Russell draws on the work of the German sociologist Norbert Elias, whose book, The Civilising Process: The History of Manners, published originally in 1939, was not translated into English until 1969, when, belatedly, its influence began to be felt. For Elias, ‘the rules of civility were all about the erection of invisible “walls” between people, limiting physical contact and increasingly guarding privacy and personal space against unwanted intrusion by others’. But how did these ‘rules of civility’ function in a brash colonial society? Russell is interested in the personal encounters and disputes that provide colourful evidence of ‘jarring juxtapositions of values and habits’, and her analysis proceeds through a series of case studies.

Robert Dawson came to Australia as the first manager of the London-based Australian Agricultural Company, which had been promised a grant of a million acres in New South Wales in the neighbourhood of Port Stephens. What is remarkable about Dawson is that, even as he was engaged as the agent of pastoral settlement, he respected the Aborigines he met and negotiated with, regarding them as ‘more agreeable, more humane, and certainly more interesting than most of his convict servants’. Indeed, it seems Worrimay people today remember Dawson as a ‘good man’. Yet he never questioned the legitimacy of his mission on behalf of the Australian Agricultural Company, which was to become a juggernaut in coal mining as well as in pastoralism. Russell compares Dawson with Niel Black, a dour Scottish settler, who deliberately avoided any dealings with Aborigines, preferring to purchase existing holdings in Victoria’s Western District. What appalled him was the barbaric behaviour of his squatter confrères, who, in the absence of the civilising influence of women, seemed to revel in living in masculine squalor, letting off steam in riotous drinking sessions.

Among the gestures that Russell interrogates is the handshake. Dawson, in his meetings with Aborigines, often insisted on the handshake to symbolise an understanding or agreement, even though he seems to have realised that the Indigenous inhabitants didn’t fully appreciate its significance. On the other hand, when the New South Wales dignitaries lined up to greet the duke of Edinburgh in 1868, Henry Parkes, the lowly ivory turner who had become a political leader of some importance, is said to have offered his hand to the duke, who coolly declined it. Those who prided themselves on their knowledge of royal formalities gloated over this gaffe.

A potentially more lethal gesture still occasionally resorted to in the early nineteenth century was the challenge to a duel. William Bland had, as a young surgeon in the navy, engaged in a duel in which he had mortally wounded his opponent. Found guilty of murder, he was let off lightly with a sentence of transportation for seven years. He became a popular figure in Sydney as a doctor and philanthropist, but clung tenaciously to his inherited notion of gentlemanly conduct. When in disagreement with a fellow doctor, Farquhar McCrae, over the appropriate treatment of a patient, a dispute which escalated into the public domain, Bland sought through insult to force McCrae to challenge him to a duel. McCrae, well aware of Bland’s history, wisely refused to oblige. As far as he was concerned, what was at stake was a question of medical ethics and not some ancient code of honour.

It is ironic that, while Bland continued to stick to his gentlemanly guns, his criminal record was a cause for embarrassment for some at least, though it had become part of colonial etiquette that a convict background could only be hinted at. Who could be invited to Government House was always a cause for debate and gossip. While the vain but shrewd Parkes could hardly be excluded, his wife Clarinda could. Self-made men had to be put up with in the colonies, but, as far as polite society was concerned, their wives were another matter.

Russell, an accomplished storyteller who writes stylishly, includes some beautiful cameos, such as the foolish Captain Gilbee, a member of the Victorian Volunteer Force, who allowed a notorious prostitute to parade down Bourke Street wearing his pillbox cap, belt, and sword. But sometimes these stories would benefit from more context and comparison. With both Bland and Parkes in mind, for example, I could not help thinking of Victoria’s Redmond Barry, the eminent judge who was such an important contributor to the cultural development of the gold-rich colony. Early in his career, Barry, described by Peter Ryan in the Australian Dictionary of Biography as a man of ‘unfailing, if elaborate and old-fashioned, courtesy’, was challenged to a duel which descended into farce. His opponent accidentally shot his own toe off, whereupon ‘Barry magnanimously and ceremoniously fired his pistol into the air’. Barry also had a lifelong relationship with Mrs Louisa Barrow, who bore him four children. Although Louisa could not accompany Redmond to Government House, they were seen in public together, sometimes with their children. Barry died in 1880; when Mrs Barrow died some years later, she was buried beside him. While certain rules had to be observed, colonial society was capable of bending them, or, in different contexts, politely ignoring them.

While Russell acknowledges the context of social class, there is little reference to the relevant Australian literature. So the chapter on the unhappy governess Margaret Youngman does not locate her in the ranks of the shabby-genteel, a fate from which a fortunate marriage would later rescue her. And although we hear of self-made men, we are not reminded of the colonial respect for manual labour. The squatter, whatever his social pretensions, was not above getting his hands dirty. Also, Russell’s analysis hardly engages with the manners of the workplace. Trade unions nowhere get a mention.

Perhaps I am guilty of asking Russell to have written a different sort of book, though the subtitle does suggest something all-embracing. What she has given us is an insightful treatment of the kind of predicaments colonists could find themselves in when attempting to adapt an inherited code of manners to the ever-changing colonial environment. Savage or Civilised? also comes with splendidly evocative colour illustrations.