Who's Master? Who's Man? [Australia in the Victorian Age Volume 1] by Michael Cannon

Book Description

Secondhand. Good condition. Book has wear to book edges and corners, particularly the tail edge. Foxing to foredges. Interior and binding are still very good. Dust jacket has wear to top and tail edges, with the spine top reinforced with book tape.

The first book in Michael Cannon's Australia in the Victorian Age. The book focuses on the immigration of people of widely differing types - convicts, military men, merchants, squatters, gold-seekers, and "coloured" immigrants.

The book proceeds to show how these people were shaken down by circumstances into two distinct Australian classes, the exploiters and the exploited. The favoured circumstances of the governing class are depicted and contrast with the suffering of the convict men, women and children, lower-class immigrants, unsuccessful diggers, Chines coolies, kanakas and so on.

However, because conditions in the new country often made it possible for the poor man to become wealthy, there was a high degree of upward and downward mobility replacing the rigidity of the English class system. (book flap)

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