Colonial attitudes toward native subjects

When I decided to publish the diary of William Whitehead I had to make a choice about whether I wanted to edit the diary or not.  I knew I wanted to be as faithful to the original as possible, even preserving spelling and grammatical mistakes.  But should I edit the content by removing passages that are very personal, or that betray a certain colonial attitude toward native peoples?

On the one hand, William was aware that his diary would be read by others, since he was writing to his family.  And whether he explicitly gave permission or not, he was happy when he learned that friends in West Hartlepool were also reading and enjoying the diary.

“[5:80] I am very pleased my journal is of so much interest to all, & delighted if friends derive pleasure from it, but in all sincerity I do feel it to be very watery & by no means over creditable in many ways. However, it is there as it is & being chiefly for you & my own dear ones, I feel always a freedom in committing all & every incident, trivial & otherwise, that I think may interest you to its pages. Pass it round!! Pass it round!! Joy to others is intense joy to the writer, this you well know.”

In fact, William made so many of these kinds of self-deprecating comments regarding his grammar and language that you can be sure he expected the diary might be read by many people who knew him.  Moreover, he remarked on multiple occasions about the diaries of others which he had read and which were passed around widely.

“[5:85] I also, especially for his interest, fetched Mr. Leask‘s diary of our West of Scotland tour, tho’ should we not meet, it has not been brought needlessly, as the cousin at Sydney had a reading of it & expressed delight.”

But the most compelling evidence I have that he knew the diary would be read by others beyond his immediate family is the fact that refrained from commenting at all on some personal family issues:

“[5:55] …David was on the platform, glad to meet each other, but more on this subject when I get home & it will keep.”

So I feel confident that William would have been proud, as well as humbled, to know that his diary was published on the World Wide Web for the whole world to read.

On the other hand, 120 of the most transformative years in human history have elapsed since 1898, and history has not judged very kindly certain attitudes toward race and cultural superiority that were so prevalent at that time as to be considered nearly universal.  That an Englishman in 1898 would have considered white people superior, or that he would have been shocked by certain native customs, is not surprising.  But how should we approach these attitudes today in the full light of history?

Above all, I see this journal as a historical document, a primary source of the most intimate kind.  My objective in publishing this journal is to make it available to everyone who wants to read it, and I am conscious that many of its present readers are the descendants of peoples that William judged very condescendingly.  But its value to researchers and amateur historians alike makes the idea of editing the content seem dishonest.  Especially since I can’t even be sure that William, if he were alive today, would disown any of the content of his own diary.  We should look at the opinions expressed within its pages in the context of William’s times, and recognize that it would have been a very strange man indeed who saw the world then the way that we see it now.

Colonialism has left many scars on the countries that were touched by it and no one today can excuse the actions of its proponents and apologists, no matter the few positive consequences which may have also resulted from it.  Which is why it is important not to whitewash the opinions of real people of the time, but rather to expose them to critical evaluation.  In the end, I think we will come to value our own times even more, and recognize that we still have a long way to go towards true equality and mutual understanding.