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AFRICA’S GLOBAL ENGAGEMENT:
PERSPECTIVES FROM EMERGING COUNTRIES

Australia and Africa

A New Friend from
the South?
Nikola Pijović
Africa’s Global Engagement: Perspectives
from Emerging Countries

Series Editor
Ajay Dubey
ASA India Centre of African Studies
African Studies Association of India
New Delhi, India
The 21st century has been characterized by a global rush to engage
African countries. Unlike in the past, globalization has given African
countries options to select and diversify their engagements. Though tra-
ditional powers are still trying to reinforce their links, African countries
have generally found it more empowering to reduce their traditional
dependence and develop more equitable relations with counties of the
South, especially with emerging economies. Different regions and coun-
tries of the world find different opportunities and challenges in their
attempts to engage the African region. Similarly, African countries, along
with the African Union and other regional organizations, find different
advantages in diversifying their traditional dependence. However, the
new engagements have neither replaced the traditional engagement of
Africa, nor are they wholly unproblematic from African perspectives. In
this context, it is essential to understand and analyse emerging Africa’s
global engagements.
To that end, this series will cover important countries and regions,
including traditional powers, that engage African countries, the African
Union and African regional organisations. The book series will also
address global and regional issues that exclusively affect African coun-
tries. Books in the series can be either monographs or edited works.
Expected Content:
The series will focus on the following aspects, among others:

• In its current global engagement, is Africa still a “helpless” player?

Who dictates the terms of Africa’s new engagement, and how it
impacts various African countries?
• In the current competition between traditional powers and emerg-
ing economies to engage Africa, is Africa’s global engagement
merely undergoing a geographical shift, or is it moving toward
increasingly equitable international relations? How traditional pow-
ers have re-strategised themselves to retain their influence on Africa
and how Africa is responding to them?

How is Africa involved in the issues of global governance and how it

negotiates and navigates its positions on issues of global concerns?

More information about this series at

http://www.palgrave.com/gp/series/15417
 Nikola Pijović

Australia and Africa

A New Friend from the South?
Nikola Pijović
Africa Research and Engagement Centre
University of Western Australia
Perth, WA, Australia

Africa’s Global Engagement: Perspectives from Emerging Countries

ISBN 978-981-13-3422-1 ISBN 978-981-13-3423-8 (eBook)
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-13-3423-8

Library of Congress Control Number: 2018966693

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer
Nature Singapore Pte Ltd., part of Springer Nature 2019
This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the
Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights
of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction
on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and
retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology
now known or hereafter developed.
The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this
publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are
exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use.
The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and
information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication.
Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, express or implied,
with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have
been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published
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Cover design by eStudio Calamar

This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature
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The registered company address is: 152 Beach Road, #21-01/04 Gateway East, Singapore
189721, Singapore
Map of Australian Embassies and High Commissions in Africa, 2018.
Source Based on United Nations Geospatial Information Section and customized
by the author. Note Australia’s High Commission in South Africa was opened in
1946; the Embassy in Egypt was opened in 1950; the High Commission in Ghana
was opened in 1958, closed in 1985, and re-opened in 2004; the High Commission
in Nigeria was opened in 1960; the High Commission in Tanzania was opened in
1962 and closed in 1987; the High Commission in Kenya was opened in 1965; the
Embassy in Algeria was opened in 1976 and closed in 1991; the High Commission
in Zambia was opened in 1980 and closed in 1991; the High Commission in
Zimbabwe were opened in 1980; the High Commission in Mauritius was opened in
1984; the Embassy in Ethiopia was opened in 1984, closed in 1987, and re-opened
in 2010; the Embassy in Morocco was opened in 2017.
 Preface

This book began its life in mid-2012 when I first started looking into
Australia’s engagement with Africa. As I was putting together a research
proposal and other documents necessary to apply for Ph.D. study in
Australia, I began seriously reading about Australia and Africa. Realizing
that there was very little written on the topic at the time, I began day-
dreaming about one day writing a book capturing the entirety of
Australia’s engagement with Africa. Six and something years later, here
I am. As corny and clichéd as it sounds, I think dreaming about it was
essential for actually completing the book. Off course, there were many
hurdles to pass between those initial daydreams in 2012 and this end
product—being accepted into a Ph.D. program, researching the topic
and contributing something original to it, actually passing the Ph.D.,
finding a publisher who wants to publish it as a book, and then substan-
tially redrafting the research into a book manuscript. But once you get
there—to the book publication stage—you realize that it was the dream
of writing and publishing the book that was most important; the thing
that kept pushing you to do such silly things like—after feeding your
screaming infant and putting her back to sleep at 3 a.m.—staying up to
work on a book proposal that has already been turned down by 6 differ-
ent publishers.
Australia and Africa—A new friend from the South? is the product
of three and a half years of Ph.D. research conducted between 2013
and 2017. It was a fun book to write mostly because it tells a largely
unknown story, and I have been very fortunate to ask people questions

vii
viii    Preface

no one had ever asked them before, which meant they were overwhelm-
ingly happy to take time out of their—usually very busy—schedules
and talk about the topic. One of my fondest memories from this time
was meeting up in April 2015 in a small café in Canberra’s suburb of
Kingston with a very senior Australian diplomat who had just come back
from serving at the United Nations. This was at a time when every uni-
versity and foreign policy think-tank in Australia was trying to get a hold
of him because he was key in spearheading the country’s successful 2012
Security Council campaign, and was intimately involved in pretty much
every meeting Australia attended at the United Nations. Even some of
my senior academic colleagues had contacted him repeatedly for inter-
views, but he didn’t have the time. Figuring that he was a pretty busy
man, I asked him to squeeze me in for a 30-min chat, and he said ok;
two hours later, we exited the café, made a time for a follow-up meeting,
and I spent the rest of the day marvelling at what a great interview I just
did. And why did he give me two hours of his life? Because a good friend
of his asked him to, and because I was asking him about Australia and
Africa, and he wanted to talk about it.
When I began daydreaming about this book, it was with one moti-
vation in mind—to leave something original and of substance to future
generations. Yes, academics write books to satisfy their egos, secure pro-
motions, gain prominence etc., but the main reason I wrote this book
is because no one had thus far told the story of Australia’s engagement
with Africa, and it is a story worth telling. Australians and especially the
almost 400,000 African-born ones do not have many outlets for inform-
ing themselves about their country’s engagement with African states, and
this book should help alleviate that situation. My hope is that one day, as
Australia’s engagement with Africa becomes more robust and extensive,
many more people will write and talk about this topic, and this book will
become an outdated reminder of how peripheral the study of Australia’s
engagement with Africa once was. Until then, I hope this book will
serve as an easily digestible source for anyone interested in the topic of
Australia and Africa.
I am indebted to many people for their time and thoughts in making
this research viable. The primary thanks go to all the participants in my
research, and specifically ex Australian Foreign Ministers Gareth Evans,
Alexander Downer, and Stephen Smith. I am also particularly grateful to
the Australian Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade, and Australian
Aid Agency officials for their insights into Australia’s engagement with
 Preface    ix

Africa. At the Australian National University, I must thank Prof. Michael

Wesley for supporting my Ph.D. research with great ideas, patience, and
just being a kind human being; and Associate Professor Bjorn Dressel
for helping me to hone my thinking and tighten up key arguments.
Also, many thanks to Professor Ajay Dubey and the team at Palgrave
Macmillan for helping this book to come about.
My final thanks are reserved for the person closest to me, and the
one who suffered the most from my overwhelming focus on writing
this book. Thank you Soma Tata. You have been my most persistent and
understanding critic, supporter, discussant, and promoter. With your
usual grace and understanding, you have endured everything. I cannot
thank you enough for your support. Hvala ti ljubavi.
Za Amandlu i novu generaciju.

Pretoria, South Africa Nikola Pijović

 Praise for Australia and Africa

“Australia may not know what it wants in Africa, but Nikola Pijović
knows that Africa needs to be on the Australian political map, even if
it is not a central pillar to its foreign policy engagement. Pijović’s thor-
ough, insightful and in-depth research has captured, in one volume, the
complete history of Australia’s engagement with Africa. This book is a
brilliantly crafted and unique contribution to understanding the political
significance of Australian-African relations.”
—Dr. Tanya Lyons, Editor of the Australasian Review
of African Studies and former President of the African
Studies Association of Australasia and the Pacific

“Australia is an important ‘emerging engager’ in Africa, with a distinc-

tive history and profile. This well-written, empirically-based book shows
the importance of both domestic politics and ideas in Australia’s African
engagements. As such it makes a very valuable addition to the literature
on foreign power interest in Africa.”
—Dr. Pádraig Carmody, Trinity College Dublin
and the University of Johannesburg, and author
of The New Scramble for Africa

“A comprehensive examination of Australia’s ambivalent and inconsistent

engagement with sub-Saharan Africa, this book makes an important con-
tribution to the scholarship on Australia’s foreign relations. Provocative
and carefully argued, it looks at Australia-Africa relations from the inside

xi
xii    PRAISE FOR AUSTRALIA AND AFRICA

and outside. It examines the drivers, inhibitors and prejudices that have
shaped Australia’s approach to the continent; as well as comparing the
results of Australia’s record with those of other new engagers with
Africa.”
—Professor Michael Wesley, Dean, College of Asia
and the Pacific, Australian National University
 Contents

1 Introduction: A New Friend from the South? 1

2 From the Boer War to the End of Apartheid 19

3 Australia Tries to Forget Africa 51

4 Australia Re-discovers Africa…and Then Tries to Forget

It Again 73

5 Political Partisanship and Australia’s Volatile Aid to Africa 123

6 Conclusion 159

Appendix: Australia’s Merchandise Trade with Africa 177

Index 183

xiii
 About the Author

Dr. Nikola Pijović is a Research Fellow at the Africa Research and

Engagement Centre (AfREC), University of Western Australia. He
specializes in Australian foreign policy, and is a leading authority on
Australia’s engagement with Africa, having published academic and
media articles on Australia and Africa, as well as provided submissions to
the Australian Parliament on the country’s relations with African states.
Dr. Pijović’s research also focuses on comparative foreign policy-making
in two-party political systems, and especially the distinctions between
‘core’ and ‘peripheral’ foreign policy. He has published on statehood,
insurgency, and terrorism in Somalia and Somaliland.

xv
 List of Figures

Fig. 4.1 IMF Fuel Price Index 1996–2017 (Source IMF [n.d.];
based on May 2018. Note Index 2005 = 100) 80
Fig. 4.2 IMF Metals Price Index 1996–2017 (Source IMF [n.d.];
based on May 2018. Note Index 2005 = 100) 80
Fig. 4.3 Total Africa oil production 1990–2016, ’000 barrels per day
(Source BP 2017) 81
Fig. 4.4 Total Africa gas production 1990–2016, billion cubic metres
(Source BP 2017) 81
Fig. 5.1 Total Australian ODA to SSA, current prices,
1989/1990–2015/2016, AUD ’000 143
Fig. 5.2 Total Australian ODA to SSA as a percentage of total
Australian ODA, 1989/1990–2015/2016 143
Fig. 6.1 A snapshot of G20 member states’ Embassies and High
Commissions in Africa in 2018. Note South Africa is excluded 174
Fig. A.1 Australia’s total two-way merchandise trade with Africa,
1988–2017, AUD million (Source Author calculations based
on Australian Bureau of Statistics 5368.0 Tables 14a and b,
May 2018) 178

xvii
 List of Tables

Table 5.1 Total Australian ODA to SSA, and as a percentage of total

ODA, 1989/1990–2015/2016 142
Table 5.2 Budget estimates for total Australian ODA to Africa
between 2007 and 2013, AUD Million 146
Table 5.3 Year-on-year cuts to Australia’s total ODA to SSA
2011/2012–2017/2018, current prices, AUD Million 150
Table A.1 Australia’s top merchandise export markets in Africa,
1996–2017, AUD million 179
Table A.2 Australia’s top merchandise import source countries
in Africa, 1996–2017, AUD million 180
Table A.3 Composition of major Australian exports to African states 181
Table A.4 Composition of major Australian imports from African states 181

xix
 CHAPTER 1

Introduction: A New Friend

from the South?

In January 2011, Australia’s foreign minister, Kevin Rudd, made a trip to

Ethiopia, delivering his first-ever address to the Executive Council of the
African Union (AU). In elaborating on his country’s approach to dealing
with Africa, Rudd told the gathering that Australia’s perspective was that
of ‘a developed country’, but one from the global ‘south’, and not the
‘north’; after all, Rudd had travelled to Ethiopia from the southern hem-
isphere (Rudd 2011). By pitching his country as one from the ‘south’
and without colonial baggage in Africa, and interested in mutually bene-
ficial partnerships rather than traditional ‘donor–recipient’ relationships,
the Australian foreign minister was highlighting Australia’s uniqueness
when compared to other Western developed nations in North America
and Europe. And, in summing up his remarks, Kevin Rudd made it clear
that after years of neglect by previous Australian governments, his coun-
try was interested in a ‘new’ engagement with Africa. By the time Kevin
Rudd’s term in office was up in February 2012, he had become the
Australian foreign minister with by far the most visits to Africa. Between
October 2010 and February 2012, Rudd visited Africa seven times. By
contrast, Australia’s longest-serving foreign minister, Alexander Downer,
made only four visits to Africa in his 11 years in office between 1996 and
2007, and Australia’s current foreign minister, Julie Bishop, has only
made one visit to mainland Africa since 2013. But why this explosion of
interest in Africa in such a short time span? And, more importantly, why
so little engagement with Africa before and after Kevin Rudd’s time in

© The Author(s) 2019 1

N. Pijović, Australia and Africa, Africa’s Global
Engagement: Perspectives from Emerging Countries,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-13-3423-8_1
2 N. PIJOVIĆ

office? This book will answer these and many more questions, and for
the first time relate the largely unknown story of Australia’s engagement
with Africa.
* * *
When one thinks of ‘new’ actors and emerging countries engaging with
Africa, Australia does not normally spring to mind. Usually, such terms
are reserved for a number of countries that have ramped up their engage-
ment with Africa since the turn of the millennium, and do not fit into
the category of traditional donors and ‘old’ colonial powers in Africa.
But, as this book will show, Australia’s engagement with Africa is unique
because the country straddles both the categories of traditional donor
and emerging country engaging with Africa. However, it is also unique
because it does not happily sit in any of those categories. The question
mark in the title of this book—A New Friend from the South?—is there to
highlight several contradictions inherent in Australia’s engagement with
Africa. Is Australia a ‘new’ friend to Africa; that is, can it be called an
emerging engager or ‘new’ actor in Africa? Yes and no. Yes, because like
many other countries, Australia has since the turn of the millennium—
and really in the past decade—tried to enhance, broaden, and generally
re-invigorate its engagement with Africa. No, because Australia is an
Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD)
member and ‘traditional’ donor, and actually has a long history of
engagement with Africa, albeit a history that is largely—and one might
add conveniently—forgotten because it involves a long period of sup-
porting British colonialism, and sympathy for racism and apartheid.
Moreover, is Australia a friend from the ‘South’; that is, regardless of
its geography in the southern hemisphere, can it be considered a coun-
try whose engagement with Africa is bereft of colonial baggage, and
consistent with the shared experience of colonialism, shared respect for
sovereignty and non-interference, and shared emphasis on ‘mutual devel-
opment’ that at least rhetorically marks ‘south–south cooperation’, rather
than the traditional ‘donor–recipient’ relationships characterizing OECD
countries’ engagement with Africa? Again, yes and no. Yes, because
Australia was never a foreign power directly administering an African
colony, but was itself a colony of Britain. No, because Australia played
its part in supporting Britain’s colonization of Africa, and the coun-
try’s domestic political tradition, and the values and objectives its for-
eign policy seeks to spread share many more commonalities with wealthy
 1 INTRODUCTION: A NEW FRIEND FROM THE SOUTH? 3

Western and previously imperial countries than they do with developing

or ‘Southern’ countries—and its development assistance is very much
characterized by traditional ‘donor–recipient’ relationships.
These contradictions highlight the richness of the topic of Australia’s
engagement with Africa. In trying to untangle and explain such contra-
dictions, this book offers a twofold purpose and contribution. On the
one hand, this is a book about Australia’s engagement with Africa, and
as such, its primary purpose is to tell the story of around 130 years of
that engagement. In making such a long time period more easily under-
standable, Australia’s engagement with Africa is broken down into two
periods: historical and contemporary. The former refers to Australia’s
engagement with Africa from its earliest days to the end of the Cold War,
while the latter examines the time period since then. On the other hand,
the book also has comparative value, and its secondary purpose is to add
further empirical detail to the literature on emerging countries’ engage-
ment with Africa. However, it does this by highlighting Australia’s
uniqueness as compared to other emerging countries and the commonal-
ities marking their engagement with Africa.
With these two contributions in mind, the book tries to answer
two central questions, making several key arguments along the way.
As the emphasis of the book is on investigating Australia’s contempo-
rary engagement with Africa, the first central question this book seeks
to answer is: What does Australia want in Africa? Answering this ques-
tion involves examining the ‘why’ and ‘how’ Australia engages with
Africa. The key arguments made here are that Australian decision-makers
are unable to offer a politically bipartisan justification for why Australia
should engage with Africa, and are therefore also unable to assess their
country’s strategic and long-term interests in Africa—as such Australia
does not know what it wants in Africa. For almost one century, from
roughly the 1880s up until the early 1970s, Australia’s engagement with
Africa was defined by support for colonialism and sympathy with racism
and apartheid. This has left the country with a ‘flawed’ history that has
for the most part been conveniently forgotten, but every now and then
spring up in the attitudes and pronouncements of Australian politicians.
While both of Australia’s two main political forces—the conservative
Liberal-National Party coalition, and the centre-left Labor Party—have
a history of displaying colonialist and racist attitudes towards engage-
ment with Africa, since the 1970s, it has been mainly the conservative
side that has displayed a (neo)colonialist and racist sentiment regarding
4 N. PIJOVIĆ

engagement with African states and issues. On the other hand, while
between the 1970s and 1990s there was a period of politically biparti-
san focus on the fight against apartheid, that ended with apartheid’s ulti-
mate demise in 1994. Since then, Australia’s contemporary engagement
with Africa has become highly politically partisan, resulting in an episodic
engagement, revolving around the country’s need to secure African sup-
port for its multilateral goals—such as United Nations Security Council
(UNSC) membership—and exhibiting a parochial, superficial and cyclical
short-term outlook.
The second central question the book seeks to answer is What kind of
an emerging engager with Africa is Australia? Answering this question is
only possible after answering the first question, and taking into account
the commonalities shared by other emerging countries’ engagement with
Africa. The key arguments made here are that because Australia does not
know what it wants in Africa, its engagement with the continent is not
driven by the same motives and enacted in the same way as that of many
other emerging countries—as such Australia is a unique emerging engager
with Africa. Much of the literature on ‘new’ or emerging countries’
engagement with Africa focuses on countries like China, India, Japan,
Russia, Brazil, Turkey, or the Republic of Korea, and at its core, suggests
three main features common to most emerging countries’ engagement
with Africa: an engagement motivated by (a) the desire to secure resources
for domestic economies and (b) geopolitical strategies (such as offsetting
and countering the influence of strategic rivals); and an engagement con-
ducted through a significant degree of collusion between national govern-
ments and businesses (or in many cases, through state-owned companies)
(Cheru and Obi 2010; Carmody 2013, 2016; Allan et al. 2013; Van der
Merwe et al. 2016; Stolte 2015). All of that highlights the very ­strategic—
if at times incoherent—nature of emerging countries’ engagement with
Africa. Australia, on the other hand, is unique because its engagement
with Africa features none of those commonalities: it is rarely, if ever, stra-
tegic, and is certainly not guided by the government’s desire to secure
resources for the Australian economy, and even less by geopolitical strat-
egies or offsetting and countering the influence of a strategic rival. And
its engagement with Africa is not coordinated between the national gov-
ernment and Australian business companies—the latter operate completely
independently of the government and generally only seek diplomatic
support with host African government contacts in the hope of positively
influencing the ease of doing business. Although Australian businesses
 1 INTRODUCTION: A NEW FRIEND FROM THE SOUTH? 5

operating in Africa are predominantly in the resources sector, their activ-

ities are not guided by the desires of the government of the day, or geo-
strategic and geopolitical considerations. Hence, Australia appears sui
generis when compared to other emerging countries engaging with Africa,
and highlights that not all emerging countries engage with Africa with the
same motivations and in the same ways.

Australia and Africa: A Snapshot

The African continent is home to a very diverse set of 54 states.
Although there are similarities between the historical experiences of
(de)colonization and independence of many of them, there are also very
vast socio-economic, cultural, linguistic, and religious differences across
these states as well as within them. Australia, however, has a history of
engaging with only a minority of African states, so that even talking about
engagement with ‘Africa’ is something of a misnomer: one has to look
very hard and will find very little to write about regarding Australia’s
engagement with, for example, Senegal, Mauritania, Togo, Chad, or
Angola. Australia’s contacts with the African continent have always been
strongest at the extremes (Egypt and South Africa), and traditionally
more focused on Commonwealth member states, and eastern African
countries (given that they share Australia’s Indian Ocean geography).
However, this should not suggest that Australia’s contacts with
African states do not have a long history. The country’s earliest offi-
cial contacts with Africa served the interests of colonialism and British
empire-building, and were bloody affairs. From the 1880s and the
British war against Mahdist forces in the Sudan, up until the end of
World War II, the experience of expeditionary war-making was cen-
tral to Australia’s engagement with Africa. When the newly formed
Commonwealth of Australia came into existence in 1901, one of the first
items on its agenda was sending troops to fight alongside the British in
the Boer War. Much pomp and heroism have been accorded to these ear-
liest Australian imperial expeditions to Africa, even though the behaviour
and service of some Australian soldiers in the Boer War were far from
exemplary (Reynolds 2016, 191–195). Although Australia’s imperial
expeditions in Africa are today presented as noble fights for freedom,
these military engagements were not tasked with ‘liberating’ anyone;
their purpose was upholding the status quo of colonization, and subju-
gating the indigenous populations.
6 N. PIJOVIĆ

But Australia’s troubled engagement with Africa is not only confined

to the days before the ‘winds of change’ and decolonization. For r­ easons
of colonial links, a common British cultural heritage, and sympathies for
racially discriminatory immigration, Australia had for almost a century
(from the 1880s and well into the 1970s) maintained a strong interest
in, and affinity for Africa’s white settler societies. These were predomi-
nantly situated on the southern end of the continent: South Africa and
Zimbabwe (or Rhodesia, as it was called until 1980). Australia’s ties of
‘kith and kin’ with whites there, and sympathies for apartheid South
Africa and white-minority-led Rhodesia are not well known, and rather
unfashionable to acknowledge as they highlight an ever-present dormant
streak of racism in Australia’s own white settler society, and amongst its
conservative politicians. But such sympathies were real, and there were
many at the highest echelons of Australia’s political class who sympa-
thized with the ‘plight’ of ‘outnumbered’ whites in southern Africa. And
so it was that up until the early 1970s Australia officially treated apart-
heid governance as an internal South African issue and one it would
not criticize internationally. Furthermore, although Rhodesia’s 1965
Unilateral Declaration of Independence from Britain was not recog-
nized by the Australian government—at that time led by the conservative
Liberal-Country Party coalition—many of its top political brass, includ-
ing then Prime Minister Robert Menzies, remained openly sympathetic
to Rhodesia’s white-minority government, and racial segregation in gen-
eral. All of this was to a great degree motivated by the colonialist and
racist mindset exhibited by Prime Minister Menzies and his key minis-
ters, and remained spiritually consistent with the country’s own racially
discriminatory ‘White Australia’ immigration policy.
During these years, there were not many prominent Australian politi-
cians willing to openly criticize apartheid and racism in Africa. However,
two individuals, Gough Whitlam and Malcolm Fraser, both as leaders of
their political parties, and Australian prime ministers between 1972 and
1983, exhibited an unambiguously anti-racist and anti-apartheid rheto-
ric. Whitlam was leader of the Australian Labor Party and his election to
the prime ministership in late 1972 (after some 22 years of conservative
rule) ushered symbolic changes to Australia’s engagement with Africa.
Whitlam changed Australia’s stance on abstaining from United Nations
(UN) votes condemning apartheid, and in 1974, Australia even voted
in favour of a UNSC resolution seeking to expel South Africa from the
organization. However, while rhetorically condemning racism in South
 1 INTRODUCTION: A NEW FRIEND FROM THE SOUTH? 7

Africa, Australia during this time still maintained strong trade links with
the apartheid government, leading many to charge the Labor govern-
ment with hypocrisy.
The conservatives, on the other hand, were back in power between
1975 and 1983, and many of their politicians was still very much sym-
pathetic to apartheid and Rhodesia’s white-minority government.
Luckily for Australia, they were led by a man wholeheartedly commit-
ted to the fight against racism and apartheid, Prime Minister Malcolm
Fraser. Although Malcolm Fraser and Gough Whitlam were great polit-
ical rivals, in their condemnation of racism, they represented a united
front, and Fraser often cut a lonely figure standing in opposition to many
in his conservative government by making the fight against apartheid
a bipartisan plank of Australia’s engagement with Africa. Fraser played
a prominent role in trying to broker Zimbabwe’s independence at the
1979 Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting in Zambia, but
his outspoken anti-racism almost turned his own Cabinet against him.
Fraser had to dismiss his own Minister-elect for Veterans’ Affairs, Senator
Glenister Sheil, a day before he was to be sworn into office, because
the latter had made favourable statements about apartheid; and Fraser’s
government—to its great embarrassment—could not close down the
Rhodesian Information Centre in Sydney because of a backbench revolt
against the move.
The struggle against apartheid between the early 1970s and 1990s
was the only period where Australia’s engagement with Africa displayed a
long-term focus. It was also the only time it received bipartisan political
support. The downside to all of this was that the anti-apartheid strug-
gle removed the focus from any other possible interests the country
might have in Africa. As the Cold War came to an end, and with it the
final dismantling of apartheid in South Africa, Australia’s engagement
with Africa experienced a recalibration of intensity. Between roughly
the mid-1990s and mid-2000s Australia, under the conservative gov-
ernment of Prime Minister John Howard, did not appear to pay much
attention to African issues, and this attitude only changed with the elec-
tion of another Labor government in late 2007. Partially motivated by
its pursuit of UNSC membership in 2012 and the country’s expanding
aid budget, the Labor government sought to ‘broaden’ and ‘deepen’
ties with the African continent, highlighting its above-mentioned ‘new’
engagement with Africa. Australian foreign ministers made a flurry of
visits to Africa and the country’s aid budget to Africa grew significantly,
8 N. PIJOVIĆ

reaching almost 10% of Australia’s total Official Development Assistance

(ODA) budget in 2011–2012. Then, when it seemed that a closer focus
on, and engagement with Africa would become a more durable feature
of Australia’s foreign policy agenda, another conservative government
came to power in 2013 and Australia’s engagement with Africa has since
fizzled out. The polarizing political partisanship plaguing Australia’s con-
temporary engagement with Africa struck again to rob the country of a
unified, strategic, and long-term approach to understanding and pursu-
ing its interests in Africa.
This sketch of Australia’s engagement with Africa highlights four key
themes that will be re-invoked throughout the book. Firstly, engagement
with Africa has on the whole been sporadic and episodic rather than stra-
tegic. Aside from the support for the fight against apartheid between
the 1970s and 90s and a short interlude between 2008 and 2012, issues
were dealt with on an ad hoc basis, without any ‘grand plan’ considera-
tions or a wider framework justifying why it made sense for Australia to
engage with African states. Secondly, while Australia’s engagement with
Africa has been underpinned by wider structural factors (such as global
trends and regional dynamics), the active policy-making of successive
Australian governments, and the agency of the country’s key foreign
policy decision-makers (prime ministers and foreign ministers) bears pri-
mary responsibility for determining the course of Australia’s engagement
with Africa. Thirdly, the Commonwealth (and to a lesser extent the UN)
has been Australia’s traditional ‘window’ into Africa, and m ­ ultilateralism
has traditionally been the main conduit for Australia’s engagement with
Africa. Finally, and particularly since the end of apartheid in South Africa,
engagement with Africa has been uniquely politically partisan, and this,
coupled with the omnipresent (neo)colonialist, parochial, and racist
mindset still readily found mainly on the conservative side of Australian
politics, accounts for the ultimate inability of Australia’s decision-makers
to understand their country’s strategic interests in Africa.

The Literature on Australia and Africa

The study of Australia’s foreign policy has generally concentrated on
accounts of the country’s relations with its immediate region (Asia,
South Pacific), or its relationships with key strategic allies and trade
partners [United States (US), China, United Kingdom (UK), Japan,
Indonesia, New Zealand]. The consequences of this study focus have
 1 INTRODUCTION: A NEW FRIEND FROM THE SOUTH? 9

been profound for students interested in African studies, and Australia’s

relationship with the African continent in particular. African studies in
Australia are virtually non-existent, and the study of Australia’s foreign
policy towards Africa receives only scant and episodic attention. While
it may be easy to criticize the paucity of Australian scholarship on the
country’s engagement with Africa, it must be acknowledged that this is
to a large extent influenced by a lack of empirical study material. Africa’s
marginal status in Australia’s overall foreign policy context has influenced
its marginal status in Australia’s scholarly writing. Academics cannot
be criticized for not paying much attention to an area of foreign pol-
icy which has traditionally received little attention from policy-makers,
and it is hardly surprising that one would find it impossible to sustain an
academic career in Australia by focusing only on Australia’s engagement
with Africa.
Nevertheless, even with these limitations in mind, the dearth of schol-
arly studies of the topic is concerning. In the period between 1980
and 2012, Australia’s most prominent journals of international affairs,
political science, and history published just over a dozen scholarly arti-
cles dealing with Australian foreign policy towards Africa (Mickler
and Lyons 2013, 7–8). Since then, only anther three have been added
(Makinda 2015; Mickler and Pijović 2015; Pijović 2016). While there
have been a few book chapters over the past 20 years dealing with aspects
of Australia’s engagement with Africa, most of Australia’s prominent
foreign policy textbooks pay marginal attention to Africa. For example,
Gareth Evans and Bruce Grant (1995) in Australia’s Foreign Relations
in the World of the 1990s have a chapter devoted to the Middle East and
Africa, but their discussion of Australia’s engagement with Africa spans
less than 15 pages—and this is one of the few textbooks that actually
tries to explain why Australia engages with Africa. Derek McDougall’s
Australian Foreign Relations: Entering the Twenty-first Century gives
chapter-length discussions of Australia’s main bilateral and regional rela-
tions, with no similar discussion of Africa (McDougall 2009), while Carl
Ungerer’s Australian Foreign Policy in the Age of Terror focuses predom-
inantly on Australia’s region and relations with key strategic and trade
partners (US and China), with no interest in Africa (Ungerer 2008).
Stewart Firth’s Australia in International Politics: An Introduction
to Australian Foreign Policy discusses Africa only a few times and with
reference to humanitarian issues and aid, or Australia’s role in support-
ing the struggle against apartheid in Southern Africa (Firth 2011).
10 N. PIJOVIĆ

More recently, Baldino, Carr, and Langlois’ Australian Foreign Policy:

Controversies and Debates examines important controversial foreign pol-
icy questions, devoting several chapters to engagement with Australia’s
region and key bilateral relationships, with no examination of Australia’s
engagement with Africa or African issues (Baldino et al. 2014). While
this is by no means an exhaustive review of all noteworthy Australian
foreign policy textbooks, it is representative of the peripheral status
accorded to Africa in discussions of Australia’s foreign policy and place in
the world.
The country’s pre-eminent flagship publication on Australia in World
Affairs, published by the Australian Institute of International Affairs
since the 1950s, includes only two chapters specifically devoted to
Australia and Africa, one published in 1983, the other in 2011 (Higgott
1983; Lyons 2011). This is not to suggest that the series did not engage
with African issues, rather that most discussions of Africa were usually
within the context of a broader discussion of Australia’s relations with
the Commonwealth, UN, or Indian Ocean, with only a few chapters
more directly engaged with particular African affairs, such as the Suez
crisis of the late 1950s. These works are indispensable in surveying
Australia’s engagement with Africa until the 1970s, and to them should
be added David Goldsworthy’s (2002) Losing the Blanket: Australia
and the End of Britain’s Empire which also covers more substantively
Australia’s engagement with Africa during the 1950s and 1960s. The
main strength of Goldsworthy’s book lies in its originality and detail of
historical research into those early days of Australia’s engagement with
Africa. However, the book only examined engagement with Africa in the
wider context of Australia’s foreign policy subservience to Britain, and
was not written as a stand-alone history of Australia’s engagement with
Africa.
It was only in 2013 that a book centrally focused on examining
Australia’s engagement with Africa was published. David Mickler and
Tanya Lyons’ New Engagement: Contemporary Australian Foreign Policy
Towards Africa focused on the period of the Labor government’s revival
of foreign policy engagement with Africa (roughly 2008–2012). The
book argued that Australia’s commercial and political interests were cen-
tral to the motivations behind the country’s reengagement with Africa,
with the government keen to support substantial Australian interests,
involvements, and investments on the African continent in particu-
larly the resources sector, while at the same time working on garnering
 1 INTRODUCTION: A NEW FRIEND FROM THE SOUTH? 11

African support for the country’s upcoming 2012 UNSC membership

bid (Mickler and Lyons 2013, 4). This book is also indispensable for
understanding why Australia under the Labor government engaged with
Africa, but given its narrow temporal scope, lacks the historical context
fundamental to understanding Australia’s contemporary engagement
with Africa.

Methodology and Delimitations
This book is based on primary and secondary literature, and elite inter-
views with Australian politicians, diplomats, public servants, and Non-
Governmental Organization (NGO) and private sector officials. Primary
literature refers to documents produced at the time of the events dis-
cussed: online archives of speeches and media releases by Australian
ministers, departmental and parliamentary reports and documents,
recordings and transcripts of interviews with politicians and public offi-
cials, correspondence, official governmental websites, and online and
print media. Secondary literature refers mainly to sources published after
the events discussed took place, including books and academic articles,
unpublished theses, political diaries, memoirs, and biographies.
Elite interviews are generally distinguished from ‘normal’ interviews
by two things: they are in-depth examinations focused on specific top-
ics, lasting between 30 minutes and one hour; and often involve high-
level decision-makers and politicians. For the purposes of this research,
over 20 such interviews were conducted, most of which lasted around
an hour. The majority of the interviews were conducted on a non-
attributive basis, but the ones involving politicians were ‘on the record’.
Those interviewed included three former Australian foreign ministers,
with the rest being Australian NGO and private sector officials with
past and current operations in Africa, and current or retired Australian
Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (DFAT) and Australian Agency
for International Development (AusAID) officials occupying various
senior positions including ministerial advisers. Half of the interviewed
DFAT and AusAID officials were Australian High Commissioners and
Ambassadors in Africa prior to and/or during the interviews.
With regard to terminology, the main point that requires explana-
tion is the use of the term ‘Africa’. Unfortunately, the vast majority of
international and Australian media writing and commentary, as well as
books and articles talk about ‘Africa’ as if it was one country. For those
12 N. PIJOVIĆ

who are even casually acquainted with the great diversity of the African
continent, this terminology is infuriating and smacks of intellectual colo-
nialism. This book refers to Australia’s engagement with ‘Africa’ for
two main reasons. The first is to highlight the problematic nature of
Australian political and public discourse on the country’s engagement
with the states of Africa. Yes, Australia has limited diplomatic and politi-
cal, security, trade, and cultural links with most African states, but there
is also a great deal of ignorance about African issues and peoples. Simply
put, Africa is still a blank space for many Australians (regardless of their
socio-economic standing and educational levels), or better said, it is so
unknown that generalizations about the politics, trade, and cultures of
the continent are the norm rather than the exception. The second reason
is because it is simpler to talk of engagement with ‘Africa’ as a short-
hand for many African states, than to try and mention all of those states
individually—that would make for a thoroughly unreadable text. While
the book identifies particular African countries Australia has engaged
with, often, it unfortunately has to resort to the short-hand of engage-
ment with ‘Africa’.

Book Structure
This book is divided into six chapters. After this introduction, Chapter 2
of the book examines Australia’s engagement with Africa from its earliest
official contacts to the end of the Cold War and the fall of apartheid in
the early 1990s. The purpose of the chapter is to relate all important
and high-profile episodes of Australia’s engagement with Africa in this
time period, and highlight how engagement with Africa has tradition-
ally been more multilateral than bilateral—usually taking place through
the Commonwealth. The chapter also discusses Australia’s largely unac-
knowledged historical ‘baggage’ in Africa. Up until the early 1970s,
Australian governments—while nominally not supporting apartheid—
exhibited imperialist and racist tendencies, sympathizing with ‘outnum-
bered’ whites and apartheid in Rhodesia and South Africa. While such
sympathies were still present on the conservative side of Australian poli-
tics, between the early 1970s and the fall of apartheid in the early 1990s,
the country still managed to develop a politically bipartisan dedication to
the fight against apartheid.
Chapters 3 and 4 tell the story of Australia’s contemporary—
post-Cold War and post-apartheid—engagement with Africa. They also
 1 INTRODUCTION: A NEW FRIEND FROM THE SOUTH? 13

highlight issues of structure and agency in Australia’s engagement with

Africa. Discussions about structure and agency revolve around the rela-
tionship between political actors and the extent to which their conduct
can shape and is shaped by the political, economic, geostrategic, and cul-
tural environment they find themselves in. Structure refers to the context
within which political events, outcomes, and effects occur and is beyond
the immediate control of the actors directly involved, while agency refers
to the conduct of those actors, implying that their behaviour and choices
are responsible for the effects and outcomes we are interested in explain-
ing (Hay 2002, 95–96). Since the end of the Cold War, there have been
two key structural factors underpinning Australia’s engagement with
Africa: throughout the 1990s, this was the ‘Decline of Africa’, and from
the late 2000s, the ‘Rise of Africa’.
Chapter 3 examines Australia’s engagement with Africa during the
reign of the conservative John Howard government between 1996
and 2007, arguing that during this time, Australia largely tried to for-
get Africa. The chapter firstly discusses the structural factor termed the
‘Decline of Africa’ which to an extent made it easier for the Howard
government to perceive Africa as a place of little interest. Since the
anti-apartheid struggle was so central to Australia’s engagement with
Africa for over two decades beforehand, apartheid’s ultimate demise in
the early 1990s influenced a diminished intensity in that engagement.
Also, changes in Australia’s political leadership in the early 1990s sig-
nalled a lessening interest in the Commonwealth—Australia’s tradi-
tional ‘window’ into Africa—as well as an increasing focus on Australia’s
engagement with Asia, which also took some of the intensity out of
engagement with Africa. More broadly, the end of the Cold War took
away much of Africa’s overall international strategic value, further expos-
ing some of the long-standing development issues prevalent in many
African countries, and contributing to a global narrative of a ‘hopeless
Africa’ running through much of the 1990s.
The rest of Chapter 3 examines the Howard government’s engage-
ment with Africa, highlighting how the agency of the Australian gov-
ernment, and Prime Minister John Howard and Foreign Minister
Alexander Downer affected and determined the nature of that engage-
ment. While the Howard government’s engagement with Africa was
not monolithic, it was episodic rather than strategic, and in conserva-
tive fashion, fairly reactive. Overall, the Howard government did not
conceptualize Africa as a policy space with much relevance past the
14 N. PIJOVIĆ

multilateral Commonwealth connection, and the most high-profile epi-

sode of engagement with Africa came through Prime Minister Howard’s
bruising encounters with African leaders during the 2002/2003
Commonwealth suspension of Zimbabwe. Between 2004 and 2007, the
government did react to the growth of Australian commercial and con-
sular interests in Africa by opening an Australian High Commission in
Ghana in 2004, and an Australian Consulate General in Libya in 2005.
However, notwithstanding these initiatives, the Howard government did
not seek proactive engagement with African states and issues during its
four terms in office.
Chapter 4 looks at Australia’s engagement with Africa during the
reigns of two ideologically different Australian governments between
2007 and 2018. It tells the story of how between 2007 and 2013, the
Labor government re-discovered Africa, embarking on what it called a
‘new engagement’ with the continent; and how after 2013, the conserva-
tive Liberal-National Party coalition governments led by Prime Ministers
Tony Abbott and Malcolm Turnbull tried to again forget about Africa.
This chapter also begins with an examination of structural factors under-
pinning engagement with Africa since the late 2000s termed the ‘Rise of
Africa’. From roughly the turn of the millennium, the continental trend
of Africa’s greater political stability and macroeconomic growth, coincid-
ing with the global resources boom emerging in the early-2000s, all con-
tributed to a growing recognition that things in Africa were changing for
the better. This in turn fed the ‘Rise of Africa’ narrative as propagated by
some of the world’s most prominent media outlets, international finan-
cial organizations, banking groups and research institutions, which made
it easier and more appealing for Australia to embark on a ‘new engage-
ment’ with Africa. Although African states still face significant develop-
mental and security challenges, and the global resources boom fizzled
out by mid-2014, the ‘Rise of Africa’ remains a vibrant narrative about
the continent’s future prospects. However, conservative Australian gov-
ernments since 2013 have largely ignored it.
The second section of this chapter examines in detail the Labor gov-
ernment’s ‘new engagement’ with Africa, arguing that during this
time and for the first time in Australia’s history, the country’s engage-
ment with Africa was more strategic than episodic. It was strategic
because the government was able to justify why engagement with Africa
made sense—primarily through its ‘middle power’ approach to for-
eign policy—and as a result was able to assess its strategic interests on
Another random document with
no related content on Scribd:
 Westward the French and British fur trade opened up the length
and breadth of North America.
By the time the hatter invented the imitation “beaver,” our silk
hat, this mad hat trade had pioneered the Russian empire, the
United States and the Dominion of Canada, belting the planet with
the white man’s power.
Now in this monstrous adventure the finest of all the adventurers
were Scotch, and the greatest Scot of them all was Alexander
MacKenzie, of Stornoway, in the Scotch Hebrides. At the age of
seventeen he landed in Montreal, soon after Canada was taken by
the British, and he grew up in the growing fur trade. In those days
the Hudson’s Bay Company was a sleepy old corporation with four
forts, but the Nor’westers of Montreal had the aid of the valiant
French Canadian voyageurs as guides and canoe men in the far
wilderness.
Their trade route crossed the upper lakes to Thunder Bay in
Lake Superior, where they built Fort William; thence by Rainy River
to the Lake of the Woods, and Rat Portage; thence up Lake
Winnipeg to the Grand Saskatchewan. There were the forts where
buffalo hunters boiled down pemmican, a sort of pressed beef spiced
with service berries, to feed the northern posts. Northward the long
trail, by lake and river, reached à la Crosse, which gave its name to a
famous Indian ball game, and so to the source of the Churchill River
at Lac la Loche, from whence the Methye portage opened the way
into the Great Unknown.
When MacKenzie reached Clear-water River, Mr. Peter Pond of
the Nor’westers had just shot Mr. Ross of the X. Y. Company.
MacKenzie took charge, and he and his cousin moved the trade
down to the meeting of the Athabasca and the Peace, at an inland
sea, the Athabasca Lake, where they built the future capital of the
North, Fort Chipewyan. From here the Slave River ran down to Great
Slave Lake, a second inland sea whose outlet was unknown.
MacKenzie found that outlet six miles wide. The waters teemed with
wild fowl, the bush with deer, and the plains on either side had herds
of bison.
 MacKenzie took with him four French voyageurs, a German and
some Indians, working them as a rule from three A. M. till dusk, while
they all with one accord shied at the terrors ahead, the cataracts, the
savage tribes, the certainty of starvation. The days lengthened until
there was no night, they passed coal fields on fire which a hundred
years later were still burning, then frozen ground covered with grass
and flowers, where the river parted into three main branches opening
on the coast of an ice-clad sea. The water was still fresh, but there
were seaweeds, they saw whales, the tides would wash the people
out of camp, for this was the Arctic Ocean. So they turned back up
that great river which bears MacKenzie’s name, six thousand miles
of navigable waters draining a land so warm that wheat will ripen on
the Arctic circle, a home for millions of healthy prosperous people in
the days to come.
MacKenzie’s second journey was much more difficult, up the
Peace River through the Rocky Mountains, then by a portage to the
Fraser Valley, and down Bad River. All the rivers were bad, but the
birch bark canoe, however much it smashes, can be repaired with
fresh sheets of bark, stuck on with gum from the pine trees. Still,
after their canoe was totally destroyed in Bad River and the stock of
bullets went to the bottom, the Indians sat down and wept, while the
Frenchmen, after a square meal with a lot of rum, patched up the
wreck to go on. Far down the Fraser Valley there is a meadow of tall
grass and flowers with clumps of wild fruit orchard and brier rose,
gardens of tiger lilies and goldenrod. Nobody lived there in my time,
but the place is known as Alexandria in memory of Alexander
Mackenzie and of the only moment in his life when he turned back,
beaten. Below Alexandria the Fraser plunges for two hundred miles
through a range of mountains in one long roaring swoop.
So the explorers, warned by friendly Indians, climbed back up-
stream to the Blackwater River; and if any big game hunter wants to
shoot mosquitoes for their hides that valley would make a first-class
hunting ground. The journey from here to the coast was made afoot
with heavy loads by a broad Indian trail across the coast range to the
Bilthqula River, and here the explorers were the guests of rich
powerful tribes. One young chief unclasped a splendid robe of sea-
otter skins, and threw it around MacKenzie, such a gift as no king
could offer now. They feasted on salmon, service berries in grease,
and cakes of inner hemlock bark sprinkled with oil of salmon, a
three-hour banquet, followed by sleep in beds of furs, and blankets
woven from wool of the mountain sheep. The houses were low-
pitched barns of cedar, each large enough to seat several hundred
people, and at the gable end rose a cedar pole carved in heraldic
sculpture gaily painted, with a little round hole cut through for the
front door.
Each canoe was a cedar log hollowed with fire, then spread with
boiling water, a vessel not unlike a gondola. One such canoe, the
Tillicum, has made a voyage round the world, but she is small
compared with the larger dugouts up to seven tons burden. An old
chief showed MacKenzie a canoe forty-five feet in length, of four foot
beam painted with white animals on a black hull, and set with ivory of
otter teeth. In this he had made a voyage some years before, when
he met white men and saw ships, most likely those of the great
Captain Cook. MacKenzie’s account of the native doctors describes
them to the life as they are to-day. “They blew on the patient, and
then whistled; they rubbed him violently on the stomach; they thrust
their forefingers into his mouth, and spouted water into his face.”
MacKenzie, had he only waited, would have seen them jump on the
patient’s stomach to drive the devils out.
He borrowed canoes for the run down the Bilthqula to Salt Water
at the head of one of British Columbia’s giant fiords. There the
explorer heard that only two moons ago Captain Vancouver’s boats
had been in the inlet. An Indian chief must have been rude, for one
officer fired upon him, while another struck him with the flat of a
sword. For this the chief must needs get even with Alexander
MacKenzie as he wandered about the channels in search of the
open sea. He never found the actual Pacific, but made his final camp
upon a rock at the entrance of Cascada inlet. Here is Vancouver’s
description of the place. “The width of the channel did not anywhere
exceed three-quarters of a mile; its shores were bounded by
precipices much more perpendicular than any we had yet seen
during this excursion; and from the summits of the mountains that
overlooked it ... there fell several large cascades. These were
extremely grand, and by much the most tremendous of any we had
ever beheld.”
Those cataracts, like lace, fell from the cornice glaciers through
belt after belt of clouds, to crash through the lower gloom in
deafening thunder upon black abysmal channels. The eagles swirl
and circle far above, the schools of porpoises are cleaving and
gleaming through the white-maned tide. In such a place, beset by
hostile Indians, as the dawn broke the great explorer mixed vermilion
and grease to paint upon the precipice above him:
“Alexander MacKenzie, from Canada by land 22nd July, 1793.”
He had discovered one of the world’s great rivers, and made the
first crossing of North America.
 XLV
THE WHITE MAN’S COMING

IT is our plain duty here to take up the story of Vancouver, an

English merchant seaman from before the mast, who rose to a
captaincy in the royal navy, and was sent to explore the British
Columbian coast. He was to find “the Straits of Anian leading
through Meta Incognita to the Atlantic,” the famous Northwest
passage for which so many hundreds of explorers gave their lives.
His careful survey proved there was no such strait.
Of course it is our duty to follow Vancouver’s dull and pompous
log book, and show what savage tribes he met with in the wilds. But
it will be much more fun to give the other side, the story of
Vancouver’s visit as told by the Indians whose awful fate it was to be
“discovered” by the white man with his measles, his liquor and his
smallpox.
In the winter of 1887–8 I was traveling on snowshoes down the
Skeena Valley from Gaat-a-maksk to Gaet-wan-gak, which must be
railway stations now on the Grand Trunk Pacific. My packer was
Willie-the-Bear, so named because a grizzly had eaten off half his
face, the side of his face, in fact, which had to be covered with a
black veil. We were crossing some low hills when I asked him about
the coming of the white men. Promptly he told me of the first ship—a
Spaniard; the second—Vancouver’s; and the third—an American, all
in correct order after a hundred years. Who told him? His mother.
And who told her? Her mother, of course.
So, living as I was among the Indians, and seeing no white
man’s face for months on end, I gathered up the various memories
of the people.
 At Massett, on the north coast of the Queen Charlotte Islands,
the Haidas were amazed by a great bird which came to rest in front
of the village. When she had folded her wings a lot of little birds shot
out from under her, which came to the beach and turned out to be
full of men. They were as fair of color as the Haidas, some even
more so, and some red as the meat of salmon. The people went out
in their dugouts to board the bird, which was a vast canoe. All of
them got presents, but there was one, a person of no account, who
got the finest gift, better than anything received by the highest chiefs,
an iron cooking-pot.
In those days the food was put with water into a wooden trough
and red-hot stones thrown in until it boiled. The people had copper,
but that was worth many times the present price of gold, not to be
wasted on mere cooking pots. So the man with the iron pot, in his
joy, called all the people to a feast, and gave away the whole of his
property, which of course was the right thing to do. The chiefs were
in a rage at his new importance, but they came, as did every one
else. And at the feast the man of no account climbed the tall pole in
front of his house, the totem pole carved with the arms of his
ancestors, passing a rope over the top by which he hauled up the
iron pot so that it might be seen by the whole tribe. “See,” he said,
“what the great chief has given me, the Big Spirit whose people have
tails stiff as a beaver tail behind their heads, whose canoe is loaded
with thunder and lightning, the mother of all canoes, with six young
canoes growing up, whose medicine is so strong that one dose
makes you sick for three days, whose warriors are so brave that one
got two black eyes and did not run away, who have a little dog which
scratches and says meaou!
“This great chief has given us presents according to our rank,
little no-account presents to the common people; but when I came
he knew I was his brother, his equal, and to me, to me alone, he
gave this pot which sits upon the fire and does not burn, this pot
which boils the water, and will not break!”
But as the man bragged he kept twitching the rope, and down
fell the pot, smash on the ground, and broken all to pieces.
 Now as to the first white man who came up Skeena River:
A very old man of Kitzelash remembered that when he was a
boy he stood on the banks of the cañon and there came a canoe
with a white man, a big chief called Manson, a Spaniard, and a black
man, all searching for gold. He remembered that first one man sang
a queer song and then they all took it up and sang, laughing
together.
A middle-aged man of Gaet-wan-gak remembered that in his
childhood a canoe came up the river full of Indians, and with two
white men. Nobody had ever seen the like, and they took the
strangers for ghosts, so that the women ran away and hid. The
ghosts gave them bread, but they spat it out because it was ghost
food and had no taste. They offered tea, but the people spat it out,
because it was like earth water out of graves. Rice, too, they would
not touch, for it was like—perhaps one should not say what that was
like.
 XLVI
THE BEAVER

IN the heart of the city of Victoria I once found an old log barn, the
last remnant of Fort Camosun, and climbing into the loft, kicked
about in a heap of rubbish from which emerged some damp rat-
gnawed manuscript books. From morning to evening, and far into the
dusk, I sat reading there the story of a great adventuress, a heroine
of tonnage and displacement, the first steamer which ever plied on
the Pacific Ocean.
Her builders were Messrs. Boulton and Watt, and Watt was the
father of steam navigation. She was built at Blackwall on London
River in the days of George IV. She was launched by a duchess in a
poke bonnet and shawl, who broke a bottle of wine against the ship’s
nose and christened her the Beaver. Then the merchant adventurers
of the Hudson’s Bay Company, in bell toppers, Hessian boots and
white chokers, gave three hearty cheers.
The Beaver was as ugly as it was safe to make her, but built of
honest oak, and copper bolted, her engines packed in the hold, and
her masts brigantine-rigged for the sailing voyage round Cape Horn.
She went under convoy of the barque Columbia, a slow and rather
helpless chaperon, who fouled and nearly wrecked her at Robinson
Crusoe’s Island. Her master, to judge by the ship’s books, was a
peppery little beast, who logged the mate for a liar: “Not correct D.
Home;” drove his officers until they went sick, quarreled with the
Columbia’s doctor, found his chief engineer “in a beastly state of
intoxication,” and finally, at the Columbia River, hounded his crew
into mutiny.
 “Mr. Phillips and Mr. Wilson behaved,” says the mate, “in a most
mutinous manner.” So the captain had all hands aft to witness their
punishment with the cat-o’-nine-tails. Phillips called on the crew to
rescue him, and they went for the captain. Calling for his sword, the
skipper defended himself like a man, wounding one seaman in the
head. Then he “succeeded in tying up Phillips, and punishing him
with two dozen lashes with a rope’s end over his clothes,”
whereupon William Wilson demanded eleven strokes for himself, so
sharing the fun, for better or worse, with a shipmate.
Fort Vancouver, on the Columbia River, an old stockade of the
Nor’westers, was at this time the Hudson’s Bay Company’s capital
on the Pacific coast, where reigned the great Doctor McLauchlan,
founder of Oregon. Here the Beaver shipped her paddles, started up
her engines, and gave an excursion trip for the ladies. So came her
voyage under steam out in the open Pacific of eight hundred miles to
her station on the British Columbian coast. She sailed on the last day
of May in 1836, two years before the Atlantic was crossed under
steam. On the Vancouver coast she discovered an outcrop of steam
coal, still the best to be had on the Pacific Ocean.
In her days of glory, the Beaver was a smart little war-ship
trading with the savages, or bombarding their villages, all the way
from Puget Sound to Alaska. In her middle age she was a survey
vessel exploring Wonderland. In her old age the boiler leaked, so
that the engineer had to plug the holes with a rag on a pointed stick.
She was a grimy tug at the last, her story forgotten; and after fifty-
two years of gallant service, was allowed to lie a weed-grown wreck
within a mile of the new City of Vancouver, until a kindly storm gave
her the honor of sea burial.
It was in 1851 that the Beaver brought to the factor at Fort
Simpson some nuggets of the newly discovered Californian gold. At
first he refused to take the stuff in trade, next bought it in at half its
value, and finally showed it to Edenshaw, head chief of the Haida
nation. As each little yellow pebble was worth a big pile of blankets,
the chief borrowed a specimen and showed it to his tribe in the
Queen Charlotte Islands.
 There is a legend that in earlier days a trader found the Haidas
using golden bullets with their trade guns, which they gladly
exchanged for lead. Anyway an old woman told Edenshaw that she
knew where to find the stuff, so next day she took him in a small
dugout canoe to the outer coast. There she showed him a streak
seven inches wide, and eighty feet in length, of quartz and shining
gold, which crossed the neck of a headland. They filled a bushel
basket with loose bits, and left them in the canoe while they went
back for more. But in the stern of the canoe sat Edenshaw’s little son
watching the dog fish at play down in the deeps. When the elders
came back Charlie had thrown their first load of gold at the dog fish,
and later on in life he well remembered the hands of blessing laid on
by way of reward.
Still, enough gold was saved to buy many bales of blankets.
Edenshaw claimed afterward that, had he only known the value of
his find, he would have gone to England and married the queen’s
daughter.
News spread along the coast and soon a ship appeared, the
H. B. C. brigantine Una. Her people blasted the rocks, while the
Indians, naked and well oiled, grabbed the plunder. The sailors
wrestled, but could not hold those oily rogues. In time the Una sailed
with a load of gold, but was cast away with her cargo in the Straits of
Fuca.
Next year Gold Harbor was full of little ships, with a gunboat to
keep them in order while they reaped a total harvest of two hundred
eighty-nine thousand dollars. H. M. S. Thetis had gone away when
the schooner Susan Sturgis came back for a second load, the only
vessel to brave the winter storms. One day while all hands were in
the cabin at dinner the Indians stole on board, clapped on the
hatches and made them prisoners. They were marched ashore and
stripped in the deep snow, pleading for their drawers, but only
Captain Rooney and the mate were allowed that luxury. The seamen
were sold to the H. B. Company at Fort Simpson, but the two officers
remained in slavery. By day they chopped fire-wood under a guard,
at night crouched in a dark corner of a big Indian house, out of sight
of the fire in the middle, fed on such scraps of offal as their masters
deigned to throw them.
Only one poor old woman pitied the slaves, hiding many a dried
clam under the matting within their reach. Also they made a friend of
Chief Bearskin’s son; and Bearskin himself was a good-hearted
man, though Edenshaw proved a brute. Rooney was an able-bodied
Irishman, Lang a tall broad-shouldered Scot, though this business
turned his hair gray. For after the schooner was plundered and
broken up, a dispute arose between Bearskin and Edenshaw as to
their share of the captives. Edenshaw would kill Lang rather than
surrender him to Bearskin, and twice the Scotchman had his head
on the block to be chopped off before Bearskin gave in to save his
life. At last both slaves were sold to Captain McNeill, who gave them
each a striped shirt, corduroy trousers and shoes, then shipped them
aboard the Beaver. Now it so happened that on the passage
southward the Beaver met with the only accident in her long life, for
during a storm the steering gear was carried away. Lang was a
ship’s carpenter, and his craftsmanship saved the little heroine from
being lost with all hands that night. This rescued slave became the
pioneer ship-builder of Western Canada.
 XLVII
A. D. 1911
THE CONQUEST OF THE POLES

THE North Pole is only a point on the earth’s surface, a point which
in itself has no length, breadth or height, neither has it weight nor
any substance, being invisible, impalpable, immovable and entirely
useless. The continents of men swing at a thousand miles an hour
round that point, which has no motion. Beneath it an eternal ice-field
slowly drifts across the unfathomed depths of a sea that knows no
light.
Above, for a night of six months, the pole star marks the zenith
round which the constellations swing their endless race; then for six
months the low sun rolls along the sky-line on his level rounds; and
each day and night are one year.
The attempt to reach that point began in the reign of Henry VIII
of England, when Master John Davis sailed up the Greenland coast
to a big cliff which he named after his becker, Sanderson’s Hope.
The cliff is sheer from the sea three thousand four hundred feet high,
with one sharp streak of ice from base to summit. It towers above
Upernivik, the most northerly village in the world, and is one
thousand one hundred twenty-eight miles from the Pole.
In 1594 Barentz carried the Dutch flag a little farther north but
soon Hudson gave the lead back to Great Britain, and after that, for
two hundred seventy-six years the British flag unchallenged went on
from victory to victory in the conquest of the North. At last in 1882
Lieutenant Greely of the United States Army beat us by four miles at
a cost of nearly his whole expedition, which was destroyed by
famine. Soon Doctor Nansen broke the American record for Norway,
to be beaten in turn by an Italian prince, the Duke d’Abruzzi. But
meanwhile Peary, an American naval officer, had commenced his
wonderful course of twenty-three years’ special training; and in 1906
he broke the Italian record. His way was afoot with dog-trains across
the ice of the Polar sea, and he would have reached the North Pole,
but for wide lanes of open sea, completely barring the way. At two
hundred twenty-seven miles from the Pole he was forced to retreat,
and camp very near to death before he won back to his base camp.
Peary’s ship was American to the last detail of needles and
thread, but the vessel was his own invention, built for ramming ice-
pack. The ship’s officers and crew were all Newfoundlanders, trained
from boyhood in the seal fishery of the Labrador ice-pack. They
were, alas! British, but that could not be helped. To make amends
the exploring officers were Americans, but they were specially
trained by Peary to live and travel as Eskimos, using the native
dress, the dog-trains and the snow houses.
Other explorers had done the same, but Peary went further, for
he hired the most northerly of the Eskimo tribes, and from year to
year educated the pick of the boys, who grew up to regard him as a
father, to obey his orders exactly, and to adopt his improvements on
their native methods. So he had hunting parties to store up vast
supplies of meat, and skins of musk-ox, ice-bear, reindeer, fox, seal
and walrus, each for some special need in the way of clothing. He
had women to make the clothes. He had two hundred fifty huskie
dogs, sleds of his own device, and Eskimo working parties under his
white officers. In twenty-three years he found out how to boil tea in
ten minutes, and that one detail saved ninety minutes a day for
actual marching—a margin in case of accident. Add to all that
Peary’s own enormous strength of mind and body, in perfect training,
just at the prime of life. He was so hardened by disaster that he had
become almost a maniac, with one idea, one motive in life, one hope
—that of reaching the Pole. Long hours before anything went wrong
an instinct would awaken him out of the soundest sleep to look out
for trouble and avert calamity.
 A glance at the map will show how Greenland, and the islands
north of Canada, reach to within four hundred miles of the Pole.
Between is a channel leading from Baffin’s Bay into the Arctic
Ocean. The Roosevelt, Peary’s ship, forced a passage through that
channel, then turned to the left, creeping and dodging between the
ice-field and the coast of Grant Land. Captain Bartlett was in the
crow’s-nest, piloting, and Peary, close below him, clung to the
standing rigging while the ship butted and charged and hammered
through the floes. Bartlett would coax and wheedle, or shout at the
ship to encourage her, “Rip ’em, Teddy! Bite ’em in two! Go it! That’s
fine, my beauty! Now again! Once more!”
Who knows? In the hands of a great seaman like Bartlett a ship
seems to be a living creature, and no matter what slued the
Roosevelt she had a furious habit of her own, coming to rest with her
nose to the north for all the world like a compass. Her way was
finally blocked just seventy-five miles short of the most northerly
headland, Cape Columbia, and the stores had to be carried there for
the advanced base. The winter was spent in preparation, and on
March first began the dash for the Pole.
No party with dog-trains could possibly carry provisions for a
return journey of eight hundred miles. If there had been islands on
the route it would have been the right thing to use them as advanced
bases for a final rush to the Pole. But there were no islands, and it
would be too risky to leave stores upon the shifting ice-pack. There
was, therefore, but one scheme possible. Doctor Goodsell marched
from the coast to Camp A, unloaded his stores and returned. Using
the stores at Camp A, Mr. Borup was able to march to Camp B,
where he unloaded and turned back. With the stores at Camp B,
Professor Marvin marched to Camp C and turned back. With the
stores at Camp C, Captain Bartlett marched to Camp D and turned
back. With the stores at Camp D, Peary had his sleds fully loaded,
with a selection, besides, of the fittest men and dogs for the last lap
of the journey, and above all not too many mouths to feed.
It was a clever scheme, and in theory the officers, turned back
with their Eskimo parties, were needed to pilot them to the coast. All
the natives got back safely, but Professor Marvin was drowned. If
Peary had not sent all his officers back, would he have been playing
the game in leaving his Eskimo parties without navigating officers to
guide them in the event of a storm? There is no doubt that his
conduct was that of a wise and honorable man. But the feeling
remains—was it sportsman-like to send Captain Bartlett back—the
one man who had done most for his success, denied any share in
the great final triumph? Bartlett made no complaint, and in his cheery
acceptance of the facts cut a better figure than even Commander
Peary.
With his negro servant and four Eskimos, the leader set forth on
the last one hundred thirty-three miles across the ice. It was not plain
level ice like that of a pond, but heaved into sharp hills caused by the
pressure, with broken cliffs and labyrinthine reefs. The whole pack
was drifting southward before the wind, here breaking into mile-wide
lanes of black and foggy sea, there newly frozen and utterly unsafe.
Although the sun did not set, the frost was sharp, at times twenty
and thirty degrees below zero, while for the most part a cloudy sky
made it impossible to take observations. Here great good fortune
awaited Peary, for as he neared the Pole, the sky cleared, giving him
brilliant sunlight. By observing the sun at frequent intervals he was
able to reckon with his instruments until at last he found himself
within five miles of ninety degrees north—the Pole. A ten-mile tramp
proved he had passed the apex of the earth, and five miles back he
made the final tests. Somewhere within a mile of where he stood
was the exact point, the north end of the axis on which the earth
revolves. As nearly as he could reckon, the very point was marked
for that moment upon the drifting ice-field by a berg-like hill of ice,
and on this summit he hoisted the flag, a gift from his wife which he
had carried for fifteen years, a tattered silken remnant of Old Glory.
“Perhaps,” he writes, “it ought not to have been so, but when I
knew for a certainty that I had reached the goal, there was not a
thing in the world I wanted but sleep. But after I had a few hours of it,
there succeeded a condition of mental exaltation which made further
rest impossible. For more than a score of years that point on the
earth’s surface had been the object of my every effort. To obtain it
my whole being, physical, mental and moral, had been dedicated.
The determination to reach the Pole had become so much a part of
my being that, strange as it may seem, I long ago ceased to think of
myself save as an instrument for the attainment of that end.... But
now I had at last succeeded in planting the flag of my country at the
goal of the world’s desire. It is not easy to write about such a thing,
but I knew that we were going back to civilization with the last of the
great adventure stories—a story the world had been waiting to hear
for nearly four hundred years, a story which was to be told at last
under the folds of the Stars and Stripes, the flag that during a lonely
and isolated life had come to be for me the symbol of home and
everything I loved—and might never see again.”
Here is the record left at the North Pole:—

“90 N. Lat., North Pole,

“April 6th, 1909.
“I have to-day hoisted the national ensign of the United
States of America at this place, which my observations indicate
to be the North Polar axis of the earth, and have formally taken
possession of the entire region, and adjacent, for and in the
name of the president of the United States of America.
“I leave this record and United States flag in possession.
“Robert E. Peary,
“United States Navy.”

Before the hero of this very grand adventure returned to the

world, there also arrived from the Arctic a certain Doctor Cook, an
American traveler who claimed to have reached the Pole. The
Danish Colony in Greenland received him with joy, the Danish
Geographical Society welcomed him with a banquet of honor, and
the world rang with his triumph. Then came Commander Peary out
of the North, proclaiming that this rival was a liar. So Doctor Cook
was able to strike an attitude of injured innocence, hinting that poor
old Peary was a fraud; and the world rocked with laughter.
 In England we may have envied the glory that Peary had so
bravely won for his flag and country, but knew his record too well to
doubt his honor, and welcomed his triumph with no ungenerous
thoughts. The other claimant had a record of impudent and amusing
frauds, but still he was entitled to a hearing, and fair judgment of his
claim from men of science. Among sportsmen we do not expect the
runners, after a race, to call one another liars, and were sorry that
Peary should for a moment lapse from the dignity expected of brave
men.
It is perhaps ungenerous to mention such trifling points of
conduct, and yet we worship heroes only when we are quite sure
that our homage is not a folly. And so we measure Peary with the
standard set by his one rival, Roald Amundsen, who conquered the
Northwest passage, then added to that immortal triumph the
conquest of the South Pole. In that Antarctic adventure Amundsen
challenged a fine British explorer, Captain Scott. The British
expedition was equipped with every costly appliance wealth could
furnish, and local knowledge of the actual route. The Norseman
ventured into an unknown route, scantily equipped, facing the
handicap of poverty. He won by sheer merit, by his greatness as a
man, and by the loyal devotion he earned at the hands of his
comrades. Then he returned to Norway, they say, disguised under an
assumed name to escape a public triumph, and his one message to
the world was a generous tribute to his defeated rival. The modern
world has no greater hero, no more perfect gentleman, no finer
adventurer than Roald Amundsen.
 XLVIII
WOMEN

TWO centuries ago Miss Mary Read, aged thirteen, entered the
Royal Navy as a boy. A little later she deserted, and still disguised as
a boy, went soldiering, first in a line regiment, afterward as a trooper.
She was very brave. On the peace of Ryswick, seeing that there was
to be no more fighting, she went into the merchant service for a
change, and was bound for the West Indies when the ship was
gathered in by pirates. Rather than walk the plank, she became a
pirate herself and rose from rank to rank until she hoisted the black
flag with the grade of captain. So she fell in with Mrs. Bonny, widow
of a pirate captain. The two amiable ladies, commanding each her
own vessel, went into a business partnership, scuttling ships and
cutting throats for years with marked success.
In the seventeenth century an escaped nun did well as a
seafaring man under the Spanish colors, ruffled as a gallant in Chili,
and led a gang of brigands in the Andes. On her return to Spain as a
lady, she was very much petted at the court of Madrid. The last of
many female bandits was Miss Pearl Hart, who, in 1890, robbed a
stage-coach in Arizona.
Mr. Murray Hall, a well-known Tammany politician and a
successful business man, died in New York, and was found to be a
woman.
But of women who, without disguise, have excelled in
adventurous trades, I have known in Western Canada two who are
gold miners and two who are cowboys. Mrs. Langdon, of California,
drove a stage-coach for years. Miss Calamity Jane was a noted
Montana bull-whacker. Miss Minnie Hill and Miss Collie French are
licensed American pilots. Miss Evelyn Smith, of Nova Scotia, was a
jailer. Lady Clifford holds Board of Trade certificates as an officer in
our mercantile marine. A distinguished French explorer, Madame
Dieulafoy, is an officer of the Legion of Honor, entitled to a military
salute from all sentries, and has the singular right by law of wearing
the dress of a man. Several English ladies have been explorers.
Miss Bird explored Japan, conquered Long’s Peak, and was once
captured by Mountain Jim, the Colorado robber. Lady Florence Dixie
explored Patagonia, Miss Gordon-Cumming explored a hundred of
the South Sea Isles, put an end to a civil war in Samoa and was one
of the first travelers on the Pamirs. Mrs. Mulhall has traced the
sources of the Amazons. Lady Baker, Mrs. Jane Moir, and Miss
Kingsley rank among the great pioneers of Africa. Lady Hester
Stanhope, traveling in the Levant, the ship being loaded with
treasure, her own property, was cast away on a desert island near
Rhodes. Escaping thence she traversed the Arabian deserts, and by
a gathering of forty thousands of Arabs was proclaimed queen of
Palmyra. This beautiful and gifted woman reigned through the first
decades of the nineteenth century from her palace on the slopes of
Mount Lebanon. Two other British princesses in wild lands were Her
Highness Florence, Maharanee of Patiala, and the sherifa of Wazan,
whose son is reverenced by the Moslems in North Africa as a sacred
personage.
Among women who have been warriors the greatest, perhaps,
were the British Queen Boadicea, and the saintly and heroic Joan of
Arc, burned, to our everlasting shame, at Rouen. Frances
Scanagatti, a noble Italian girl, fought with distinction as an officer in
the Austrian army, once led the storming of a redoubt, and after three
years in the field against Napoleon, went home, a young lady again,
of sweet and mild disposition.
Doctor James Barry, M. D., inspector-general of hospitals in the
British Army, a duelist, a martinet, and a hopelessly insubordinate
officer, died in 1865 at the age of seventy-one, and was found to be
a woman.
Apart from hosts of adventurous camp followers there have been
disguised women serving at different times in nearly every army.
Loreta Velasquez, of Cuba, married to an American army officer,
dressed up in her husband’s clothes, raised a corps of volunteers,
took command, was commissioned in the Confederate Army during
the Civil War of 1861–5, and fought as Lieutenant Harry Buford. She
did extraordinary work as a spy in the northern army. After the war,
her husband having fallen in battle, she turned gold miner in
California.
Mrs. Christian Davies, born in 1667 in Dublin, was a happy and
respectable married woman with a large family, when her life was
wrecked by a sudden calamity, for her husband was seized by a
press gang and dragged away to serve in the fleet. Mrs. Davis, crazy
with grief, got her children adopted by the neighbors, and set off in
search of the man she loved. When she returned two years later as
a soldier, she found her children happy, the neighbors kind, and
herself utterly unknown. She went away contented. She served
under the Duke of Marlborough throughout his campaigns in Europe,
first as an infantry soldier, but later as a dragoon, for at the battles of
Blenheim and Fontenoy she was a squadron leader of the Scots
Grays. The second dragoon guards have many curious traditions of
“Mother Ross.” When after twelve years military service, she
ultimately found her husband, he was busy flirting with a waitress in
a Dutch inn, and she passed by, saying nothing. In her capacity as a
soldier she was a flirt herself, making love to every girl she met, a
gallant, a duelist, and notably brave. At last, after a severe wound,
her sex was discovered and she forgave her husband. She died in
Chelsea Hospital at the age of one hundred eight, and her
monument may be seen in the graveyard.
Hannah Snell left her home because her husband had bolted
with another woman, and she wanted to find and kill him. In course
of her search, she enlisted, served as a soldier against the Scots
rebellion of 1745, and once received a punishment of five hundred
lashes. A series of wonderful adventures led her into service as a
marine on board H. M. S. Swallow. After a narrow escape from
foundering, this vessel joined Admiral Boscawen’s fleet in the East
Indies. She showed such extreme gallantry in the attack on Mauritius
and in the siege of Areacopong, that she was chosen for special