We, Us and Them: ‘Robinsonian Collaboration’ in a British World

In a seminal essay, Bridge and Fedorowich conceived the British world in the old Dominions as composed of intricate and overlapping networks and associations formed by migration and settlement. This transnational co-ethnic community achieved its greatest strength in the generation before the First World War and, contrary to Robinson’s influential argument about collaboration, was ‘emphatically about we’ rather than ‘us and them’. This essay considers these propositions with reference to the networks and associations of British-Australian business at the turn of the nineteenth century. It identifies the nature and limits of cooperative action and argues that there is still a place for Robinsonian collaboration in the British world as described by Bridge and Fedorwich. The essay thus affirms the strengths and limits of the original thesis that have already been identified by other scholars.