Whiteness in the tropics

Abstract

In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, two visions of a white tropical Queensland vied for ascendancy. One was based on the principle of white dominance. It envisioned a society in which power and status would be concentrated in the hands of white people but with manual labour performed by an underclass of Asians and Pacific Islanders. The other was based on the principle of white exclusiveness. It looked forward to a tropical Queensland devoid of non-white people.