmania
'Pybus is a brilliant storyteller - this is a book for history buffs as well as anyone who wants to better understand the darkest sides of Australia's past' - The Guardian 'Pybus has managed to lift the veil from an extremely dark chapter in Australia's colonial history...an important book that deserves to be widely read' - Sydney Morning Herald 'In her vivid and ethical capturing of the Tasmanian apocalypse, Pybus smashes the fiction of contemporary imaginings and repopulates the canvas with undeniable truths.' - The Saturday Paper 'A meticulously researched, beautifully written and deeply moving account of the shadow market in the skeletal remains of Tasmania's first people' - Inside Story 'In her captivating book and a piece of truth-telling par excellence, Pybus uncovers the network of colonial men in Tasmania who used their status and laced it with deception and trickery to obtain the Ancestral remains of Palawa men, women and children, and ship them off to Europe...' - Professional Historians Association of Australia
- Long-listed for Mark and Evette Moran Nib Literary Award 2024 (Australia)
