AustLit

Margaret Allen looks at the 1893 publication, Reminiscences, English and Australasian: Being an Account of a Visit to England, Australia, New Zealand, Tasmania, Ceylon, in which N. L. Doss records the anti-Chinese sentiment prevalent in the Australian colonies at the time of his visit. 'Doss's account of his travels in the Australian colonies in 1888 reveals an Indian view of the White Australian project at the point of its inception. Doss participates in the racialised hierarchies of the contemporary empire, locating himself as an Aryan like the English and superior to the Chinese and to the Indigienous peoples. Nevertheless, his ambivalence towards the racialist politics of the Australian colonies emerges at a number of crucial points in his text.' (p.215)