In the second half of the nineteenth century, the two convict-built European settler colonial projects in Oceania, French New Caledonia and British Australia, were geographically close yet ideologically distant. Observers in the Australian colonies regularly characterized French colonization as backward, inhumane, and uncivilized, often pointing to the penal colony in New Caledonia as evidence. Conversely, French commentators, while acknowledging that Britain's transportation of convicts to Australia had inspired their own penal colonial designs in the South Pacific, insisted that theirs was a significantly different venture, built on modern, carefully preconceived methods. Thus, both sides engaged in an active practice of denying comparability; a practice that historians, in neglecting the interconnections that existed between Australia and New Caledonia, have effectively perpetuated. This article draws attention to some of the strategies of spatial and temporal distance deployed by the Australian colonies in relation to thebagnein New Caledonia and examines the nation-building ends that these strategies served. It outlines the basic context and contours of the policy of convict transportation for the British and the French and analyses discursive attempts to emphasize the distinctions between Australia and New Caledonia. Particular focus is placed on the moral panic in Australian newspapers about the alleged dangerous proximity of New Caledonia to the east coast of Australia. I argue that this moral panic arose at a time when Britain's colonies in Australia, in the process of being granted autonomy and not yet unified as a federated nation, sought recognition as reputable settlements of morally virtuous populations. The panic simultaneously emphasized the New Caledonian penal colony's geographical closeness to and ideological distance from Australia, thereby enabling Australia's own penal history to be safely quarantined in the past.

中文翻译：

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“近距离的道德垃圾”：澳大利亚和新喀里多尼亚的刑事殖民化和距离策略，c.1853-1897

十九世纪下半叶，法国新喀里多尼亚和英属澳大利亚这两个由罪犯在大洋洲建造的欧洲移民殖民项目，地理上相近，意识形态上却相距甚远。澳大利亚殖民地的观察家经常将法国的殖民化描述为落后、不人道和不文明，经常将新喀里多尼亚的流放地作为证据。相反，法国评论员虽然承认英国将罪犯运送到澳大利亚激发了他们自己在南太平洋的刑事殖民计划，但坚持认为他们的冒险是一个截然不同的冒险，建立在现代、谨慎的先入为主的方法之上。因此，双方都积极地否认可比性；历史学家的一种做法，在忽视澳大利亚和新喀里多尼亚之间存在的相互联系的情况下，实际上已经长期存在。本文提请注意澳大利亚殖民地部署的一些空间和时间距离策略与巴涅在新喀里多尼亚，并研究了这些战略所服务的国家建设目标。它概述了英国和法国囚犯运输政策的基本背景和轮廓，并分析了强调澳大利亚和新喀里多尼亚之间区别的话语尝试。特别关注澳大利亚报纸上关于新喀里多尼亚与澳大利亚东海岸的所谓危险接近的道德恐慌。我认为，这种道德恐慌是在英国在澳大利亚的殖民地在获得自治权但尚未统一为一个联邦国家的过程中出现的，他们寻求承认为道德高尚的人口的信誉良好的定居点。恐慌同时强调了新喀里多尼亚流放地与澳大利亚的地理距离和意识形态距离，