Talk:Vanessa Collingridge

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George Collingridge

Previously, the article seemed to imply that at some time it was thought that Cook discovered Australia and that George Collingridge's theory was that it was the Portuguese, not Cook, who did this dead.

No well-read person ever thought Cook discovered Australia. In his first voyage (1768 to 1771), he brought with him copies of charts of Australia drawn by the Dutch and others in the 17th. The orthodox view then, as now, was that Janszoon was the first European to stand on and chart the Australian mainland, having done so in 1606.

More than half of Australia's coastline had been charted before Cook set sail.

GC's unusual theory was that the Portuguese had visited Australia throughout the 16th century, well before Janszoon's journey.

I have edited the article to make it plain that conventional theory was that the Dutch discovered Australia in. It was against this theory that George Collingridge espoused his theory of much earlier Portuguese exploration.

Ordinary Person 08:42, 30 October 2007 (UTC)[reply]

The article is not a history lesson, it's a biography of Vanessa Collingride, and covers her biography of Cook and her relationship with GC. As can be seen in contemporary reviews of the book, Collingridge's controversy among contemporary historians was his revisionism with regards to Cook's contribution:

"George Collingridge suggested that the Portuguese had discovered the east coast of Australia before Cook, though he was not the first to do so. At the time, however, this was almost regarded as heresy in Australian academic circles, whose members regarded Cook as a national hero." Journal for Maritime Research
"Noting linguistic anomalies in the maps, George Collingridge deduced that Cook was not the discoverer of Australia. Although he was vilified at the time, his theories now attract serious study." The Spectator
"[Collingridge's] proposals were rejected by both the Establishment and the public as they flew in the face of the British Empire and the accepted history which recognised Captain Cook as the "discoverer" of Australia." The Captain Cook Society

Also, as far as I can see, GC made not a single mention of Janszoon in his 1895 book at all. "The Dutch" had nothing to do with Collingridge's resultant notoriety, and certainly the associated inline citations make no mention of them. --DeLarge 17:29, 3 November 2007 (UTC)[reply]