The Fennell Lecture 2023 - Professor Julia Laite

In 1822, William Eppes Cormack, mineralogist, imperialist, and benighted humanitarian, set off to trek across the ‘unknown’ interior of the Island of Newfoundland, which had been a British fishing station and colonial possession since the early 16th century. His aims were manifold: to name, claim and exploit the land and resources he found there, and to search for the Beothuk, a supposedly ‘lost tribe’ who called the island home. Cormack blamed the plight of the Beothuk on the cruel negligence of the colonial government, and upon the crueller savagery of the Island’s white settlers, who clung to the coasts in poor, isolated, and technically illegal settlements. With the help of Mi’kmaq and Innu guides (for whom the interior was not, in fact, unknown), Cormack set out to remake the Island as a civilized and prosperous place.

This lecture retells the story of Cormack and his guides, as well as the story of Shanawdithit, the Beothuk woman he eventually found, whom he dubbed ‘the last of her people’. It also considers Cormack’s ‘savage’ settlers—including my own ancestors—and the story’s afterlife in contemporary Newfoundland. How might this retold story illuminate settler colonialism in a poor, remote and isolated hinterland, and how might it help remake this troubled place?

Registration (free) at the Eventbrite link.

Professor Julia Laite 

Julia Laite is Professor of History at Birkbeck, University of London. She researches and teaches on the history of women, crime, sexuality and migration in the 19th and 20th century British world. Her latest book,The Disappearance of Lydia Harvey: A true story of sex, crime, and the meaning of justice (Profile, 2021) won the Crime Writer’s Association Gold Dagger for Non-Fiction and the Bert Roth Award for New Zealand Labour History. This lecture is drawn from a new project about critical family history, storytelling, and settler colonialism in Newfoundland.