An Elm Tree at the Yarra River? Batman’s Treaty as a Nexus of Settler-Colonial Space|Time.

Drawing on the example of Batman’s Treaty, the only land cession treaty between Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples and British settlers, this article reconstructs the processes, discourses and networks at the local, regional, and the British-imperial level that gave rise to a specifically Anglophone settler-colonial space|time. It focuses on the role of two Quaker ministers, James Backhouse and George Washington Walker, who travelled to Australia between 1832 and 1838. Shocked by the genocidal violence on the frontier, they advocated a treaty settlement with Australian First Nations following the example of their fellow-Quaker William Penn, who allegedly concluded a peace treaty with representatives of the Lenni Lenape (Delaware people) under the canopy of a large elm tree in 1682. The ministers convinced decision-makers both locally and in London of the value of such treaties, and thus spread the idea of a settlercolonial space|time, which (regardless of cultural and socio-ecological specificities) extended from Philadelphia to Port Phillip and lasted for more than two centuries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]