English passengers

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English Passengers (original title English Passengers ) is a historical novel published in 2000 , written by Matthew Kneale ; the author received the Whitbread Book Award for this novel and was nominated for the Booker Prize . The special charm of the book lies in the large number of different characters from whose point of view the storyline is told. The novel is about three Englishmen who set out as passengers on a smuggler's ship from the Isle of Man in the 19th century to discover the Garden of Eden in Tasmania's wilderness . At the same time, the fate of the Tasmanian indigenous population under the English occupation is portrayed from the perspective of the indigenous Peevay.

Historical background of the novel

The story takes place in the 19th century. The British Empire is ruled by Queen Victoria . The ever expanding British Empire has also expanded to Van Diemen's Land , a large island off the southern tip of Australia . The prospect of making their fortune in the colonies sparked a kind of gold rush mood; Australia attracts a colorful mix of colonial administrators, farmers, ranchers, traders, missionaries and adventurers. But the island far from home is also an ideal place of exile for dangerous prisoners.

Tasmania was never an uninhabited island. About 4000 Aborigines of Australian origin lived here. After Tasmania was discovered and occupied by the whites in 1804, the "civilization" of the "savages" began immediately. They were driven from their land, hunted, and decimated by violence and introduced diseases. Eventually they were deported to remote reservations ( Flinders Island ). Especially the white sealers abducted female Aborigines and attacked them in a brutal and inhuman manner; the gender ratio among the remaining natives was so severely disturbed. Diseases brought in, to which the Aborigines were unable to develop resistance, and alcohol abuse quickly wiped out the indigenous population.

Some of the characters appearing in the story are related to historical personalities; including Walyer , a Tasmanian freedom fighter, George Vandiemen, a young Aboriginal who was taught arithmetic by his teacher John Bradley, Robert Knox , a racist anthropologist, George Augustus Robinson , whose failed attempt to rescue the Aborigines consisted in imposing European culture on them and many more.

content

The story essentially follows the fates of several protagonists: Captain Illiam Quillian Kewley and his Isle of Man ship crew , Reverend Geoffrey Wilson, a clergyman and amateur researcher, Doctor Thomas Potter, a racist anthropologist, and Peevay, a native of Tasmania . The story begins in 1857 with Captain Kewley, who wants to make his fortune smuggling alcohol, tobacco and art objects and for this purpose buys a ship, the Sincerity , and equips it with a clever hiding place for smuggled goods. He hires friends and acquaintances from the Isle of Man as the ship's crew. Before the crew in France can sell their contraband goods in England, the ship and crew are stopped by English customs and brought to London because they are suspected of smuggling. Although the customs ultimately cannot prove anything because the customs cannot find the well-hidden contraband, Captain Kewley feels forced to take passengers on board in order to be able to pay the costs that have now accrued, such as the mooring fees, and finally to the hated London harbor leave.

On board are three English passengers who are eyed with suspicion by the crew from Man, which is rather hostile towards the English: Reverend Wilson, Doctor Potter and the young biologist Renshaw. These three urgently need a ship because they want to go on a research expedition to Tasmania and their own ship has been confiscated for the war in India. Originally, Captain Kewley only wants to carry the three passengers on the pretext until they have successfully sold the smuggled cargo for a large profit and then get rid of the passengers. A sale of the contraband fails, however, and they are now even on the run from English authorities, so that the ship finally sets course for Tasmania, contrary to the original plan, in the hope that grass will have grown over their crimes after the long voyage.

The three English passengers want to reach Tasmania for various reasons: Reverend Wilson, a hobby geologist, wants to find the Garden of Eden there in order to be able to silence his critics, who have devoted themselves to the demon of Darwinism . In his opinion, the Garden of Eden should be nowhere else than at the end of the world, namely in the wilderness of Tasmania. Soon there is also a sponsor for this expedition, who is Dr. Potter and an unsuccessful biologist named Renshaw join in. The surgeon and amateur anthropologist, Dr. Potter, officially accompanies the team as a doctor, but as the story turns out, his real motivation is that he wants to collect human skulls and other body parts as "artifacts" on the way to his theory of the superiority of the Anglo-Saxon "race" and the To prove the inferiority of the "race" of the Aborigines, which he sees at the lowest level of the hierarchy. He sees the chance to prove his “scientific” theory, according to which white masters have the biological right or even the duty to wipe out lower races from the ground, and makes notes for a book during the trip.

The story jumps back about 30 years after the introduction of the ship's crew and their passengers to tell the story of young Peevay, son of a native woman and a brutal whaler who once kidnapped and raped her. From Peevay's point of view, it is told how the natives initially come into conflict with white settlers in Tasmania more and more often, until an attempt is made to round up the natives by means of a military action (the so-called Black Line ) in a small region in Tasmania. Peevay and parts of his tribe, led by Peevay's mother, manage to escape at first, but finally, weakened by illness and hunger, they give up their escape and are convinced to be transported to Flinders Island. There they discover that, contrary to the promises made to them, the island offers them only a meager, miserable life, and the number of Aborigines is rapidly falling due to infectious diseases and malnutrition. When finally there are only a small number left, they are allowed to return to mainland Tasmania.

As expected, the journey is turbulent with many tensions and conflicts between the different characters on board. Once in Tasmania, Captain Tewley finally succeeds in finding a buyer for his cargo. His English passengers leave the ship and embark on a grueling expedition inland in search of the Garden of Eden. They choose Peevay, who has grown up in the meantime, as their guide. Potter wants to expose the thief of his late mother's corpse. The expedition ends catastrophically because Reverend Wilson, as expedition leader, insists on climbing a steep mountain in the hope that the Garden of Eden is behind it. When the weather worsens and the terrain turns out to be too difficult to travel safely, a conflict between Wilson and the rest of the expedition, led by Dr. Potter who, it turns out, did not believe in the Garden of Eden theory from the start. In the violent conflict, the mules fall down the slope with a large part of their luggage, as does the biologist Renshaw, who actually only wanted to mediate. Wilson moves on alone while the rest of the group tries to find a way back. Peevay leaves the group and starts a campaign of revenge against the whites (with the exception of Renshaw and Wilson, whom he spares as good people) because he knows that Dr. Potter stole the remains of the deceased Peevay's mother, cut them up and kept them in his luggage as "artifacts".

Wilson and the rest of the expedition wander around disoriented for a while and finally team up to find a way back. They finally land, already decimated by Peevay's attacks, in a hidden bay, where the Sincerity and Captain Kewley of all people discovers them on the shore and takes them back on board. However, Kewley is quick to regret his good deed because Dr. Potter takes control of the ship and puts Wilson and Kewley in chains. The crew tried to mutiny, but it wasn't until just off the coast of England that they finally succeeded in removing Dr. Overpowering Potter and his aides during a storm, killing the Doctor. The sincerity is due to the mismanagement of Dr. Potters in such bad shape during the voyage that they eventually drifted to the shores of England and crashed there. However, Captain Kewley and his crew manage to save themselves and even get their smugglers' gold and a suitcase from Dr. To take Potter.

The story ends in two directions: With Peevay's help, Renshaw finds a way back from the wilderness and stays with a farming family in Tasmania, which has become a new home for him. Wilson went mad during the expedition in Tasmania and spends the rest of his life in an English village where he was washed up as a shipwrecked man, as a "village saint". The Sincerity's crew are quick to hire other ships, fearing that they will kill Dr. Potters will be held accountable. Kewley hides at first, but eventually comes out to find that no one suspects her of the murder. Remnants of Dr. Potter's collection will eventually be recovered on behalf of the expedition sponsor, Mr. Childs, and the insurance company, and will be on display in London. Dr. Potter will be recovered from the wreckage of the Sincerity along with other remnants of his collection and exhibited as a "native skull" together with the rest of his collection in an exhibition in London. Peevay moves on to the region, where he suspects his father, whom he wants to kill in revenge, and finds out there that his father is already dead. Joining a group who are the descendants of whalers or escaped convicts and abducted Aboriginal women, he has found a new tribe.

shape

The novel is described alternately from the perspective of the people involved, first by Captain Kewley, then by other people such as the Reverend Wilson and the young Tasmanian native Peevay and his father, a whaler and later prisoner in Tasmania. The novel initially jumps back and forth between different time levels: the story of Kewley and Wilson begins in 1857, that of Peevay and his father in 1820. The different storylines (Kewley and his crew, Reverend Wilson and his expedition team, and Peevay and his tribe) combine little by little: First, Kewley and his crew take Wilson and his team on board, then the English passengers in Tasmania meet the now grown-up Peevay and the few survivors of the Aborigines from Flint Island. In addition to the aforementioned protagonists, Kneale has more than a dozen minor characters appear (colonial dignitaries, settler women, indigenous women, prisoners, etc.), whose descriptions complete the picture of the world around 1850.

The novel is a bitter satire on the ruthless and brutal expansionist efforts of the major European powers. The self-portrayal of the occupiers as unrestricted rulers of the world and “master race”, who claim all land and resources regardless of the rights of the indigenous people, cannot be surpassed in megalomania. Nevertheless, Kneale knows how to skilfully not let the bitterness outweigh the incidents, but instead packs the atrocities of the indigenous population, which ultimately culminate in genocide, in his satirical-comic portrayal of the self-appointed “master race”. The Sincerity (even the name - "Sincerity" - is sheer irony) is the Ship of Fools. The horror at the terror and the tragedy of the events is not alleviated by the satirical exaggeration. Rather, the shock is intensified by the stark contrasts. Human traits are also not excluded from the novel. Peevay and his mother, who are completely estranged due to the tragic circumstances in which the pregnancy came about, are united in their hatred of the white scut, at least for a short time. The joy of his mother's recognition turns into sadness, anger and hatred immediately after her sudden death. Kneale makes it clear that during this time the foundation for a racial ideology was established, in whose name plunder, oppression and murder continued in the centuries that followed.

reception

The author received the Whitbread Book Award for this novel; the novel was also shortlisted for the Booker Prize.

Adam Hochschild of the New York Times praises the character drawings in the novel, especially those of Captain Kewley, while the Aboriginal Peevay is rated as difficult to implement and a little trying. Although unlike many other characters in the novel, Captain Kewley has no historical role model, but his character drawing is more vivid than that of the others. Hochschild also notes that the two storylines (the voyage on the one hand and the Tasmanian indigenous experience on the other) feel more like two novels in one, with one storyline being more unpredictable and comical while the other is tragic. The successful character of Captain Kewley alone makes the novel worth reading.

Steven Poole of The Guardian calls the novel a wonderfully composed composition of 21 voices: short stories, letters and memoirs in the first person as well as a newspaper report. Poole notes that not all characters are full, round characters, but Kewley, Potter, Wilson, and Peevay are "creations to remember." Poole praises the story's action-packed finale and draws comparisons to Dracula, only that Kneale takes an even clearer moral stance on colonialism and racism. In terms of language, Poole also considers the novel to be very successful and worthy of a literature prize.

The novel has been translated into several languages; there is an audio book version with Simon Callow as the narrator.

literature

Text output

  • Matthew Kneale: English Passengers . Hamish Hamilton, London 2000, ISBN 0-241-14068-4 . (Original edition)
  • Matthew Kneale: English Passengers . Translated from English by Sabine Hübner. Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, Stuttgart / Munich 2000, ISBN 3-421-05274-3 . (German translation)

Audio book

  • Matthew Kneale: English Passengers . Voiced by Simon Callow. HarperCollins UK Audio, London 2005, ISBN 9780007218387 .

Secondary literature

  • Adam Hochschild: The Floating Swap Meet (review). In: The New York Times , May 28, 2000, accessed May 19, 2020.
  • Caroline Lusin: Encountering darkness, intertextuality and polyphony in JM Coetzee's Dusklands (1974) and Matthew Kneale's English passengers (2000) . Rodopi, Amsterdam 2009, ISBN 978-90-420-2714-5 .
  • Steven Poole: All hands on deck . (Review) In: The Guardian , March 4, 2000, accessed May 19, 2020.

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Matthew Kneale: Epilogue . In: Matthew Kneale: English passengers . Translated from English by Sabine Hübner. Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, Stuttgart / Munich 2000, ISBN 3-421-05274-3 , pp. 539-542.
  2. ^ Adam Hochschild: The Floating Swap Meet (review). In: The New York Times on the Web , May 28, 2000, accessed May 19, 2020.
  3. ↑ Steven Poole: All hands on deck . (Review) In: The Guardian , March 4, 2000, accessed May 19, 2020.