‘The Chief Chinese Interpreter’ Charles Hodges: mapping the aurality of race and governance in colonial Melbourne

Abstract

This article demonstrates the importance of aurality and speech in law and governance in Melbourne, the capital of the British settler colony of Victoria, Australia. It does so via tracking the role of England-born Chinese Interpreter, Charles Powell Hodges, across Melbourne spaces, notably the Supreme Court and the so-called ‘Chinese Quarter’. By examining Hodges’ involvement in the surrounding racial politics of urban labour, and of carpentry in particular, this article highlights the spatially dependent ways in which power was verbally negotiated in and between colonial state actors, Hodges, and the Chinese merchant and working classes. It further examines Hodges’ role as an advocate for Chinese interests in the context of the 1890s Depression. Hodges spoke against popular anti-Chinese sentiments at a time when white settler linguistic identity was being formulated, and in the lead up to the 1901 Federation of the Australian colonies. A focus on acts of speaking, hearing, and listening, I argue, is a way to deepen historical understandings of governance, and of resistance thereto.