Edward Duyker
Encyclopedia
Edward Duyker is an Australian historian and author born in Melbourne
, Victoria, to a father from the Netherlands
and a mother from Mauritius
. Despite recent immigrant roots, 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
.
Edward Duyker's books include several ethno-histories — Tribal Guerrillas (1987),*http://catalogue.nla.gov.au/Record/305057?lookfor=author:(Edward%20Duyker)&offset=13&max=30 The Dutch in Australia (1987)*http://catalogue.nla.gov.au/Record/1690976?lookfor=author:(Edward%20Duyker)&offset=18&max=30 and Of the Star and the Key: Mauritius, Mauritians and Australia (1988)*http://catalogue.nla.gov.au/Record/2097995?lookfor=author:(Edward%20Duyker)&offset=6&max=30 — and numerous books dealing with early Australian exploration, among them critically acclaimed biographies of Daniel Solander
, Marc-Joseph Marion Dufresne, Jacques Labillardière
and François Péron
. Much of his work seeks to redress the anglo-centrism of Australian history and he has made a major contribution to knowledge and understanding of the French voyages to the Indian Ocean
and Pacific in the eighteenth and early-nineteenth centuries.
Duyker is a member of the editorial board of Doryanthes
, a journal of history and heritage for southern Sydney, and Explorations published by the Institute for the Study of French-Australian Relations.*http://www.fritss.unimelb.edu.au/activities/links/isfar.html He is an Honorary Senior Lecturer in the School of Languages and Cultures at the University of Sydney and an Adjunct Professor of the Australian Catholic University
.*http://www.acu.edu.au/staff/organisation/senior_executive/pvc_academic_affairs/committees_reporting_to_pvc_academic_affairs/ceremonial_and_protocols_committee/honorary_titles_conferred/ Between 1996 and 2002 he also served as the Honorary Consul of the Republic of Mauritius in New South Wales
.*http://catalogue.nla.gov.au/Record/2065796?lookfor=title:(Consular%20List)&offset=1&max=33
with whom he maintained a fragmented but lifelong friendship. He completed his secondary studies at De La Salle College, Malvern. There, under Tim O'Hearn (later Professor and Dean of Students Australian Catholic University
), he was one of the first students in Victoria to study Asian history at a secondary level (National Library of Australia Oral History collection, ORAL TRC 3101).*http://catalogue.nla.gov.au/Record/190692 In 1970 he competed in the Seven Network
's It's Academic
quiz program and the following year reached the semi-final as an individual contestant in the Australian version of the quiz show Jeopardy!
. As an undergraduate at La Trobe University
, he studied philosophy, English literature, history and a number of inter-disciplinary subjects. One of his formative influences was the eminent Australian historian Professor Alan Frost
(see 'Exploring the explorers', Agora, 2004, p. 48). As a doctoral candidate at the University of Melbourne
(where he also studied Bengali language
), he was supervised by the Indian philosopher and literary critic Sibnarayan Ray
. He received his Ph.D. in 1981 for a thesis on the participation of the tribal Santals
in the Maoist Naxalite
insurgency in India. Duyker was recruited by the Australian Department of Defence in Canberra in early 1981 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. Although his early writings were focussed on South Asian subjects and in many cases were published in the Australian Defence Force Journal, Duyker soon refused to be confined as a scholar and author.
Using the Dutch and French linguistic resources of his family, he edited The Discovery of Tasmania (1992)*http://catalogue.nla.gov.au/Record/319563?lookfor=author:(Edward%20Duyker)&offset=29&max=30 which brought together all known journal extracts from the first two European expeditions to Van Diemen's Land
. An Officer of the Blue (1994),*http://catalogue.nla.gov.au/Record/143872?lookfor=author:(Edward%20Duyker)&offset=12&max=30 Duyker's critically acclaimed biography of Marc-Joseph Marion Dufresne
(the first explorer after Abel Tasman
to reach Van Diemen's Land
), was launched by former Prime Minister of Australia Gough Whitlam
. One of the book's reviewers, Professor Michael Roe
, commented: '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. Likewise his sources range widely as to both type and location . . . ' (The Mercury, Hobart, 28 May 1994, p. 38). An Officer of the Blue would also be the subject of an essay, 'The Tortoise Wins Again!', by Professor Greg Dening
, published in his collection Readings/Writings (Melbourne University Press, 1998, pp. 201-4).*http://catalogue.mup.com.au/978-0-522-84841-0.html
Nature's Argonaut (1998),*http://catalogue.mup.com.au/978-0-522-84753-6.html 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),*http://catalogue.mup.com.au/978-0-522-84636-2.html which Paul Brunton described as "a major contribution to textual scholarship" (The Sydney Morning Herald, 24 June 1995, Spectrum, p. 13A). With his mother Maryse Duyker he published the first English translation of the journal of the explorer Bruny d'Entrecasteaux
in 2001.*http://catalogue.mup.com.au/978-0-522-84932-5.html 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
. Citizen Labillardière (2003),*http://catalogue.mup.com.au/978-0-522-85160-1.html Duyker's biography of the naturalist Jacques Labillardière
, was similarly influential and won the General History Prize among the New South Wales Premier's History Awards
. Professor Arthur Lucas
, formerly 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' (Reviews in Australian Studies, vol. 1, no. 1, 2006).*http://www.nla.gov.au/openpublish/index.php/ras/article/view/590/659
Although a long-term New South Wales resident, Edward Duyker is a frequent visitor to France and to Tasmania. With Australian Greens Senator Bob Brown
and broadcaster Peter Cundall
he was an outspoken campaigner for the protection of Recherche Bay
, from logging. He has also been engaged in a number of campaigns to preserve and protect remnant bushland on the Georges River and several historic buildings in Sydney
. Together with his wife Susan Duyker, a heritage architect and grazier, he is a member of the National Trust.
François Péron: An Impetuous Life (2006),*http://catalogue.mup.com.au/978-0-522-85260-8.html Duyker's biography of the controversial zoologist of the expedition of Nicolas-Thomas Baudin
to Australian waters (1800—1803), won the Frank Broeze Maritime History Prize in 2007. Robert Willson, described it as a story told ‘vividly and with magnificent research . . . a splendid and absorbing biography of a gifted scientist with a fatal flaw.’ (Canberra Times, 19 August 2006, p. 17). A recurrent theme in Edward Duyker's writing on early natural history is an attempt to recapture the sense of wonder at the unique flora and fauna encountered by early European explorers in Australia. He has also rendered homage to prescient early naturalists who offered ‘a new focus on the natural equilibrium, the finiteness of resources in restricted locations and the precious quality of unique and vulnerable species that could easily be driven to extinction by human greed or the introduction of feral animals’ (see Duyker, François Péron, p. 9).
Edward Duyker has also edited A Woman on the Goldfields (1995),*http://catalogue.nla.gov.au/Record/654274?lookfor=author:(Edward%20Duyker)&offset=22&max=30 dealing with the life of Emily Skinner on the nineteenth-century Victorian gold fields. Given the paucity of such sources on women during the Gold Rush, it was one of 100 specially selected books to be recorded by the Victorian Institute for the Blind for the Centenary of Australian Federation. Together with Coralie Younger, he authored Molly and the Rajah (1991) *http://catalogue.nla.gov.au/Record/2635522?lookfor=title:(Molly%20and%20the%20Rajah)&offset=1&max=2333003 the life of Esme Mary Fink, an Australian woman who married the Rajah of Pudukottai, India, in 1915. Described as "redolent of . . . Anna and the King of Siam
" (Canberra Times, 2 November 1991), this book drew the attention of a number of film makers. Although the motion picture rights were soon reported sold and the film went into pre-production (The Good Weekend, 3 April 1993, p. 43), these rights have now lapsed and the film is yet to be made.
In 2007 Edward Duyker published A Dictionary of Sea Quotations*http://catalogue.mup.com.au/978-0-522-85371-1.html with a deeply personal introduction on his family's links with the sea. Indeed, Duyker often provides a strong personal orientation in his writing, whether it be references to the austerity and difficulties of his Catholic childhood (he is the eldest of eight children and his Dutch father laboured on the Melbourne waterfront for 37 years), or the experiences of his forebears in Europe and the islands of the Indian Ocean. Edward Duyker is a progressive humanist historian; he has written a great deal with the Age of Enlightenment
and the French Revolution
as a backdrop. Nevertheless, in his biographies of Jacques Labillardière
and François Péron
he has shown himself to be horrified by The Reign of Terror and the coercive excesses of the Revolution. He is also a bitter critic of Napoleon Bonaparte, particularly because of his suppression of democratic liberties, abrogation of his republican commitments, prosecution of global war and retention of slavey as an institution in French colonies. Ironically, both Duyker and his wife Susan are descendants of mariners who were on opposing sides at the Battle of Trafalgar
('Perspective', ABC Radio National, 21 September 2007).*http://www.abc.net.au/rn/perspective/stories/2006/1682895.htm
Duyker's biographies of naturalists are largely conventional linear narratives, but they are both richly embroidered and deceptively simple. According to Professor Greg Dening
, 'Edward Duyker in a simple, direct phrase can lay open the most complex issue' ('The Naturalist Mind', Australian Book Review, April 1998, pp. 8-9). Duyker's books 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 (Canberra Times, 16 May 1998, pp. 7-8). He makes a point of visiting the places he writes about and orienting explorers' maps and journals to a modern landscape or coast. This has sometimes been under difficult circumstances, such as when he researched the naturalist Labillardière's travels in the Middle East
, including war-ravaged Lebanon
. In August 2005 Duyker delivered the inaugural Theo Barker Memorial Lecture at Charles Sturt University
in Bathurst
and took as his theme a remark attributed to R. H. Tawney
that an historian needs 'a stout pair of boots'. During his lecture, he recounted how in the course of field-research in West Bengal
for his book Tribal Guerrillas, he had lost 20 kilograms in weight through dysentery and malnutrition (Charles Sturt University Library, 907.2 DUYK). This was an ordeal he also recounted with witty detail in a largely autobiographical article 'The Word in the Field' (National Library of Australian News, May 1999, pp. 15-17).
In September 1983 Edward Duyker published an article entitled ‘Land Use and Ecological Change in Central New South Wales’ (Journal of the Royal Australian Historical Society, vol. 69, part 2, pp. 120–132). It signaled his strong interest in the use of history and ethnography to understand anthropogenic environmental change and propose solutions such as fire as a management tool. The following year he published an article entitled ‘History and Anthropology’ (Man in India, vol 64, no. 1, March 1984, pp. 74—81) which explored a number of philosophical and methodological issues relating to these overlapping disciplines and which he demonstrated in his book Tribal Guerrillas. The late Professor 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' (Third World Quarterly, vol. 11, no. 2, April 1989, pp. 226-7).*http://www.jstor.org/pss/3992769 Similarly, 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." In the mainstream Indian press, Kalyan Mukherjee commented that Edward Duyker generated attention in India
because he was ‘able to combine contemporary interest with history . . . in that tough ground only the very best writers survive’. (Hindustan Times [Delhi], 22 November 1987). 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 skillfully 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
, writing in the New Zealand Herald (Sat. 14 January 1995), 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."
What Duyker points out is that ‘Rigorous fieldwork or direct participant observation would at first seem anathema to the analysis of the unobservable past, if the seeds of the past were not so readily represented in the present. Among non-literate peoples, oral tradition often forms the principal source for historical reconstruction of the past. The most basic means of obtaining such oral information is through fieldwork . . . While the historian has to exercise caution and discrimination, the exaggeration and distortion of past events also forms part of the thought processes and social life of people . . . When represented in structurally stable oral forms such as songs or ballads or even political slogans, the field researcher can collect data of great utility.’ (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).
Despite his theoretical reflections, Duyker is essentially a narrative historian who writes to tell a story. Ironically, he frequently produces equally engaging ‘tales of research’, such as his account of the detective quest involved in identifying the artist of the expedition of Bruny d'Entrecasteaux
to Australia
and the Pacific (see Duyker, ‘In Search of Jean Piron’, National Library of Australia News, March 2006, pp. 7—10)*http://www.nla.gov.au/pub/nlanews/2006/mar06/NLAnews_Mar06_final.pdf and his account of his search for the grave of Nicolas-Thomas Baudin
in Mauritius
(see ‘In Search of Madame Kerivel and Baudin’s Last Resting Place’, National Library of Australia News, vol. IX, no. 12, September 1999, pp. 8—10). Many of his book reviews bear a similar mark and when he delivered the 2007 Vaughan Evans Memorial Lecture at the Australian National Maritime Museum
, he chose to speak on uncovering the life of Daniel Solander (Signals, No. 81, December 2007-February 2008).
Aside from his contributions to the Australian Dictionary of Biography, since 1985 Duyker has written some 70 entries for the bilingual Dictionnaire de Biographie Mauricienne/Dictionary of Mauritian Biography published on his mother’s native island. Duyker has given Mauritians a sense of their place in Australian history. William Bostock called Mauritian Heritage*http://catalogue.nla.gov.au/Record/460527?lookfor=author:(Edward%20Duyker)&offset=24&max=30 "a towering achievement among the ethnographic and genealogical studies of immigrants to Australia" ( Journal of Intercultural Studies (Melbourne), Vol. 8, No. 1, 1987). Although Eric Rolls (1923-2007) incorrectly asserted that Duyker was born in Mauritius, he noted that 'Nothing was known of any Mauritian convicts until Dr Ed Duyker . . . decided to write a book on his countrymen in Australia' (Rolls, Sojourners, 1992, p. 34).*http://catalogue.nla.gov.au/Record/2805927?lookfor=Eric%20Rolls%20Sojourners&offset=1&max=3 James Cowan
wrote that Duyker’s meticulously researched ethnohistory Of the Star and the Key, ‘has given us a panorama that includes escaped convicts on the streets of Port Louis, pardoned slaves on the streets of Sydney, and a world of dreamers afflicted with 'gold fever' scurrying down shafts on the goldfields‘. He added: 'To discover that the Australian sugar industry owes much to those early Mauritian migrants comes as a surprise also' (Sutherland Shire Historical Society Quarterly Bulletin (Sydney), November 1990, pp. 607-8). Mauritius
also features strongly in all of Duyker’s books dealing with Dutch and French exploration of the Australian coast.
Just as Duyker has given Mauritians a place in Australian history, he has done the same for the Dutch in a number of pioneering monographs. These have sometimes engendered surprising, life-changing, emotional responses, as one immigrant Johan Kruithof revealed in 1997:
‘It was 1988 when I first read the book The Dutch in Australia written by Dr Edward Duyker, and his chapters on postwar migration opened my eyes . . . words fail me in trying to describe how I felt when I read . . . Lights went on, veils were lifted and in one instant my feelings were vindicated and all doubts resolved . . . my ‘Australian-ness’ has been immeasurably richer for my being able to openly and joyfully acknowledge my Dutch heritage as a vital and undeniable part of it . . . nobody is going to steal any part of me ever again.’
(see Johan Kruithof, ‘A Case of Cultural Theft’, in Calwell, S. and Johnson, D. (ed.) There’s More to Life than Sex & Money, Penguin, Ringwood, 1997, p. 87.)*http://catalogue.nla.gov.au/Record/14888?lookfor=title:(There's%20more%20to%20life%20than%20sex%20and%20money)&offset=1&max=1828064
Ultimately, Duyker’s writings - including hundreds of articles, reviews and contributions to biographical dictionaries and encyclopaedias – are as diverse as the subjects and disciplines which clearly fascinate him. As Manning Clark
put it in his foreword to Of the Star and the Key (1988): 'Edward Duyker . . . has an eye for the things of the mind'. In many respects he has built his readership on his eclectic interests and made a strength of them. CSIRO scientist Richard Groves, for example, asked in the Historical Records of Australian Science (14, 2003): ‘I wonder whom Edward Duyker will choose for his next scholarly biography? Irrespective of who may be chosen, I look forward to reading an equally good ‘yarn’ told so engagingly, while at the same time being a work of considerable scholarship.’*http://www.publish.csiro.au/?act=view_file&file_id=HR03010.pdf
by the Australian Government in 2003 and the Medal of the Order of Australia
in 2004. He was elected a fellow of the Linnean Society of London
in January 1998, a fellow of the Royal Historical Society
in July 2000 and a fellow of the Australian Academy of the Humanities
in November 2007*http://www.humanities.org.au/Fellows/NewFellows2007.htm (see also Who's Who in Australia, Crown Content, Melbourne 2008, p. 676). The late Professor Greg Dening
once described him as 'an historian's historian' (Australian Book Review, June/July, 2003, p. 10).*http://dspace.flinders.edu.au/dspace/bitstream/2328/1103/1/10-11.pdf
"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."
Melbourne
Melbourne is the capital and most populous city in the state of Victoria, and the second most populous city in Australia. The Melbourne City Centre is the hub of the greater metropolitan area and the Census statistical division—of which "Melbourne" is the common name. As of June 2009, the greater...
, Victoria, to a father from the Netherlands
Netherlands
The Netherlands is a constituent country of the Kingdom of the Netherlands, located mainly in North-West Europe and with several islands in the Caribbean. Mainland Netherlands borders the North Sea to the north and west, Belgium to the south, and Germany to the east, and shares maritime borders...
and a mother from Mauritius
Mauritius
Mauritius , officially the Republic of Mauritius is an island nation off the southeast coast of the African continent in the southwest Indian Ocean, about east of Madagascar...
. Despite recent immigrant roots, his mother has ancestors from Cornwall
Cornwall
Cornwall is a unitary authority and ceremonial county of England, within the United Kingdom. It is bordered to the north and west by the Celtic Sea, to the south by the English Channel, and to the east by the county of Devon, over the River Tamar. Cornwall has a population of , and covers an area of...
who emigrated to Adelaide, South Australia, in 1849, and he is related to the Australian landscape painter Lloyd Rees
Lloyd Rees
Lloyd Frederic Rees AC CMG was an Australian landscape painter who twice won the Wynne Prize for his landscape paintings....
.
Edward Duyker's books include several ethno-histories — Tribal Guerrillas (1987),*http://catalogue.nla.gov.au/Record/305057?lookfor=author:(Edward%20Duyker)&offset=13&max=30 The Dutch in Australia (1987)*http://catalogue.nla.gov.au/Record/1690976?lookfor=author:(Edward%20Duyker)&offset=18&max=30 and Of the Star and the Key: Mauritius, Mauritians and Australia (1988)*http://catalogue.nla.gov.au/Record/2097995?lookfor=author:(Edward%20Duyker)&offset=6&max=30 — and numerous books dealing with early Australian exploration, among them critically acclaimed biographies of Daniel Solander
Daniel Solander
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.-Biography:...
, Marc-Joseph Marion Dufresne, Jacques Labillardière
Jacques Labillardière
Jacques-Julien Houtou de Labillardière was a French naturalist noted for his descriptions of the flora of Australia. Labillardière was a member of a voyage in search of the La Pérouse expedition...
and François Péron
François Péron
François Auguste Péron was a French naturalist and explorer. He is credited with the first use of the term anthropology.-Explorations:...
. Much of his work seeks to redress the anglo-centrism of Australian history and he has made a major contribution to knowledge and understanding of the French voyages to the Indian Ocean
Indian Ocean
The Indian Ocean is the third largest of the world's oceanic divisions, covering approximately 20% of the water on the Earth's surface. It is bounded on the north by the Indian Subcontinent and Arabian Peninsula ; on the west by eastern Africa; on the east by Indochina, the Sunda Islands, and...
and Pacific in the eighteenth and early-nineteenth centuries.
Duyker is a member of the editorial board of Doryanthes
Doryanthes
Doryanthes is a plant genus of the species Doryanthes excelsa and Doryanthes palmeri and native to the coast of Eastern Australia.These plants grow in a rosette form. It takes more than 10 years for them to get flowers...
, a journal of history and heritage for southern Sydney, and Explorations published by the Institute for the Study of French-Australian Relations.*http://www.fritss.unimelb.edu.au/activities/links/isfar.html He is an Honorary Senior Lecturer in the School of Languages and Cultures at the University of Sydney and an Adjunct Professor of the Australian Catholic University
Australian Catholic University
Australian Catholic University is a national public university. It has six campuses and offers programs in five faculties throughout Australia.-History:...
.*http://www.acu.edu.au/staff/organisation/senior_executive/pvc_academic_affairs/committees_reporting_to_pvc_academic_affairs/ceremonial_and_protocols_committee/honorary_titles_conferred/ Between 1996 and 2002 he also served as the Honorary Consul of the Republic of Mauritius in New South Wales
New South Wales
New South Wales is a state of :Australia, located in the east of the country. It is bordered by Queensland, Victoria and South Australia to the north, south and west respectively. To the east, the state is bordered by the Tasman Sea, which forms part of the Pacific Ocean. New South Wales...
.*http://catalogue.nla.gov.au/Record/2065796?lookfor=title:(Consular%20List)&offset=1&max=33
Studies and Historical Work
Edward Duyker attended St Joseph's School, Malvern, in the same class as the virtuoso pianist Geoffrey TozerGeoffrey Tozer
Geoffrey Tozer was an Australian classical pianist and composer. As a child prodigy, he composed an opera at the age of eight, and became the youngest recipient of a Churchill Fellowship award at 13...
with whom he maintained a fragmented but lifelong friendship. He completed his secondary studies at De La Salle College, Malvern. There, under Tim O'Hearn (later Professor and Dean of Students Australian Catholic University
Australian Catholic University
Australian Catholic University is a national public university. It has six campuses and offers programs in five faculties throughout Australia.-History:...
), he was one of the first students in Victoria to study Asian history at a secondary level (National Library of Australia Oral History collection, ORAL TRC 3101).*http://catalogue.nla.gov.au/Record/190692 In 1970 he competed in the Seven Network
Seven Network
The Seven Network is an Australian television network owned by Seven West Media Limited. It dates back to 4 November 1956, when the first stations on the VHF7 frequency were established in Melbourne and Sydney.It is currently the second largest network in the country in terms of population reach...
's It's Academic
It's Academic (Australian game show)
It's Academic is an Australian children's game show airing on the Seven Network. The show is based on the long-running American version of It's Academic, and pits students from different schools against each other in a test of knowledge covering a number of diverse subjects including English,...
quiz program and the following year reached the semi-final as an individual contestant in the Australian version of the quiz show Jeopardy!
Jeopardy!
Griffin's first conception of the game used a board comprising ten categories with ten clues each, but after finding that this board could not be shown on camera easily, he reduced it to two rounds of thirty clues each, with five clues in each of six categories...
. As an undergraduate at La Trobe University
La Trobe University
La Trobe University is a multi-campus university in Victoria, Australia. It was established in 1964 by an Act of Parliament to become the third oldest university in the state of Victoria. The main campus of La Trobe is located in the Melbourne suburb of Bundoora; two other major campuses are...
, he studied philosophy, English literature, history and a number of inter-disciplinary subjects. One of his formative influences was the eminent Australian historian Professor Alan Frost
Alan Frost
Alan Frost is a La Trobe University-based academic. A major theme of his research has involved the European exploration of the Pacific Ocean over the second half of the eighteenth century. He is best known for books in which he challenges common historical stereotypes and misconceptions concerning...
(see 'Exploring the explorers', Agora, 2004, p. 48). As a doctoral candidate at the University of Melbourne
University of Melbourne
The University of Melbourne is a public university located in Melbourne, Victoria. Founded in 1853, it is the second oldest university in Australia and the oldest in Victoria...
(where he also studied Bengali language
Bengali language
Bengali or Bangla is an eastern Indo-Aryan language. It is native to the region of eastern South Asia known as Bengal, which comprises present day Bangladesh, the Indian state of West Bengal, and parts of the Indian states of Tripura and Assam. It is written with the Bengali script...
), he was supervised by the Indian philosopher and literary critic Sibnarayan Ray
Sibnarayan Ray
Sibnarayan Ray was one of the most renowned Bengali thinker, educationist, philosopher and literary critic of twentieth century India. A radical humanist, he is widely reputed for his works on Marxist-revolutionary Manabendra Nath Roy, and famous polymath Bertrand Russell, commenting on Ray, once...
. He received his Ph.D. in 1981 for a thesis on the participation of the tribal Santals
Santals
The Santhal , are the largest tribal community in India, who live mainly in the states of Jharkhand, West Bengal, Bihar, Orissa, and Assam. There is also a significant Santal minority in neighboring Bangladesh, and a small population in Nepal....
in the Maoist Naxalite
Naxalite
The word Naxal, Naxalite or Naksalvadi is a generic term used to refer to various militant Communist groups operating in different parts of India under different organizational envelopes...
insurgency in India. Duyker was recruited by the Australian Department of Defence in Canberra in early 1981 and eventually worked in the Joint Intelligence Organization
Defence Intelligence Organisation
The Defence Intelligence Organisation is an Australian government intelligence agency responsible for assessing intelligence obtained from or provided by other Australian and foreign intelligence agencies, supporting Defence and Government decision-making and the planning and conduct of Australian...
. He left in July 1983 to take up a position as a Teaching Fellow at Griffith University
Griffith University
Griffith University is a public, coeducational, research university located in the southeastern region of the Australian state of Queensland. The university has five satellite campuses located in the Gold Coast, Logan City and in the Brisbane suburbs of Mount Gravatt, Nathan and South Bank. Current...
, Brisbane, but ultimately settled in Sydney
Sydney
Sydney is the most populous city in Australia and the state capital of New South Wales. Sydney is located on Australia's south-east coast of the Tasman Sea. As of June 2010, the greater metropolitan area had an approximate population of 4.6 million people...
as a full-time author in 1984. Although his early writings were focussed on South Asian subjects and in many cases were published in the Australian Defence Force Journal, Duyker soon refused to be confined as a scholar and author.
Using the Dutch and French linguistic resources of his family, he edited The Discovery of Tasmania (1992)*http://catalogue.nla.gov.au/Record/319563?lookfor=author:(Edward%20Duyker)&offset=29&max=30 which brought together all known journal extracts from the first two European expeditions to Van Diemen's Land
Van Diemen's Land
Van Diemen's Land was the original name used by most Europeans for the island of Tasmania, now part of Australia. The Dutch explorer Abel Tasman was the first European to land on the shores of Tasmania...
. An Officer of the Blue (1994),*http://catalogue.nla.gov.au/Record/143872?lookfor=author:(Edward%20Duyker)&offset=12&max=30 Duyker's critically acclaimed biography of Marc-Joseph Marion Dufresne
Marc-Joseph Marion du Fresne
Marc-Joseph Marion du Fresne , with the surname sometimes spelt Dufresne, was a French explorer who made important discoveries in the south Indian Ocean, in Tasmania and in New Zealand, where he died...
(the first explorer after Abel Tasman
Abel Tasman
Abel Janszoon Tasman was a Dutch seafarer, explorer, and merchant, best known for his voyages of 1642 and 1644 in the service of the VOC . His was the first known European expedition to reach the islands of Van Diemen's Land and New Zealand and to sight the Fiji islands...
to reach Van Diemen's Land
Van Diemen's Land
Van Diemen's Land was the original name used by most Europeans for the island of Tasmania, now part of Australia. The Dutch explorer Abel Tasman was the first European to land on the shores of Tasmania...
), was launched by former Prime Minister of Australia Gough Whitlam
Gough Whitlam
Edward Gough Whitlam, AC, QC , known as Gough Whitlam , served as the 21st Prime Minister of Australia. Whitlam led the Australian Labor Party to power at the 1972 election and retained government at the 1974 election, before being dismissed by Governor-General Sir John Kerr at the climax of the...
. One of the book's reviewers, Professor Michael Roe
Michael Roe (historian)
Owen Michael Roe is an Australian historian and academic, focusing on Australian history.Educated at Caulfield Grammar School , Roe attended the University of Melbourne and began studying a combined BA/LL.B. degree...
, commented: '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. Likewise his sources range widely as to both type and location . . . ' (The Mercury, Hobart, 28 May 1994, p. 38). An Officer of the Blue would also be the subject of an essay, 'The Tortoise Wins Again!', by Professor Greg Dening
Greg Dening
Greg Dening was born in Newcastle, New South Wales. He was educated at the Jesuit School, St Louis in Perth and at Xavier College in Melbourne. He earned an MA from Melbourne University and his PhD from Harvard where his doctoral dissertation was a historical ethnography of the Marquesas Islands...
, published in his collection Readings/Writings (Melbourne University Press, 1998, pp. 201-4).*http://catalogue.mup.com.au/978-0-522-84841-0.html
Nature's Argonaut (1998),*http://catalogue.mup.com.au/978-0-522-84753-6.html Edward Duyker's biography of Daniel Solander
Daniel Solander
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.-Biography:...
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
New South Wales Premier's History Awards
The State Government of New South Wales, Australia established the Premier's History Awards in 1997. In 2005 the name of the awards was changed to NSW History Awards...
in 1999. Duyker is also the co-editor, with Per Tingbrand, of Daniel Solander: Collected Correspondence 1753–1782 (1995),*http://catalogue.mup.com.au/978-0-522-84636-2.html which Paul Brunton described as "a major contribution to textual scholarship" (The Sydney Morning Herald, 24 June 1995, Spectrum, p. 13A). With his mother Maryse Duyker he published the first English translation of the journal of the explorer Bruny d'Entrecasteaux
Bruni d'Entrecasteaux
Antoine Raymond Joseph de Bruni d'Entrecasteaux was a French navigator who explored the Australian coast in 1792 while seeking traces of the lost expedition of La Pérouse....
in 2001.*http://catalogue.mup.com.au/978-0-522-84932-5.html 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
Recherche Bay
Recherche Bay is located on the extreme south-eastern corner of Tasmania, Australia and was a landing place of the d’Entrecasteaux expedition to find missing explorer La Pérouse...
. Citizen Labillardière (2003),*http://catalogue.mup.com.au/978-0-522-85160-1.html Duyker's biography of the naturalist Jacques Labillardière
Jacques Labillardière
Jacques-Julien Houtou de Labillardière was a French naturalist noted for his descriptions of the flora of Australia. Labillardière was a member of a voyage in search of the La Pérouse expedition...
, was similarly influential and won the General History Prize among the New South Wales Premier's History Awards
New South Wales Premier's History Awards
The State Government of New South Wales, Australia established the Premier's History Awards in 1997. In 2005 the name of the awards was changed to NSW History Awards...
. Professor Arthur Lucas
Arthur Lucas (academic)
For one of the two last men to be executed in Canada, please see Arthur LucasArthur Maurice Lucas FIBiol is an Australian academic who served as the 18th Principal of King's College London....
, formerly Principal of King's College London
King's College London
King's College London is a public research university located in London, United Kingdom and a constituent college of the federal University of London. King's has a claim to being the third oldest university in England, having been founded by King George IV and the Duke of Wellington in 1829, and...
, 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' (Reviews in Australian Studies, vol. 1, no. 1, 2006).*http://www.nla.gov.au/openpublish/index.php/ras/article/view/590/659
Although a long-term New South Wales resident, Edward Duyker is a frequent visitor to France and to Tasmania. With Australian Greens Senator Bob Brown
Bob Brown
Robert James Brown is an Australian senator, the inaugural Parliamentary Leader of the Australian Greens and was the first openly gay member of the Parliament of Australia...
and broadcaster Peter Cundall
Peter Cundall
Peter Cundall, AM is a horticulturalist, conservationist, author, broadcaster and television personality in Australia. He currently lives in Tasmania's Tamar Valley, and until the age of 81 continued to be a presenter of the ABC TV program Gardening Australia. His last show aired on 26 July 2008...
he was an outspoken campaigner for the protection of Recherche Bay
Recherche Bay
Recherche Bay is located on the extreme south-eastern corner of Tasmania, Australia and was a landing place of the d’Entrecasteaux expedition to find missing explorer La Pérouse...
, from logging. He has also been engaged in a number of campaigns to preserve and protect remnant bushland on the Georges River and several historic buildings in Sydney
Sydney
Sydney is the most populous city in Australia and the state capital of New South Wales. Sydney is located on Australia's south-east coast of the Tasman Sea. As of June 2010, the greater metropolitan area had an approximate population of 4.6 million people...
. Together with his wife Susan Duyker, a heritage architect and grazier, he is a member of the National Trust.
François Péron: An Impetuous Life (2006),*http://catalogue.mup.com.au/978-0-522-85260-8.html Duyker's biography of the controversial zoologist of the expedition of Nicolas-Thomas Baudin
Nicolas Baudin
Nicolas-Thomas Baudin was a French explorer, cartographer, naturalist and hydrographer.Baudin was born a commoner in Saint-Martin-de-Ré on the Île de Ré. At the age of fifteen he joined the merchant navy, and at twenty joined the French East India Company...
to Australian waters (1800—1803), won the Frank Broeze Maritime History Prize in 2007. Robert Willson, described it as a story told ‘vividly and with magnificent research . . . a splendid and absorbing biography of a gifted scientist with a fatal flaw.’ (Canberra Times, 19 August 2006, p. 17). A recurrent theme in Edward Duyker's writing on early natural history is an attempt to recapture the sense of wonder at the unique flora and fauna encountered by early European explorers in Australia. He has also rendered homage to prescient early naturalists who offered ‘a new focus on the natural equilibrium, the finiteness of resources in restricted locations and the precious quality of unique and vulnerable species that could easily be driven to extinction by human greed or the introduction of feral animals’ (see Duyker, François Péron, p. 9).
Edward Duyker has also edited A Woman on the Goldfields (1995),*http://catalogue.nla.gov.au/Record/654274?lookfor=author:(Edward%20Duyker)&offset=22&max=30 dealing with the life of Emily Skinner on the nineteenth-century Victorian gold fields. Given the paucity of such sources on women during the Gold Rush, it was one of 100 specially selected books to be recorded by the Victorian Institute for the Blind for the Centenary of Australian Federation. Together with Coralie Younger, he authored Molly and the Rajah (1991) *http://catalogue.nla.gov.au/Record/2635522?lookfor=title:(Molly%20and%20the%20Rajah)&offset=1&max=2333003 the life of Esme Mary Fink, an Australian woman who married the Rajah of Pudukottai, India, in 1915. Described as "redolent of . . . Anna and the King of Siam
Anna and the King of Siam (book)
Anna and the King of Siam is a 1944 semi-fictionalized biographical novel by Margaret Landon.In the early 1860s, Anna Leonowens, a widow with two young children, was invited to Siam by King Mongkut , who wanted her to teach his children and wives the English language and introduce them to British...
" (Canberra Times, 2 November 1991), this book drew the attention of a number of film makers. Although the motion picture rights were soon reported sold and the film went into pre-production (The Good Weekend, 3 April 1993, p. 43), these rights have now lapsed and the film is yet to be made.
In 2007 Edward Duyker published A Dictionary of Sea Quotations*http://catalogue.mup.com.au/978-0-522-85371-1.html with a deeply personal introduction on his family's links with the sea. Indeed, Duyker often provides a strong personal orientation in his writing, whether it be references to the austerity and difficulties of his Catholic childhood (he is the eldest of eight children and his Dutch father laboured on the Melbourne waterfront for 37 years), or the experiences of his forebears in Europe and the islands of the Indian Ocean. Edward Duyker is a progressive humanist historian; he has written a great deal with the Age of Enlightenment
Age of Enlightenment
The Age of Enlightenment was an elite cultural movement of intellectuals in 18th century Europe that sought to mobilize the power of reason in order to reform society and advance knowledge. It promoted intellectual interchange and opposed intolerance and abuses in church and state...
and the French Revolution
French Revolution
The French Revolution , sometimes distinguished as the 'Great French Revolution' , was a period of radical social and political upheaval in France and Europe. The absolute monarchy that had ruled France for centuries collapsed in three years...
as a backdrop. Nevertheless, in his biographies of Jacques Labillardière
Jacques Labillardière
Jacques-Julien Houtou de Labillardière was a French naturalist noted for his descriptions of the flora of Australia. Labillardière was a member of a voyage in search of the La Pérouse expedition...
and François Péron
François Péron
François Auguste Péron was a French naturalist and explorer. He is credited with the first use of the term anthropology.-Explorations:...
he has shown himself to be horrified by The Reign of Terror and the coercive excesses of the Revolution. He is also a bitter critic of Napoleon Bonaparte, particularly because of his suppression of democratic liberties, abrogation of his republican commitments, prosecution of global war and retention of slavey as an institution in French colonies. Ironically, both Duyker and his wife Susan are descendants of mariners who were on opposing sides at the Battle of Trafalgar
Battle of Trafalgar
The Battle of Trafalgar was a sea battle fought between the British Royal Navy and the combined fleets of the French Navy and Spanish Navy, during the War of the Third Coalition of the Napoleonic Wars ....
('Perspective', ABC Radio National, 21 September 2007).*http://www.abc.net.au/rn/perspective/stories/2006/1682895.htm
Duyker's biographies of naturalists are largely conventional linear narratives, but they are both richly embroidered and deceptively simple. According to Professor Greg Dening
Greg Dening
Greg Dening was born in Newcastle, New South Wales. He was educated at the Jesuit School, St Louis in Perth and at Xavier College in Melbourne. He earned an MA from Melbourne University and his PhD from Harvard where his doctoral dissertation was a historical ethnography of the Marquesas Islands...
, 'Edward Duyker in a simple, direct phrase can lay open the most complex issue' ('The Naturalist Mind', Australian Book Review, April 1998, pp. 8-9). Duyker's books are characterised by meticulous research and great attention to detail - 'written with verve, but fortified with awesome scholarship' as Dymphna Clark
Dymphna Clark
Hilma Dymphna Clark, née Lodewyckx , was a language scholar and married to the historian Manning Clark.Born in Melbourne, Australia, and of Scandinavian and Dutch ancestry, Clark was educated at Mont Albert Central School and the Presbyterian Ladies' College in East Melbourne...
put it in her review of Nature's Argonaut (Canberra Times, 16 May 1998, pp. 7-8). He makes a point of visiting the places he writes about and orienting explorers' maps and journals to a modern landscape or coast. This has sometimes been under difficult circumstances, such as when he researched the naturalist Labillardière's travels in the Middle East
Middle East
The Middle East is a region that encompasses Western Asia and Northern Africa. It is often used as a synonym for Near East, in opposition to Far East...
, including war-ravaged Lebanon
Lebanon
Lebanon , officially the Republic of LebanonRepublic of Lebanon is the most common term used by Lebanese government agencies. The term Lebanese Republic, a literal translation of the official Arabic and French names that is not used in today's world. Arabic is the most common language spoken among...
. In August 2005 Duyker delivered the inaugural Theo Barker Memorial Lecture at Charles Sturt University
Charles Sturt University
Charles Sturt University is an Australian multi-campus university located in New South Wales, Victoria, and the Australian Capital Territory. It has campuses at Bathurst, Canberra, Albury-Wodonga, Dubbo, Goulburn, Orange, Wagga Wagga and Burlington, Ontario...
in Bathurst
Bathurst, New South Wales
-CBD and suburbs:Bathurst's CBD is located on William, George, Howick, Russell, and Durham Streets. The CBD is approximately 25 hectares and surrounds two city blocks. Within this block layout is banking, government services, shopping centres, retail shops, a park* and monuments...
and took as his theme a remark attributed to R. H. Tawney
R. H. Tawney
Richard Henry Tawney was an English economic historian, social critic, Christian socialist, and an important proponent of adult education....
that an historian needs 'a stout pair of boots'. During his lecture, he recounted how in the course of field-research in West Bengal
West Bengal
West Bengal is a state in the eastern region of India and is the nation's fourth-most populous. It is also the seventh-most populous sub-national entity in the world, with over 91 million inhabitants. A major agricultural producer, West Bengal is the sixth-largest contributor to India's GDP...
for his book Tribal Guerrillas, he had lost 20 kilograms in weight through dysentery and malnutrition (Charles Sturt University Library, 907.2 DUYK). This was an ordeal he also recounted with witty detail in a largely autobiographical article 'The Word in the Field' (National Library of Australian News, May 1999, pp. 15-17).
In September 1983 Edward Duyker published an article entitled ‘Land Use and Ecological Change in Central New South Wales’ (Journal of the Royal Australian Historical Society, vol. 69, part 2, pp. 120–132). It signaled his strong interest in the use of history and ethnography to understand anthropogenic environmental change and propose solutions such as fire as a management tool. The following year he published an article entitled ‘History and Anthropology’ (Man in India, vol 64, no. 1, March 1984, pp. 74—81) which explored a number of philosophical and methodological issues relating to these overlapping disciplines and which he demonstrated in his book Tribal Guerrillas. The late Professor Thomas Nossiter
Thomas Nossiter
Thomas Johnson Nossiter was Professor of Government at the London School of Economics from 1989 until 1994.-Early life:...
, of the London School of Economics
London School of Economics
The London School of Economics and Political Science is a public research university specialised in the social sciences located in London, United Kingdom, and a constituent college of the federal University of London...
, 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' (Third World Quarterly, vol. 11, no. 2, April 1989, pp. 226-7).*http://www.jstor.org/pss/3992769 Similarly, 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." In the mainstream Indian press, Kalyan Mukherjee commented that Edward Duyker generated attention in India
India
India , officially the Republic of India , is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by geographical area, the second-most populous country with over 1.2 billion people, and the most populous democracy in the world...
because he was ‘able to combine contemporary interest with history . . . in that tough ground only the very best writers survive’. (Hindustan Times [Delhi], 22 November 1987). 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 skillfully 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
Bay of Islands
The Bay of Islands is an area in the Northland Region of the North Island of New Zealand. Located 60 km north-west of Whangarei, it is close to the northern tip of the country....
in 1772. Prof. Barrie Macdonald of Massey University
Massey University
Massey University is one of New Zealand's largest universities with approximately 36,000 students, 20,000 of whom are extramural students.The University has campuses in Palmerston North , Wellington and Auckland . Massey offers most of its degrees extramurally within New Zealand and internationally...
, writing in the New Zealand Herald (Sat. 14 January 1995), 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."
What Duyker points out is that ‘Rigorous fieldwork or direct participant observation would at first seem anathema to the analysis of the unobservable past, if the seeds of the past were not so readily represented in the present. Among non-literate peoples, oral tradition often forms the principal source for historical reconstruction of the past. The most basic means of obtaining such oral information is through fieldwork . . . While the historian has to exercise caution and discrimination, the exaggeration and distortion of past events also forms part of the thought processes and social life of people . . . When represented in structurally stable oral forms such as songs or ballads or even political slogans, the field researcher can collect data of great utility.’ (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).
Despite his theoretical reflections, Duyker is essentially a narrative historian who writes to tell a story. Ironically, he frequently produces equally engaging ‘tales of research’, such as his account of the detective quest involved in identifying the artist of the expedition of Bruny d'Entrecasteaux
Bruni d'Entrecasteaux
Antoine Raymond Joseph de Bruni d'Entrecasteaux was a French navigator who explored the Australian coast in 1792 while seeking traces of the lost expedition of La Pérouse....
to Australia
Australia
Australia , officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a country in the Southern Hemisphere comprising the mainland of the Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous smaller islands in the Indian and Pacific Oceans. It is the world's sixth-largest country by total area...
and the Pacific (see Duyker, ‘In Search of Jean Piron’, National Library of Australia News, March 2006, pp. 7—10)*http://www.nla.gov.au/pub/nlanews/2006/mar06/NLAnews_Mar06_final.pdf and his account of his search for the grave of Nicolas-Thomas Baudin
Nicolas Baudin
Nicolas-Thomas Baudin was a French explorer, cartographer, naturalist and hydrographer.Baudin was born a commoner in Saint-Martin-de-Ré on the Île de Ré. At the age of fifteen he joined the merchant navy, and at twenty joined the French East India Company...
in Mauritius
Mauritius
Mauritius , officially the Republic of Mauritius is an island nation off the southeast coast of the African continent in the southwest Indian Ocean, about east of Madagascar...
(see ‘In Search of Madame Kerivel and Baudin’s Last Resting Place’, National Library of Australia News, vol. IX, no. 12, September 1999, pp. 8—10). Many of his book reviews bear a similar mark and when he delivered the 2007 Vaughan Evans Memorial Lecture at the Australian National Maritime Museum
Australian National Maritime Museum
The Australian National Maritime Museum is a federally-operated maritime museum located in Darling Harbour, Sydney. After consideration of the idea to establish a maritime museum, the Federal government announced that a national maritime museum would be constructed at Darling Harbour, tied into...
, he chose to speak on uncovering the life of Daniel Solander (Signals, No. 81, December 2007-February 2008).
Aside from his contributions to the Australian Dictionary of Biography, since 1985 Duyker has written some 70 entries for the bilingual Dictionnaire de Biographie Mauricienne/Dictionary of Mauritian Biography published on his mother’s native island. Duyker has given Mauritians a sense of their place in Australian history. William Bostock called Mauritian Heritage*http://catalogue.nla.gov.au/Record/460527?lookfor=author:(Edward%20Duyker)&offset=24&max=30 "a towering achievement among the ethnographic and genealogical studies of immigrants to Australia" ( Journal of Intercultural Studies (Melbourne), Vol. 8, No. 1, 1987). Although Eric Rolls (1923-2007) incorrectly asserted that Duyker was born in Mauritius, he noted that 'Nothing was known of any Mauritian convicts until Dr Ed Duyker . . . decided to write a book on his countrymen in Australia' (Rolls, Sojourners, 1992, p. 34).*http://catalogue.nla.gov.au/Record/2805927?lookfor=Eric%20Rolls%20Sojourners&offset=1&max=3 James Cowan
James Cowan (author)
James Cowan is an Australian author. James Cowan is author of a number of internationally acclaimed books, including A Troubadour's Testament and Letters from A Wild State. In 1998 he was awarded the prestigious Australian Literature Society's Gold Medal for his novel, A Mapmaker's Dream...
wrote that Duyker’s meticulously researched ethnohistory Of the Star and the Key, ‘has given us a panorama that includes escaped convicts on the streets of Port Louis, pardoned slaves on the streets of Sydney, and a world of dreamers afflicted with 'gold fever' scurrying down shafts on the goldfields‘. He added: 'To discover that the Australian sugar industry owes much to those early Mauritian migrants comes as a surprise also' (Sutherland Shire Historical Society Quarterly Bulletin (Sydney), November 1990, pp. 607-8). Mauritius
Mauritius
Mauritius , officially the Republic of Mauritius is an island nation off the southeast coast of the African continent in the southwest Indian Ocean, about east of Madagascar...
also features strongly in all of Duyker’s books dealing with Dutch and French exploration of the Australian coast.
Just as Duyker has given Mauritians a place in Australian history, he has done the same for the Dutch in a number of pioneering monographs. These have sometimes engendered surprising, life-changing, emotional responses, as one immigrant Johan Kruithof revealed in 1997:
‘It was 1988 when I first read the book The Dutch in Australia written by Dr Edward Duyker, and his chapters on postwar migration opened my eyes . . . words fail me in trying to describe how I felt when I read . . . Lights went on, veils were lifted and in one instant my feelings were vindicated and all doubts resolved . . . my ‘Australian-ness’ has been immeasurably richer for my being able to openly and joyfully acknowledge my Dutch heritage as a vital and undeniable part of it . . . nobody is going to steal any part of me ever again.’
(see Johan Kruithof, ‘A Case of Cultural Theft’, in Calwell, S. and Johnson, D. (ed.) There’s More to Life than Sex & Money, Penguin, Ringwood, 1997, p. 87.)*http://catalogue.nla.gov.au/Record/14888?lookfor=title:(There's%20more%20to%20life%20than%20sex%20and%20money)&offset=1&max=1828064
Ultimately, Duyker’s writings - including hundreds of articles, reviews and contributions to biographical dictionaries and encyclopaedias – are as diverse as the subjects and disciplines which clearly fascinate him. As Manning Clark
Manning Clark
Charles Manning Hope Clark, AC , an Australian historian, was the author of the best-known general history of Australia, his six-volume A History of Australia, published between 1962 and 1987...
put it in his foreword to Of the Star and the Key (1988): 'Edward Duyker . . . has an eye for the things of the mind'. In many respects he has built his readership on his eclectic interests and made a strength of them. CSIRO scientist Richard Groves, for example, asked in the Historical Records of Australian Science (14, 2003): ‘I wonder whom Edward Duyker will choose for his next scholarly biography? Irrespective of who may be chosen, I look forward to reading an equally good ‘yarn’ told so engagingly, while at the same time being a work of considerable scholarship.’*http://www.publish.csiro.au/?act=view_file&file_id=HR03010.pdf
Honours
Edward Duyker was made a Chevalier de l'Ordre des Palmes Académiques by the French government in 2000. He was awarded the Centenary MedalCentenary Medal
The Centenary Medal is an award created by the Australian Government in 2001. It was established to commemorate the Centenary of Federation of Australia and to honour people who have made a contribution to Australian society or government...
by the Australian Government in 2003 and the Medal of the Order of Australia
Order of Australia
The Order of Australia is an order of chivalry established on 14 February 1975 by Elizabeth II, Queen of Australia, "for the purpose of according recognition to Australian citizens and other persons for achievement or for meritorious service"...
in 2004. He was elected a fellow of the Linnean Society of London
Linnean Society of London
The Linnean Society of London is the world's premier society for the study and dissemination of taxonomy and natural history. It publishes a zoological journal, as well as botanical and biological journals...
in January 1998, a fellow of the Royal Historical Society
Royal Historical Society
The Royal Historical Society was founded in 1868. The premier society in the United Kingdom which promotes and defends the scholarly study of the past, it is based at University College London...
in July 2000 and a fellow of the Australian Academy of the Humanities
Australian Academy of the Humanities
The Australian Academy of the Humanities was established by Royal Charter in 1969 to advance scholarship and public interest in the humanities in Australia...
in November 2007*http://www.humanities.org.au/Fellows/NewFellows2007.htm (see also Who's Who in Australia, Crown Content, Melbourne 2008, p. 676). The late Professor Greg Dening
Greg Dening
Greg Dening was born in Newcastle, New South Wales. He was educated at the Jesuit School, St Louis in Perth and at Xavier College in Melbourne. He earned an MA from Melbourne University and his PhD from Harvard where his doctoral dissertation was a historical ethnography of the Marquesas Islands...
once described him as 'an historian's historian' (Australian Book Review, June/July, 2003, p. 10).*http://dspace.flinders.edu.au/dspace/bitstream/2328/1103/1/10-11.pdf
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'.- At the Melbourne Writers FestivalMelbourne Writers FestivalThe Melbourne Writers Festival is an annual literary festival held in the Australian city of Melbourne.- History :The festival was founded in 1986 as a joint initiative between the Melbourne International Festival of the Arts and the City of Melbourne...
, 24 August 2003.
"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."
- At the launch of Nature's Argonaut, Sutherland Entertainment Centre, 28 April 1998.
Books and Monographs by Edward Duyker
- (ed.) Mauritian Heritage: An Anthology of the Lionnet, Commins and Related Families, Australian Mauritian Research Group, Ferntree Gully, 1986, pp. 368, ISBN 0-9590883-2-6.
- Tribal Guerrillas: The Santals of West Bengal and the Naxalite Movement, Oxford University Press, New Delhi, 1987, pp. 201, SBN 19 561938 2.
- The Dutch in Australia, AE Press, Melbourne, 1987, pp. 181, ISBN 0-86787-215-2.
- (With Maryse Duyker) Beyond the Dunes: A Dutch-Australian Story, Privately Published, Sylvania, 1987, pp. 41, ISBN 0 731600584.
- Of the Star and the Key: Mauritius, Mauritians and Australia, Australian Mauritian Research Group, Sylvania, 1988, pp. 129, ISBN 09590883 4 2.
- (With Coralie Younger) Molly and the Rajah: Race, Romance and the Raj, Australian Mauritian Press, Sylvania, 1991, pp. xii, 130, ISBN 0-646-03679-3 [spoken word version: Hear a Book, Hobart, 2 track mono, 1993, abn 91 356351].
- (ed.) The Discovery of Tasmania: Journal Extracts from the Expeditions of Abel Janszoon Tasman and Marc-Joseph Marion Dufresne 1642 & 1772, St David's Park Publishing/Tasmanian Government Printing Office, Hobart, 1992, pp. 106, ISBN 0-7246-2241-1.
- A French Trading Expedition to the Orient: The Voyage of the Montaran 1753—1756, Stockholm University Center for Pacific Asia Studies Working Paper, No.30, August 1992, pp. 20.
- New Voices in the Southland: Multiculturalism, Ethno-history and Asian Studies in Australia, Stockholm University Center for Pacific Asia Studies Working Paper No.31, September 1992, pp. 15.
- (with Hendrik Kolenberg et al.) The Second Landing: Dutch Migrant Artists in Australia, Erasmus Foundation, Melbourne, 1993, pp. 56, ISBN 0646 135937.
- An Officer of the Blue: Marc-Joseph Marion Dufresne 1724—1772, South Sea Explorer, Miegunyah/Melbourne University Press, Melbourne, 1994, pp. 229, ISBN 0-522-84565-7.
- (with Barry York) Exclusions and Admissions: The Dutch in Australia 1902-1946, Studies in Australian Ethnic History, No. 7, Centre for Immigration and Multicultural Studies, Research School of Social Sciences, Australian National University, Canberra, 1994, pp. 11, ISBN 07315 1913 2/ISSN 1039-3188.
- (with Per Tingbrand, ed. & trans) Daniel Solander: Collected Correspondence 1753—1782, Miegunyah/Melbourne University Press, Melbourne, 1995, pp. 466, ISBN 0-522-84636-X [Scandinavian University Press, Oslo, 1995 ISBN 82-00-22454-6]
- (ed.) A Woman on the Goldfields: Recollections of Emily Skinner 1854—1878, Melbourne University Press, Melbourne, 1995, pp. 129, ISBN 0-522-84652-1. [RVIB, Melbourne, 2001, Spoken word version narrated by Ronnie Evans, one of 100 titles recorded by the Royal Victorian Institute for the Blind National Information Library Service in digital audio format for the ‘Australians All project’, funded by the National Council for the Centenary of Federation.]
- Nature's Argonaut: Daniel Solander 1733—1782, Naturalist and Voyager with Cook and Banks, Miegunyah/Melbourne University Press, Melbourne, 1998 (reprinted 1999), pp. 380, ISBN 0-522-84753-6 [Short-listed, New South Wales Premier’s General History Prize, 1999]
- [Introductory essay & biographical note] Mirror of the Australian Navigation by Jacob Le Maire: A Facsimile of the ‘Spieghel der Australische Navigatie . . .’ Being an Account of the Voyage of Jacob Le Maire and Willem Schouten 1615-1616 published in Amsterdam in 1622, Hordern House for the Australian National Maritime Museum, Sydney, 1999, pp. 202, ISBN 1-875567-25-9.
- (with Maryse Duyker, ed. & trans) Bruny d’Entrecasteaux: Voyage to Australia and the Pacific 1791—1793, Miegunyah/Melbourne University Press, Melbourne, 2001, pp. xliii, pp. 392, ISBN 0-522-84932-6 [paperback edition, March 2006, ISBN 0-522-85232-7]
- Citizen Labillardière: A Naturalist’s Life in Revolution and Exploration (1755—1834), Miegunyah/Melbourne University Press, Melbourne, 2003, ISBN 0-522-85010-3, Paperback reprint, 2004, ISBN 0-522-85160-6, pp. 383 (including notes, glossaries, zoological, botanical and general index), 12 maps, 18 black and white plates [Winner, New South Wales Premier’s General History Prize, 2004].
- ‘A French Garden in Tasmania: The Legacy of Félix Delahaye (1767—1829)’, in Glynnis M. Cropp, Noel R. Watts, Roger D. J. Collins and K. R. Howe (eds.) Pacific Journeys: Essays in Honour of John Dunmore, Victoria University Press, Wellington, 2005, pp. 21—35.
- ‘Isle de France and Baudin’s Precursors in Australian Waters’, in Rivière, M. S. & Issur, K. R. (ed.) Baudin–Flinders dans l’Océan Indien: Voyages, découvertes, rencontre: Travels, Discoveries, Encounter: Actes du colloque international organisé par l’Université de Maurice, octobre 2003, L’Harmattan, Paris, 2006, pp. 137–155.
- François Péron: An Impetuous Life: Naturalist and Voyager, Miegunyah/MUP, Melb., 2006, pp. 349, ISBN 978-0522-85260-8 [winner Frank Broeze Maritime History Prize, 2007].
- (ed. & compiler) A Dictionary of Sea Quotations: From Ancient Egypt to the Present, Miegunyah/Melbourne University Press, Melbourne, 2007, pp. 439, ISBN 0-522-85371-4.
- Marc-Joseph Marion Dufresne, un marin malouin à la découvertes des mers australes, traduction française de Maryse Duyker (avec l'assistance de Maurice Recq et l'auteur), Les Portes du Large, Rennes, 2010, pp. 352, ISBN 978-2-914612-14-2.
- Père Receveur: Franciscan, Scientist and Voyager with Lapérouse, Dharawal Publications, Engadine (NSW), 2011, pp. 41, ISBN 978-0-9870727-0-2.
Family History Aids by Edward Duyker
- A Guide to Mauritian Genealogical Sources in Australia, Australian Mauritian Research Group, Forest Hill, 1984, pp. 10, ISBN 0-9590883-0-X; (Second edition with Addenda, Ferntree Gully, 1985).
- ‘The Mauritians’, in Jupp, J. (ed.) The Australian People , Angus & Robertson, Sydney, 1988, pp. 709-713; revised edition, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 2001, pp. 592—7.
- ‘The Mauritians in Australia’, The Australian Encyclopaedia, 5th edition, Australian Geographic, Sydney, 1988, Volume 5, pp. 1900—02.
- Early Dutch Immigrant Naturalizations: An Alphabetical Index 1849—1903, Volume 1: Victoria, New South Wales & Queensland, Privately Published, Sylvania (NSW), 1987, pp. 26, ISBN 0-7316-0057-6.
- Netherlandish Family History Sources in Australia: An Annotated Bibliography, Privately Published, Sylvania (NSW), 1988, pp. 22, ISBN 0-9587981-0-9.
- 'Histoire généalogique: Mauritius and Family History at the National Library’, National Library of Australia News, vol. IV, no. 1, October 1993, pp. 4—6.
- ‘Going Dutch at the National Library’, National Library of Australia News, vol. IV, no. 4, January 1994, pp 3–5.
Sources
- Dymphna Clark, 'Handmaiden to Botany's Giants', Canberra Times, 16 May 1998, Panorama, pp. 7-8.
- Marius Damas, Approaching Naxalbari, Radical Impression, Calcutta 1991, pp. 68-70 ISBN 81 85 459 01 0
- Greg Dening,'The Tortoise Wins Again!', in Greg Dening, Readings/Writings, Melbourne University Press, Melbourne, 1998, pp. 201-4, ISBN 10 0 522 848419*http://catalogue.mup.com.au/978-0-522-84841-0.html
- Greg Dening, 'Too Many Captain Cooks', Australian Book Review, June/July, 2003, pp. 10-11.*http://dspace.flinders.edu.au/dspace/bitstream/2328/1103/1/10-11.pdf
- Greg Dening, 'The Naturalist Mind', Australian Book Review, April 1998, pp. 8-9.
- Edward Duyker interviewed by Barry York, recorded 15 August 1994 & 1 & 2 September 2004, National Library of Australia Oral History collection, ORAL TRC 3101 & ORAL TRC 5306.
- Edward Duyker, 'The Word in the Field: Reminiscences of India's Santals', National Library of Australia News, May 1999, pp. 15-17.
- 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. 71–2.
- 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.
- Johan Kruithof, 'A Case of Cultural Theft', in Sue Calwell and Daniel Johnson, There's More to Life than Sex & Money, Penguin, Ringwood 1997, pp. 85-7 ISBN 0-14-026359-4
- Yvan Martial, 'Il y a 25 ans, 24 Juillet 1984, Edward Duyker raconte notre Australie', L'Express (Port Louis), 24 juillet 2009.
- Yvan Martial, 'Il y a 25 ans, 27 Juillet 1984, Les relations Australie-Maurice', L'Express (Port Louis), 24 juillet 2009.
- 'Multiethnic histories', La Trobe University Record, December 1987, p. 8.
- Kalyan Mukherjee, 'Of drugs, guerrillas and terrorism', Hindustan Times (Delhi), 22 November 1987.
- Patricia Rolfe, 'Better Breton than Briton', The Bulletin [Sydney], 17 May 1994, p. 96.
- Sydney Selvon, 'Interview du Dr Edward Duyker, chercheur Australien d'origine mauricienne', Le Mauricien, jeudi 5 juillet 1984, p. 3 & 5.
- 'The Author and the Book: An Interview with Dr Edward Duyker', Vogelvlucht (Uitgave voor Australie en Nieuw Zeeland van de Koningslijke Luchtvaart Maatschappij), 4/1988, p. 11.
- 'Exploring the explorers', Agora, 2004, p. 48.
- Vivienne Skinner, 'A man for the times: Edward Duyker', Sydney Morning Herald, Weekend Edition, 16-17 September— 2006, My Career, p. 2.
- Who's Who in Australia, Crown Content, Melbourne 2008, p. 676.
- Who's Who of Australian Writers, Thorpe/National Centre for Australian Studies, Second Edition, 1995, pp. 193-4.
External links
- Sen. Bob Brown, review of Citizen Labillardière, in Labour History, May 2006
- Australian Academy of the Humanities (New Fellows of 2007)
- Duyker Papers, National Library of Australia (MS 9061)
- Dictionary of Sydney: 'The Dutch in Sydney'
- A Dictionary of Sea Quotations
- François Péron
- Citizen Labillardière
- Nature's Argonaut
- Daniel Solander
- Voyage to Australia and the Pacific
- 'In Search of Jean Piron', National Library of Australia News
- ABC Catalyst Report on Recherch Bay
- Duyker Collection, No. 1 (of 3) National Museum of Australia