Edward Duyker

Last updated

Edward Duyker
Edward Duyker 14 Jan 2014.jpg
Edward Duyker (2014)
Born (1955-03-21) 21 March 1955 (age 68)
Melbourne, Victoria
OccupationHistorian
NationalityAustralian

Edward Duyker (born 21 March 1955[ citation needed ]) is an Australian historian, biographer and author born in Melbourne. [1]

Contents

Edward Duyker's books include several ethno-histories – Tribal Guerrillas (1987), [2] The Dutch in Australia (1987) [3] and Of the Star and the Key: Mauritius, Mauritians and Australia (1988) [4] – and numerous books dealing with early Australian exploration and natural science, among them biographies of Daniel Solander, Marc-Joseph Marion Dufresne, Jacques Labillardière, François Péron and Jules Dumont d'Urville. [5]

Personal and early life

Edward Duyker was born to a father from the Netherlands and a mother from Mauritius. [6] His mother has ancestors from Cornwall who emigrated to Adelaide, South Australia, in 1849, and he is related to the Australian landscape painter Lloyd Rees. He is also related to the French painter Félix Lionnet. [7] He attended St Joseph's School, Malvern, Victoria, and completed his secondary studies at De La Salle College, Malvern. [6] After undergraduate studies at La Trobe University, [8] he was a doctoral candidate at the University of Melbourne (where he also studied Bengali language), and was supervised by the Indian philosopher Sibnarayan Ray. He received his PhD in 1981 for a thesis on the participation of the tribal Santals in the Naxalite–Maoist insurgency in India. [6] In the course of field-research in West Bengal, he lost 20 kilograms in weight through dysentery and malnutrition – an ordeal he recounted in article "The Word in the Field". [9]

Career

After working as a spot welder at General Motors Holden in Dandenong and an RSPCA ambulance driver, Duyker was recruited by the Australian Department of Defence in Canberra in early 1981 [10] and eventually worked in the Joint Intelligence Organization. He left in July 1983 to take up a position as a Teaching Fellow at Griffith University, Brisbane, but ultimately settled in Sydney as a full-time author in 1984. [11]

Using the Dutch and French linguistic resources of his family, he edited The Discovery of Tasmania (1992) [12] which brought together all known journal extracts from the first two European expeditions to Van Diemen's Land. An Officer of the Blue (1994), Duyker's biography of the explorer Marc-Joseph Marion Dufresne [13] was the subject of an essay, "The Tortoise Wins Again!", by Greg Dening, published in his collection Readings/Writings. [14]

Nature's Argonaut (1998), [15] Edward Duyker's biography of Daniel Solander the naturalist on HM Bark Endeavour and the first Swede to circle the globe, was shortlisted for the New South Wales Premier's History Awards in 1999. Duyker is also the co-editor, with Per Tingbrand, of Daniel Solander: Collected Correspondence 1753–1782 (1995), [16] With his mother Maryse Duyker he published the first English translation of the journal of the explorer Bruny d'Entrecasteaux in 2001. [17] It has become an important Western Australian and Tasmanian historical source and, with its annotations and introduction, informed public debate regarding the heritage-listing of Recherche Bay in Tasmania. [18] Citizen Labillardière (2003), [19] Duyker's biography of the naturalist Jacques Labillardière, won the General History Prize among the New South Wales Premier's History Awards. [20]

With former Australian Greens Senator Bob Brown, archaeologist John Mulvaney and broadcaster Peter Cundall, Duyker was an outspoken campaigner for the protection of Recherche Bay from logging. [21]

François Péron: An Impetuous Life (2006), [22] Duyker's biography of the zoologist of the expedition of Nicolas-Thomas Baudin to Australian waters (1800—1803), won the Frank Broeze Maritime History Prize in 2007.

In 2007 Edward Duyker published A Dictionary of Sea Quotations [23] with a deeply personal introduction on his family's links with the sea.

Duyker's biographies of naturalists are largely conventional linear narratives, but they are characterised by meticulous research and great attention to detail – "written with verve, but fortified with awesome scholarship" as Dymphna Clark put it in her review of Nature's Argonaut. [24] He makes a point of visiting the places he writes about and orienting explorers' maps and journals to a modern landscape or coast. [25]

Thomas Nossiter of the London School of Economics praised Duyker's Tribal Guerrillas because "it exemplifies the value of synthesising anthropology and history; and, more generally, it is a scholarly contribution to a literature on tribal rebellion and insurgency far wider than India, which embraces Greece, Vietnam and Algeria as well as sub-Saharan Africa where tribal responses to imperialism and modernisation have been significant". [26] This meeting ground between history and anthropology can also be seen in An Officer of the Blue, Duyker's biography of Marc-Joseph Marion Dufresne, in which he skilfully used missionary and other accounts of Māori oral history and French journals to explain the circumstances of the explorer's death in New Zealand's Bay of Islands in 1772. Prof. Barrie Macdonald of Massey University described it as "a fine piece of detective work – a biography written with an empathy with its subject yet a critical eye that helps set in context a death that still has its significance in New Zealand history." [27]

Since 1985, Duyker has written more than 90 entries for the bilingual Dictionnaire de Biographie Mauricienne/Dictionary of Mauritian Biography published on his mother's native island. In November 2017, he was made an honorary member of the Société d'Histoire de l'Ile Maurice, [28] in recognition of these contributions and for his books on the history of the Mauritians in Australia, Mauritian Heritage [29] and Of the Star and the Key, [4] Duyker has also written a number of pioneering monographs on the Dutch in Australia, [30] and co-authored Molly and the Rajah (1991) * the life of Esme Mary Fink, an Australian woman who married the Rajah of Pudukottai, India, in 1915. He also edited A Woman on the Goldfields (1995), dealing with the life of Emily Skinner on the nineteenth-century Victorian gold fields. [31]

Academic career

Between 2001 and 2022, Duyker was an honorary senior lecturer [32] in the School of Languages and Cultures at the University of Sydney. Between 2009 and 2018, he was an adjunct and then an honorary professor of the Australian Catholic University. [32] In 2007, Duyker was elected a Fellow of the Australian Academy of the Humanities. [33]

Other positions

Between 1996 and 2002 he served as the honorary consul of the Republic of Mauritius in New South Wales. [34] Duyker is a member of the International Council of Museums and a life member of the Sutherland Shire Historical Society. [35]

Critical responses

Duyker's writings span a diverse range of subjects and disciplines. In many respects he has built his readership on his eclectic interests and made a strength of them. [36] Greg Dening once described him as "an historian's historian". [37]

Marius Damas, in his book, Approaching Naxalbari (Radical Impression, Calcutta, 1991, p. 68) commented that "Duyker brings both historical and anthropological tools into play ... Drawing on a wide range of historical and contemporary sources, including personal interviews ... [and] provides us with a richly detailed account."

Reviewing An Officer of the Blue, Michael Roe (historian) wrote: "In building his story, Duyker has to confront matters of war, politics, geography, navigation, anthropology – the list could continue. He does so with constant skill and authority." [38]

In 1995 Paul Brunton described Duyker's (and Per Tingbrand's) Daniel Solander: Collected Correspondence (1995) as "a major contribution to textual scholarship". [39]

In 2006, Arthur Lucas, former principal of King's College London, wrote that Citizen Labillardière was an "exceptionally readable, richly textured work ... The life Duyker recreates is as rich as that of the hero of any adventure novel, and the context is insightful history, not just the history of an important natural historian". [40]

Duyker's biography of French explorer Jules Sébastien César Dumont d'Urville was shortlisted and a runner-up for the 2015 Frank Broeze Maritime History Prize. One of the judges wrote that it was "a thoroughly and meticulously prepared history of one of the giants of French voyaging". Another judge described it as a "monumental work". [41]

Honours

Quotes

"There was no point in searching for Marion Dufresne's grave...he opened the first French restaurant in New Zealand – the Maori ate him".

"Some would say that I could talk under wet cement. I know at least one property developer who would like to give me the opportunity."

Bibliography

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Daniel Solander</span> Swedish botanist (1733-1782)

Daniel Carlsson Solander or Daniel Charles Solander was a Swedish naturalist and an apostle of Carl Linnaeus. Solander was the first university-educated scientist to set foot on Australian soil.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Jean-Baptiste Leschenault de La Tour</span> French botanist and ornithologist (1773-1826)

Jean-Baptiste Louis Claude Théodore Leschenault de La Tour was a French botanist and ornithologist.

Marc-Joseph Marion du Fresne was a French privateer, East India captain and explorer. The expedition he led to find the hypothetical Terra Australis in 1771 made important geographic discoveries in the south Indian Ocean and anthropological discoveries in Tasmania and New Zealand. In New Zealand they spent longer living on shore than any previous European expedition. Half way through the expedition's stay Marion died during a military assault by the Ngare Raumati iwi.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Antoine Bruni d'Entrecasteaux</span> French naval officer, explorer and colonial governor

Antoine Raymond Joseph de Bruni, chevalier d'Entrecasteaux was a French naval officer, explorer and colonial governor. He is perhaps best known for his exploration of the Australian coast in 1792, while searching for the La Pérouse expedition. Antoine Bruni d'Entrecasteaux is commonly referred to simply as Bruni d'Entrecasteaux or Bruny d'Entrecasteaux, each of which is a compound surname.

East Montalivet Island and West Montalivet Island are islands off coast of the Kimberley region, in the state of Western Australia, in the Indian Ocean. They are often referred to together as the Montlivet Islands, although this is not a gazetted name.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Cape Leeuwin</span> Most south-westerly mainland point of the Australian continent

Cape Leeuwin is the most south-westerly mainland point of the Australian continent, in the state of Western Australia.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Jacques Labillardière</span> French botanist

Jacques-Julien Houtou de Labillardière was a French biologist noted for his descriptions of the flora of Australia. Labillardière was a member of a voyage in search of the La Pérouse expedition. He published a popular account of his journey and produced the first Flora on the region.

St Alouarn Islands are a group of islands and rocks south-east of Cape Leeuwin in Western Australia, approximately 11 km south of Augusta in Flinders Bay.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Recherche Bay</span> Bay in south-eastern Tasmania, Australia

Recherche Bay is an oceanic embayment, part of which is listed on the National Heritage Register, located on the extreme south-eastern corner of Tasmania, Australia. It was a landing place of the d’Entrecasteaux expedition to find missing explorer La Pérouse. It is named in honour of the Recherche, one of the expedition's ships. The Nuenonne name for the bay is Leillateah.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Cape Freycinet</span>

Cape Freycinet is a point on the coast between Cape Leeuwin and Cape Naturaliste in the south west of Western Australia.

Frederick Henry Bay is a body of water in the southeast of Tasmania, Australia. It is located to the east of the South Arm Peninsula, and west of the Tasman Peninsula. Towns on the coast of the bay include Lauderdale, Seven Mile Beach, Dodges Ferry and Primrose Sands. The bay is accessible via Storm Bay from the south, and provides further access to Norfolk Bay to its east.

<i>Banksia nivea</i> Species of shrub in Western Australia

Banksia nivea, commonly known as honeypot dryandra, is a species of rounded shrub that is endemic to Western Australia. The Noongar peoples know the plant as bulgalla. It has linear, pinnatipartite leaves with triangular lobes, heads of cream-coloured and orange or red flowers and glabrous, egg-shaped follicles.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Solander box</span> Book-shaped container for printed material

A Solander box, or clamshell case, is a book-form case used for storing manuscripts, maps, prints, documents, old and precious books, etc. It is commonly used in archives, print rooms and libraries. It is named after the Swedish botanist Daniel Solander (1733–1782), who is credited with its construction while working at the British Museum, where he catalogued the natural history collection between 1763 and 1782.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Claude Riche</span>

Claude-Antoine-Gaspard Riche was a naturalist on Bruni d'Entrecasteaux's 1791 expedition in search of the lost ships of Jean-François de Galaup, comte de La Pérouse.

<i>Novae Hollandiae Plantarum Specimen</i>

Novae Hollandiae Plantarum Specimen is a two-volume work describing the flora of Australia. Facsimiles of the originals can be found in the online Biodiversity Heritage Library (Vol.1) and Vol 2).

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Esperance Bay</span> Bay in Western Australia

Esperance Bay is a bay on the south coast of Western Australia. Nominally located at 33°51′25″S121°55′13″E, it is the site of the town of Esperance.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Félix Delahaye</span> French Gardener, explorer (1767–1829)

Félix Delahaye was a French gardener who served on the Bruni d'Entrecasteaux voyage (1791–93) that was sent by the French National Assembly to search for the missing explorer Jean-François La Perouse. He was also one of the earliest European gardeners to work in Australia.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Jean-Nicolas Céré</span> French botanist and agronomist

Jean-Nicolas Céré was a French botanist and agronomist born on the Indian Ocean Isle de France but educated in Brittany and Paris. On the Isle de France, he was befriended by Pierre Poivre (1719–1786), administrator of the Isle de France and Ile Bourbon (Réunion), who he assisted in the cultivation of spices. When Poivre was recalled to France in 1773, Céré was appointed Director of the Royal Garden at Monplaisir, a position he held from 1775 to the time of his death in 1810.

Charles-Pierre Boullanger (1772-1813) was a French geographer who served on Nicolas Baudin’s scientific expedition to the South Seas from 1800 to 1803. He was a midshipman cartographer and hydrographic engineer on the survey vessel Le Géographe with the sister ship Naturaliste. During this expedition he produced, with Charles-Alexandre Lesueur, a detailed map of the east coast of Australia.

References

  1. ↑ Who's Who in Australia, Crown Content, Melbourne 2011, p. 677-8.
  2. ↑ Duyker, Edward (1987). Tribal guerrillas : the Santals of West Bengal and the Naxalite movement / Edward Duyker. Oxford University Press. ISBN   978-0-19-561938-6 – via National Library of Australia.
  3. ↑ Duyker, Edward (1987). The Dutch in Australia / Edward Duyker. Australian ethnic heritage series. AE Press. ISBN   9780867872156 – via National Library of Australia.
  4. 1 2 Duyker, Edward; Australian Mauritian Research Group (1988). Of the star and the key : Mauritius, Mauritians and Australia / Edward Duyker. Australian Mauritian Research Group. ISBN   9780959088342 – via National Library of Australia.
  5. ↑ Wallace Kirsop, 'Edward Duyker, or the Achievements of Independent Scholarship', Explorations (Institute for the Study of French-Australian Relations), no. 36, June 2004, pp. 17–18 & Greg Dening, 'Too Many Captain Cooks', Australian Book Review , June/July 2003, pp. 10–11.
  6. 1 2 3 Duyker, Edward; York, Barry (21 March 1994). "Interview with Edward Duyker, historian and author [sound recording] / interviewer, Barry York" – via National Library of Australia.
  7. ↑ Duyker, Mauritian Heritage, pp. 63–71,154–157, 295–308, 311–312, 328.
  8. ↑ 'Exploring the explorers', Agora, 2004, p. 48 & 'Multiethnic histories', La Trobe University Record, December 1987, p. 8.
  9. ↑ National Library of Australian News, May 1999, pp. 15–17
  10. ↑ Vivienne Skinner, 'A man for the times: Edward Duyker', Sydney Morning Herald, Weekend Edition, 16–17 September— 2006, My Career, p. 2.
  11. ↑ [National Library of Australia Oral History collection, ORAL TRC 3101 & TRC 5306 & Wallace Kirsop, 'Edward Duyker, or the Achievements of Independent Scholarship', Explorations (Institute for the Study of French-Australian Relations), no. 36, June 2004, pp. 17–18.]
  12. ↑ Tasman, Abel Janszoon; du Fresne, Marc-Joseph Marion (1992). Edward Duyker (ed.). The Discovery of Tasmania : Journal Extracts from the Expeditions of Abel Janszoon Tasman and Marc-Joseph Marion Dufresne, 1642 & 1772. Translated by Edward Duyker; Herman Duyker; Maryse Duyker. St. David's Park Pub. ISBN   9780724622412 – via National Library of Australia.
  13. ↑ An Officer of the Blue (1994)
  14. ↑ Dening, Greg (1998). Readings/WritingsReadings/writings. Melbourne University Press. pp. 201–204. ISBN   9780522848410 – via National Library of Australia.
  15. ↑ Duyker, Edward (1998). Nature's argonaut : Daniel Solander 1733-1782 : naturalist and voyager with Cook and Banks / Edward Duyker. Second Miegunyah Press series. Miegunyah Press – via National Library of Australia.
  16. ↑ Solander, Daniel Charles; Duyker, Edward; Tingbrand, Per (1995). Daniel Solander : collected correspondence 1753-1782 / edited and translated by Edward Duyker and Per Tingbrand. Second Miegunyah Press series. Miegunyah Press. ISBN   9780522846362 – via National Library of Australia.
  17. ↑ Entrecasteaux, Antoine Raymond Joseph de Bruni; Duyker, Edward; Duyker, Maryse (2006). Bruny d'Entrecasteaux : voyage to Australia and the Pacific, 1791-1793 / edited and translated by Edward Duyker and Maryse Duyker. Melbourne University Press. ISBN   9780522852325 – via National Library of Australia.
  18. ↑ see John Mulvaney, 'The axe had never sounded': Place, People and Heritage of Recherche Bay, Tasmania, ANU E Press and Aboriginal History, Canberra, 2007.
  19. ↑ Citizen Labillardière
  20. ↑ Wallace Kirsop, "Edward Duyker, or the Achievements of Independent Scholarship", Explorations (Institute for the Study of French-Australian Relations), no. 36, June 2004, pp. 17–18.
  21. ↑ "Recherche Bay – ABC TV Science". Catalyst . ABC TV (Australia). 30 October 2003.
  22. ↑ François Péron: An Impetuous Life (2006)
  23. ↑ Dictionary of Sea Quotations
  24. ↑ Dymphna Clark, 'Handmaiden to Botany's Giants', Canberra Times, 16 May 1998, Panorama, pp. 7–8.
  25. ↑ Duyker "A Stout Pair of Boots: Recollections of an Historian in the Field", Theo Barker Memorial Lecture, August 2005, Charles Sturt University Library, 907.2 DUYK
  26. ↑ Nossiter, Thomas Johnson (21 March 1989). "Review of Tribal Guerrillas: The Santals of West Bengal and the Naxalite Movement". Third World Quarterly . 11 (2): 226–227. JSTOR   3992769.
  27. ↑ Barrie Macdonald, New Zealand Herald, Sat. 14 January 1995.
  28. ↑ "Promenade Moulin Poudre". www.soc-histoire-maurice.org.
  29. ↑ Duyker, Edward (1986). Mauritian heritage : an anthology of the Lionnet, Commins, and related families / edited by Edward Duyker. Australian Mauritian Research Group. ISBN   9780959088328 – via National Library of Australia.
  30. ↑ See Gunew, S., L. Houbein, A. Karakostas-Seda. & J. Mahyuddin (eds) (1992) A Bibliography of Australian Multicultural Writers, Deakin University Press (Centre for Studies in Literary Education), Geelong, 1992, pp. 71–72.
  31. ↑ Skinner, Emily (1995). Edward Duyker (ed.). A Woman on the Goldfields – Recollections of Emily Skinner, 1854–1878. Melbourne University Press. ISBN   0522846521.
  32. 1 2 3 Who's Who in Australia, Crown Content, Melbourne 2022, p. 522.
  33. ↑ "Australian Academy of the Humanities". Archived from the original on 29 April 2013. Retrieved 14 November 2012.
  34. ↑ Australia. Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade. "Consular list / Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade". Australian Government Publishing Service for the Dept. of Foreign Affairs and Trade – via National Library of Australia.
  35. ↑ Elizabeth Craig, Caretakers of the Past: The First 50 Years of the Sutherland Shire Historical Society, 1966-2016, Sutherland, 2016, p. 145.
  36. ↑ See the summation of CSIRO scientist Richard Groves in Historical Records of Australian Science (14, 2003):Richard Groves, Historical Records of Australian Science (14, 2003)
  37. ↑ "Too Many Captain Cooks" by Greg Dening, Australian Book Review , June/July 2003, p. 10]
  38. ↑ The Mercury , Hobart, 28 May 1994, p. 38.
  39. ↑ Sydney Morning Herald, 24 June 1995, Spectrum, p. 13A
  40. ↑ "Reviews in Australian Studies, (vol. 1, no. 1, 2006)".
  41. ↑ "'Dumont d'Urville: Explorer and polymath' runner-up in maritime history prize".
  42. ↑ Jenny Lockhart, 'Historian feted by the French', St George and Sutherland Shire Leader, Tuesday, 10 October 2000, page 3.
  43. ↑ "It's an Honour – Honours – Search Australian Honours". www.itsanhonour.gov.au.
  44. ↑ "Académie de marine".
  45. ↑ For the text of his address see "Biography: Writing Past Lives", Sutherland Shire Historical Society Quarterly Bulletin, vol. 6, no. 4, November 2003, pp. 18—20
  46. ↑ https://prov.vic.gov.au/winners-2023
This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.