Australia in 19th Century
by Originally Terra Australis Incognita, or the unknown southern continent, Australia was first claimed for Britain by Captain James Cook on August 22, 1770. Although the Dutch navigator Tasman had first explored what is now Tasmania in the seventeenth century, and the French were active in eighteenth century Pacific exploration, the British claim to Australia and many adjacent islands was within a short number of decades widely accepted.
Gold was discovered in Victoria in 1851, and the discovery produced a rapid influx of miners and speculators, which led to some disorder, notably the Ballarat riots of 1854, rapidly put down by the authorities. Gold diggings and other mineral exploration contributed to the inflow of settlers, and hence indirectly to the building of railways and to the establishment in 1852 of a regular steamship service to Britain. By the 1870s, Australia attracted large amounts of British capital and a consequent railway boom. Victoria introduced protectionist legislation in the 1860s, and even under the united Commonwealth formed in 1901, protectionist feeling remained strong. Australians were often enthusiastic imperialists. They feared the expansion of other European powers in the Pacific, and attempted to implement an exclusionary Monroe-type doctrine in their region. There was a movement for the annexation of Fiji, and in 1882 the colony of Queensland annexed New Guinea, an act rapidly disallowed by the colonial office on the grounds that questions of international import were to be decided in London. On several occasions during the nineteenth century, Australia offered the mother country military forces to serve in imperial wars, and the several colonies sent a total of 16,000 men to serve in the Boer War of 1899-1902.
The idea of an Australian federation had first been mooted by Earl Grey in the 1840s, but ran into many local objections, particularly with respect to fiscal policy, and even a movement for free trade among the various colonies could make little headway. A national convention to design a federal constitution met beginning in 1891 under the chairmanship of Sir Henry Parkes. Extended disputes as to the form and powers of the new federation ensued. A further convention in 1897-1898 completed the task of writing a constitution that provided for a House of Representatives and a Senate, and reserved to the states all powers not explicitly conferred on the federation. Chief among the latter were control of interstate and foreign commerce. The six Australian colonies and the Northern territory were united under a federal government as the Commonwealth of Australia on January 1, 1901, by an act of the Imperial Parliament.
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