Monuments to ‘settlement’: Australia in St Paul’s Cathedral, 1888–1913

Abstract

This article conceptualizes the relatively small and visually modest presence of Australia in St Paul’s as monuments to British ‘settlement’, rather than invasion. It examines three plaques to politicians and colonial Governors General, and the presence of Australia in the larger-scale memorial to the South African War (1899–1901). I argue that these monuments naturalized the idea of Australia as a place of peaceful White settlement, contributed to the formation of global White settler identities, and relocated violence and warfare primarily to the African continent. I employ Goenpul woman and feminist scholar Aileen Moreton-Robinson’s notion of ‘white possessive logics’ to explore how these monuments work to legitimize Indigenous dispossession in the heart of the British metropole.