This article is part of theHistory of Australia series. |
History of Australia before 1901 |
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History of Australia since 1901 |
Constitutional history of Australia |
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2 Discovery 3 Colonisation 4 Land Exploration 5 Growth of free settlement 6 Booms, depressions and trade unions 7 Related articles |
Humans first arrived in Australia by sea, through the islands now known as Indonesia and Papua New Guinea, many thousands of years ago. Estimates of the date vary considerably: the best current guess is about 53,000 years ago, but much room for debate remains.
The land that the first Australians colonised was very different to the Australia the first Europeans would see in the 18th century: more timbered, greener, and with a wider variety of species. The long, slow desertification of the continent had been underway for millions of years, but with the arrival of humans it accelerated greatly. Fire, already a growing part of the Australian landscape, became much more frequent as hunter-gatherers used it as a tool to drive game, to produce a green flush of new growth to attract animals, and to open up impenetrable forest. Densely grown areas became more open sclerophyll forest, open forest became grassland. Fire-tolerant species became predominant: in particular, eucalypts, acacia scrub, and grasses. Long-lived and fire-intolerant species declined, as did woody shrubs and understory plants.
The changes to the fauna were even more dramatic, and much more rapid: not one species larger than a human survived, and many of the smaller species were wiped out too. All told, about 60 different vertebrates were exterminated, including the Diprotodon family (very large marsupial herbivores that looked rather like hippos), several large flightless birds, carnivorous kangaroos, a five metre lizard and a tortoise the size of a small car. The direct cause of the mass extinctions is uncertain: it may have been fire, hunting, or a combination of both, but there is no room to doubt that it was human intervention of one kind or another. (The once popular climate change explanation is no longer tenable. See Genyornis.) With no large herbivores to keep the understory vegetation down and rapidly recycle soil nutrients with their dung, fuel build-up became more rapid and fires burned hotter, further changing the landscape.
The eons-old trend to aridification of the continent reached a peak with the last ice age. The period from 18,000 to 15,000 years ago saw most of the continent become desert for a time. A number of mammal species, mostly rodents, arrived over the Indonesian landbridge. Roughly 13,000 years ago, that connection and the Bassian Plain between modern-day Victoria and Tasmania disappeared under the rising sea. From that time on, the Tasmanian Aborigines were isolated. Populations on small islands in Bass Strait died out completely. It is unknown if there were additional migrations by people from the north over the Indonesian land bridge during the last ice age. Linguistic and genetic evidence shows that there has been long-term contact between Australians in the far north and the Austronesian peoples of modern-day New Guinea and the islands, but that this appears to have been mostly trade with a little intermarriage, as opposed to colonisation.
At the time of European arrival in 1788, there were approximately half a million native Australians, forming hundreds of distinct cultural and language groups. Most were hunter-gatherers with rich oral histories and advanced land-management practices (the ecological destruction of the initial colonisation phase was thousands of years past). In the most fertile and populous areas, they lived in semi-permanent settlements. In the fertile Murray Basin, the gathering and hunting economies to be found elsewhere on the continent had in large part given way to fish farming. Little is known of the bulk of the Aboriginal peoples: European colonists, intent on carving a living from their harsh new land, paid little attention to them, and by the time anthropological investigation had become both fashionable and practicable, the only intact Aboriginal societies were those in very remote (and usually extremely arid) areas.
It is likely that the Chinese have had some knowledge of Australia since the 13th century or before. In c. 1300, Marco Polo made reference to the reputed existence of a vast southern continent. The first recorded sighting is the subject of some uncertainty. The French navigator Binot Paulmyer claimed to have landed at Australia in 1503, after being blown off course. However later investigators concluded it was more likely he was in Madagascar. French authorities again made such a claim in 1531.
In 1606, the Dutch vessel Duyfken, led by William Jansz, explored perhaps 200 miles of western side of Cape York, in the Gulf of Carpentaria. They made one landing, but were promptly attacked by natives and hence did not attempt to explore further.
A Portuguese expedition commanded by Luis Vaez de Torres and piloted by Pedro Fernandez de Quiros set out for Australia in 1605. De Quiros was a Counter-Reformation Catholic. When he landed on the New Hebrides, he christened the island group "Austrialia del Espiritu Santo," translated as "South Land of the Holy Spirit." In another ship, De Torres sailed through the Torres Strait, but he probably didn't sight the Australian coast as he later claimed. This voyage occurred a couple of weeks after the discoveries made by the Duyfken.
In 1616 Dirk Hartog landed on what is now called Dirk Hartog Island, off the coast of Western Australia, and left behind an inscription on a pewter plate. (This plate may now be seen in the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam.) The Dutch named the western half of the continent New Holland, but made no attempt to colonise it.
In 1642, Abel Tasman sailed on a famous voyage from Batavia (now Jakarta), to Papua New Guinea, Fiji, New Zealand and, on November 24, sighted Tasmania. He named it Van Diemen's Land, after Anthony van Diemen, the Dutch East India Company's Governor General at Batavia, who had commissioned his voyage. Tasman claimed Van Diemen's Land for the Netherlands.
William Dampier first explored the north-west coast of Australia in 1688, in the "Cygnet", a small trading vessel. He made another voyage in 1699, before returning to England. The first Englishman to see Australia, he was able to describe some of the flora and fauna of Australia, being the first to report Australia's peculiar large hopping animals.
James Cook is widely regarded as the most important naval explorer of Australia. He reached New Zealand in October 1769, and mapped its coast. He then sailed across to south-east Australia, and all the way up the east coast. He claimed the east coast, which he named New South Wales, for Great Britain on August 22, 1770. Cook's expedition identified Botany Bay as an appropriate place for settlement.
The last great naval explorer was Matthew Flinders, who was responsible for filling in the gaps in the map left by other explorers. In 1796 (after settlement), with George Bass, he took a 2.5 metre long open boat and explored some of the coastline south of Sydney. He suspected from this voyage that Tasmania was an island, and in 1798 he led an expedition to circumnavigate it and hence prove his theory. He returned to his homeland of England, but was soon sent back to Sydney with a much more ambitious task — to circumnavigate Australia. He did this in 1802-03, sailing first along the south coast to Sydney, then completing the circumnavigation back to Sydney.
After the loss of the United States, Britain felt a need to find an alternative destination to take the population of its overcrowded prisons (full mainly due to the unemployment created by the Industrial Revolution) and needed somewhere to send their overflow. Sir Joseph Banks, the eminent scientist who had accompanied Cook on his 1770 voyage, recommended Botany Bay as a suitable site. In 1787 the First Fleet of 11 ships and about 1350 people under the command of Captain Arthur Phillip set sail for Botany Bay. On arrival, Botany Bay was considered unsuitable and on January 26, 1788—a date now both celebrated and mourned as Australia Day)— a landing was made at the nearby Sydney Cove. Phillip named the settlement after Thomas Townshend, 1st Baron Sydney (Viscount Sydney from 1789), the Home Secretary. The new colony was formally proclaimed as the Colony of New South Wales on February 7.
Thus European settlement began with a troupe of petty criminals, second-rate soldiers, and a crew of sailors. While the settlers were reasonably well-equipped, little consideration had been given as to the skills required to make the colony self-supporting - virtually none of the convicts had farming or trade experience (nor did the soldiers, for that matter), and the lack of understanding of Australia's seasonal patterns saw initial attempts at farming fail, leaving only what animals and birds the soldiers were able to shoot. The colony nearly starved, and Phillip was forced to send a ship to Batavia for supplies. Some relief arrived with the Second Fleet in 1790, but life was extremely hard for the first few years of the colony.
Convict discipline was harsh, equivalent to what would by 20th century standards be considered a concentration camp. On the other hand, the outdoor life and (once agriculture began) the diet were healthier than most of the convicts had been used to in the slums of London. Convicts were assigned to work gangs to build roads, buildings, and the like. Female convicts were usually assigned as domestic help to soldiers.
By 1790 a convict, James Ruse, had begun to successfully farm near Parramatta, the first successful farming enterprise, and he was soon joined by others. The colony began to grow enough food to support itself, and the standard of living for the residents gradually improved.
For many years, plans of westward expansion from Sydney were thwarted by the Great Dividing Range, a large range of mountains which shadows the east coast from the Queensland-New South Wales border to the south coast. The part of the range near Sydney is called the Blue Mountains. Governor Philip Gidley King declared that they were impassable, but despite this, Gregory Blaxland successfully led an expedition to cross them in 1813. He was accompanied by William Lawson, William Wentworth and four servants. This trip paved the way for numerous small expeditions which were undertaken in the following few years.
In 1824, Governor Thomas Brisbane asked Hamilton Hume and William Hovell to travel from Hume's station near modern-day Canberra, to Spencer Gulf (west of modern-day Adelaide). However, they were required to pay their own costs. Hume and Hovell decided that Western Port was a more realistic goal, and they left with a party of six men. After discovering and crossing the Murrumbidgee and Murray rivers, they eventually reached a site near modern-day Geelong, somewhat west of their intended destination.
In 1829-30, Charles Sturt performed an expedition similar to the one which Hume and Hovell had refused: a trip to the mouth of the Murray River. They followed the Murrumbidgee until it met the Murray, and then found the junction of the Murray and the Darling before continuing on to the mouth of the Murray. The discovery that the Darling, Macquarie, Murray and Murrumbidgee rivers all flowed west had led many to believe that the interior of Australia contained an inland sea. Charles Sturt's expedition explained the mystery. It also led to the opening of South Australia to settlement.
Thomas Mitchell, the Surveyor-General of New South Wales, made a significant discovery in 1836. He led an expedition along the Lachlan River, down to the Murray River. He then set off for the southern coast, mapping what is now western Victoria. There he discovered the richest grazing land ever seen in Australia. He was knighted for this discovery in 1837. When he reached the coast at Portland Bay, he was surprised to find a small settlement. It had been established by the Henty family, who had sailed across Bass Strait from Van Diemen's Land in 1834, without the authorities being informed.
Perhaps the most famous Australian explorers were Robert O'Hara Burke and William John Wills who in 1860-61 led a well equipped expedition from Melbourne to the Gulf of Carpentaria. Due to an unfortunate run of bad luck, oversight and poor leadership, Burke and Wills both died on the return trip. See Burke and Wills expedition for a full account.
The Second Fleet in 1790 brought to Sydney two men who were to play important roles in the colony's future. One was William Wentworth, who as well as being an explorer founded Australia's first newspaper and became a leader of the movement to abolish convict transportation and establish representative government. The other was John Macarthur, a Scottish officer (and a distant relative of General Douglas MacArthur), one of the founders of the Australian wool industry, which laid the foundations of Australia's future prosperity. Macarthur was a turbulent element: in 1808 he was one of the leaders of the Rum Rebellion against the governor, William Bligh.
From about 1815 the colony, under the wise governorship of Lachlan Macquarie, began to grow rapidly as free settlers arrived and new lands were opened up for farming. Despite the long and arduous sea voyage, settlers were attracted by the prospect of making a new life on virtually free Crown land. Many settlers occupied land without authority: they were known as squatters and became the basis of a powerful landowning class. As a result of agitation by the free settlers, transportation of convicts to Sydney ended in 1840, although it continued to the smaller colonies of Van Diemen's Land (where settlement began in 1803) and Moreton Bay (founded 1824, and later renamed Queensland for some years longer. The small settlement of Perth, founded in 1829 on the Swan River in Western Australia, failed to prosper and actually asked for convicts.
The discovery of gold, beginning in 1851 first at Bathurst in New South Wales and then in the Port Phillip District (now Victoria), transformed Australia economically, politically and demographically. It led to a enormous expansion in population, including for the first time large numbers of Irish Catholics, Germans and other Europeans, and Chinese. Gold produced sudden wealth for a few, and some of Australia's oldest wealthy families date their fortunes from this period, but also employment and modest prosperity for many more. Within a few years these new settlers outnumbered the convicts and ex-convicts, and they began to demand trial by jury, representative government, a free press and the other symbols of British constitutionalism.
Contrary to popular myth, there was little opposition to these demands from the colonial governors or the Colonial Office in London, although there was some from the squatters. New South Wales had already had a partly elected Legislative Council since 1825. In 1855 New South Wales, Victoria, South Australia and Tasmania (as Van Diemen's Land was renamed) were granted full responsible government, with bicameral parliaments in which the lower houses were fully elected. The upper houses (Legislative Councils) remained dominated by government appointees and representatives of the squatters, worried that the radical democrats might try to seize their vast sheep-runs.
The gold rushes and the rapid expansion in settlement which followed were a catastrophe for the indigenous Australians. Between first European contact and the early years of the 20th century, the Aboriginal population dropped from an estimated 500,000 to about one tenth of that number. Many were killed outright with gun or poison, a great many more were starved to death by European conquest of their lands, but by far the most significant killer was European disease. Smallpox, measles, and influenza were major killers, many others added their toll - for a people without the thousands of years of genetically evolved resistance to diseases that Europeans had, even chickenpox was deadly. Of the 90% of the Aboriginal population that died out as a result of European contact, it is estimated that around 80 or 90% of the deaths were the result of disease, and reasonable to suppose that the worst-hit peoples were the ones that lived in the most fertile areas, where population densities were highest.
The rapid economic expansion which followed the gold rushes produced a period of prosperity which lasted forty years, culminating in the great Land Boom of the 1880s. Melbourne in particular grew rapidly, becoming Australia's largest city and for a while the second-largest city in the British Empire: its grand Victorian buildings are a lasting reminder of the period. Shortages of labour led to high wages for a prosperous skilled working class, whose trade unions demanded and got an eight-hour day and other benefits unheard of in Europe. Australia gained a reputation as "the working man's paradise." Some employers tried to undercut the unions by importing Chinese labour. This produced a reaction which led to all the colonies restricting Chinese and other Asian immigration. This was the foundation of the White Australia Policy, which lasted well into the 20th century.
The Great Boom could not last forever, and in 1891 it gave way to the Great Crash, a decade-long depression which created high unemployment, and ruined many businesses, and the employers responded by driving down wages. The unions responded with a series of strikes, particularly the bitter and prolonged shearers and stevedores' strikes of 1892. The colonial ministries, made up for the most part of liberals whom the unions had long seen as allies, turned sharply against the workers and there were a series of bloody confrontations, particularly in the pastoral areas of Queensland. The unions reacted to these defeats and what they saw as betrayals by liberal politicians by forming their own political party, the Labor Party (initially of course separate labour parties in each colony). These achieved rapid success: in 1899 Queensland saw the world's first socialist parliamentary government, the Dawson Government which held office for six days.
The industrial struggles of the 1890s produced a new strain of Australian radicalism and nationalism, exemplified in the Sydney based magazine, The Bulletin, under its legendary editor J F Archibald. Writers such as A B "Banjo" Paterson, Henry Lawson and (a little later) Vance and Nettie Palmer and Mary Gilmour promoted socialism, republicanism and Australian independence. Some of them also promoted an unpleasant strain of Australian racism, against Chinese, Japanese and Indian immigrants, and also against the indigenous Australians.Pre-history
Discovery
Colonisation
Land Exploration
Growth of free settlement
Booms, depressions and trade unions