'The ordered behaviour of the individual himself' : Cecil Cook's biological politics

By examining the thinking of a major public health bureaucrat, Dr Cecil Cook, this article contributes to our understanding of the relationship between racial thought and liberalism in Australia's administration of 'Aboriginal affairs'. In Cook's appraisal of the health problems of northern Australia, 2 kinds of distinction were significant: racial (whites, 'Asiatics', Aborigines) and capacity for hygienic living. We argue that over the span of Cook's career as an administrator and commentator (1925-69) distinctions of capacity were more fundamental, for he assumed that both whites and 'Aboriginals' could be brought to standards of conduct required of a healthy population. We review Cook's ideas about what made the Northern Territory different from the 6 states and about the potential of miscegenation and 'absorption'. We argue that Cook's nationalism was not simply 'ethnic' but also significantly 'civic' and that he was fundamentally a liberal assimilationist, albeit cautious and at times coercive in his application of public health ideas to the program of civic equality. In the course of our argument, we comment on other historians' conceptions of Cook.