She suggests that sustained avoidance of the taxes after the 1859 petitions eventually led to the removal of the taxes. Valerie LovejoyвЂ™s research on the Bendigo Chinese protests in 1859 has attempted to overcome this obstacle. This period of time makes it difficult to package the protests into an instant success story, especially when there is no direct correlation between the petitions and the immediate removal of the taxes. The protests started in 1856, in response to legislation enacted in 1855, and continued into 1861 the various taxes imposed on the Chinese were removed in 18. As Cronin explains, the Chinese protests вЂhad been the most determined, sustained diggersвЂ™ resistance campaignвЂ™. Other obstacles include the appeal of an instant success story, combined with a narrow perception of the measures of success. Elsewhere, I have indicated that the story of the Chinese protests conflicts with popular multicultural interpretations of democracy in the aftermath of the Eureka Rebellion, one of the protests against the goldfields licence. Furthermore, by identifying how Chinese adopted Western constitutional forms of protest, this approach challenges cultural stereotypes that suggest Chinese were incapable of crossing cultural boundaries.Дespite these advances, other existing popular historical interpretations have the capacity to undermine the acceptance and appeal of this story. This approach has the potential to facilitate new understandings by building on the familiar. In this latest body of research there has been a trend towards identifying the influences that earlier minersвЂ™ protests against the goldfields licence had on Chinese protest methods, particularly during 1859. Since then, historians have attempted to address the imbalance. In 1982, Kathryn Cronin noted that the Chinese protests had вЂreceived scant attention in Australian history booksвЂ™ вЂ“ Geoffrey SerleвЂ™s The golden age being the exception.

The Chinese protests against the various taxes imposed on them by the Victorian Government during the latter half of the 1850s are an example of this. These factors can make the process of embedding new stories a gradual one. How the information is interpreted, how the story is told, and whether it captures peopleвЂ™s imaginations, play an important part as do the ever-changing contours of popular memory. Introducing new stories about the past and embedding them as part of the dominant historical narratives is not just a matter of uncovering new information.

Colony survival digger