Everand Logo

Welcome to Everand!

  • Discover millions of ebooks, audiobooks, and so much more with a free trial

    Only $11.99/month after trial. Cancel anytime.

    Australia's British Heritage
    Australia's British Heritage
    Australia's British Heritage
    Ebook109 pages1 hour

    Australia's British Heritage

    By Stephanie Forrest

    ()

    Read preview

    About this ebook

    “When does Australia’s history begin?”

    “Particularly since Manning Clark popularised Australian history as a specialisation of study in its own right in the 1960s, many accounts of Australia’s origins have started in the early modern era, perhaps with the arrival of the first European explorers or when the First Fleet landed at Botany Bay in January 1788.”

    “The basic purpose of this book is to make an argument that once would have seemed self-evident: that Britain’s history and Australia’s history are irrevocably tied together. The history of our institutions, our language, and our culture are inseparable from Britain’s—and more specifically, England’s—past. Even at a time when, for a variety of reasons perhaps as much related to funding incentives as to cultural change, it has become unfashionable among both academic and popular historians to draw attention to this fact, this link remains undeniable and important.”

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherInstitute of Public Affairs
    Release dateApr 28, 2019
    ISBN9780909536190
    Australia's British Heritage

    Related to Australia's British Heritage

    Related ebooks

    Civilization For You

    View More
    View More

    Related podcast episodes

    Related articles

    • Article

      “His Flesh Had Rotted, And His Bed Was Full Of Worms”

      May 13, 2021

      Just what does it take to make a hermit? According to the Cambridge Dictionary, it’s “a person who lives alone and apart from the rest of society, especially for religious reasons”. But in reality, these characters can be far more complex. For more t

      6 min read

    • Article

      Shifting The Goalposts On Israel

      Nov 25, 2021

      A PARTHEID IS A horrible word. The preferred pronunciation — “aparthate” — sums it up rather well. Afrikaans for “separateness”, it was the system that classified South Africans by race and enabled the minority white population to repress the majorit

      3 min read

    • Article

      Great Māori Leaders

      Oct 8, 2020

      Descended from both Māori and Pākehā ancestry, Peter Buck was a well-respected doctor who saw a chance to do good for his people. Appointed the medical officer to the Māori in 1905, he soon moved into politics and spoke openly defending Māori rights.

      3 min read

    • Article

      The Road To Partition

      Oct 28, 2021

      The Road To Partition
      9 min read

    • Article

      A Royal Fogey Reassessed

      Nov 26, 2020

      OVER THE PAST SIX YEARS, Penguin have been publishing their excellent Monarchs series in which a leading historian writes a 30,000-word book on a king or queen from Athelstan to Elizabeth II. There are now 45 of them (including David Horspool on Oliv

      4 min read

    • Article

      Before The Revolution

      Jan 20, 2022

      Before The Revolution
      4 min read

    • Article

      We See Dreaded Stagflation Come Back To Haunt Us

      May 26, 2022

      Australia has enjoyed several decades of low inflation, but this has not always been the norm. The resurgence of inflation over the past few months has raised the possibility of wider economic problems if it is not brought under control. While higher

      3 min read

    • Article

      Stylish Solutions

      Jan 15, 2023

      Stylish Solutions
      5 min read

    • Article

      Soap On The Ropes

      Sep 25, 2023

      Soap On The Ropes
      10 min read

    • Article

      Michael Wood On…

      Dec 23, 2020

      I’ve put this one off, I’ll be honest. After all, it’s been building up for quite a while. But on 1 January 2021 we finally leave the European Union. How will historians see this moment? Too early to tell, you will rightly say, but historians taking

      3 min read

    • Article

      The Federation Of Australia

      Jan 31, 2024

      The Federation Of Australia
      6 min read

    • Article

      The Australian Settlement

      Jan 31, 2024

      The Australian Settlement
      1 min read

    • Article

      “England Was Seen As A Pariah State, Ruled By Regicidal Rebels Who’d Publicly Executed Their King”

      Sep 30, 2021

      ON THE HistoryExtra PODCAST Devil-Land: England Under Siege 1588-1688 by Clare Jackson (Allen Lane, 688 pages, £35) Ellie CawtHorne: Devil-Land looks at England from 1588 to 1688. Why do you think this is such a fascinating 100-year period of English

      9 min read

    • Article

      Deconstructing Decolonisation

      Jan 26, 2023

      LAST OCTOBER, THE ACTING vice-chancellor of Cambridge University, Dr Anthony Freeling, made a confession, widely reported in the press. He confessed that he is baffled by “decolonisation”. The word, he said, “has been misused to such an extent that I

      12 min read

    • Article

      The Frail Small Ship

      Dec 28, 2016

      The Frail Small Ship
      5 min read

    • Article

      British Tribes

      Apr 22, 2021

      British Tribes
      1 min read

    Related categories

    Reviews for Australia's British Heritage

    0 ratings

    0 ratings0 reviews

    What did you think?

    Tap to rate

    Review must be at least 10 words

      Book preview

      Australia's British Heritage - Stephanie Forrest

      Introduction

      When does Australia’s history begin?

      Particularly since Manning Clark popularised Australian history as a specialisation of study in its own right in the 1960s, many accounts of Australia’s origins have started in the early modern era, perhaps with the arrival of the first European explorers or when the First Fleet landed at Botany Bay in January 1788.

      A typical narrative of this kind might commence with a description of the difficulties faced by the first settlers in New South Wales, and then leap through the establishment of colonies in Van Diemen’s Land and in what is now Victoria, the arbitrary rule of the British governors, the gold rushes, Eureka Stockade, democracy, Federation, Gallipoli, and so forth. Such accounts tend to focus on the last two centuries or so in isolation, almost as if no earlier history is relevant to Australia’s past—not on this continent, and certainly not elsewhere.

      Geoffrey Blainey’s ground-breaking book, The Triumph of the Nomads, introduced a very different perspective on the past. Published in 1975, this book offered, for the first time, a narrative history of Australia’s past prior to European settlement. Academic historians now make sure to emphasise that the colonists who arrived at the end of the 18th century did not settle an empty continent, and that the many indigenous communities had been there long before the first European ships arrived. Many popular accounts of Australian history have since taken this new extended history into account, and tell a story of the Australian continent that extends up to 60,000 years before the arrival of the First Fleet.

      This new approach tells the history of the Australian continent, which is itself important. But it does not adequately tell us about the history of Australia as a nation—as a collection of political and legal institutions, or culture, or as a people. The First Fleet did not materialise on Australia’s shores with Australian culture, language, and ideas already intact. More than eight months earlier, the 11 ships had departed from Portsmouth in England. They brought to Australia with them the English language, British morals and philosophies, and British culture—all of which already had their own extensive history, and which would profoundly influence the development of Australia in the coming years. None of this began with Botany Bay. Nor did it begin on Australian soil.

      The basic purpose of this book is to make an argument that once would have seemed self-evident: that Britain’s history and Australia’s history are irrevocably tied together. The history of our institutions, our language, and our culture are inseparable from Britain’s—and more specifically, England’s—past. Even at a time when, for a variety of reasons perhaps as much related to funding incentives as to cultural change, it has become unfashionable among both academic and popular historians to draw attention to this fact, this link remains undeniable and important. The story of Australia’s past is incomplete without some reference to the political and cultural institutions that developed in Europe and the British Isles long before the first European settlers arrived in Botany Bay.

      For much of the recent past, Australia’s close political and cultural ties to Britain were evident in many spheres of life. For the first few decades following Australia’s initial settlement by Europeans, the oldest colonies were ruled by British governors sent by the British Parliament, and were governed according to English laws. When the colonists agitated for self-government in the middle of the 19th century, they did so by evoking their rights as British citizens. And when the British Parliament finally granted the south-eastern colonies self-government in the 1850s, the new Parliaments were modelled on the centuries-old Parliament at Westminster.

      Though the sheer distance from Britain meant that news took many days to reach Australian shores, the earliest Australian newspapers often provided extensive commentaries on political developments in England. Only three generations ago, students attending Australian schools learned about the geography of Britain alongside the geography of Australia itself, and until the postwar period, the British Isles were also the main source of migrants to this continent. Until Australian citizenship was created in 1949, all Australians—in addition to being Australian—were British subjects.

      Only a few decades ago, it would not have been necessary to make the case for Australia’s links to Britain to this length. But culturally, economically, internationally, and politically, Australia has since undergone a rapid phase of change. The British Empire is no more, the United Kingdom’s ties with Australia have weakened since the Suez Crisis and—perhaps even more significantly—its entry to the European Union. Australia has emerged as an independent nation with a distinct culture of its own. With people from many non-Western nations now calling Australia home, and with the coming of the so-called ‘Asian century’, there has been a tendency for many Australians to disassociate their country from its colonial past, and instead emphasise its indigenous heritage and its connections with other nations in the Asian region. It is telling that ‘Asia and Australia’s relations with Asia’ and ‘Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander histories and cultures’ were two of the three ‘cross-curriculum priorities’ emphasised across all areas of Australia’s first National Curriculum, released to the public in 2011. The British elements of Australia’s heritage do not attract anything near the same level of attention.

      It is undeniable that the dynamics of the world have shifted. Yet even in the fact of great change, Australia’s British heritage remains important.

      How did Australia come to be so prosperous and successful? Why is it now one of the world’s oldest continuous democracies? We need to consider how a few small British colonies on a vast, hostile continent flourished over the course of the 19th century to become some of the most successful economies in the world, overtaking even Britain itself in some respects over the course of the 20th century.

      The answer lies in Australia’s institutions.

      The economic historian Douglass C. North argued that institutions—here defined as the ‘humanly devised constraints that structure political, economic and social interaction’—shape human history more than any other single factor.¹ Institutions, as North defined them, can include laws, customs, rules, rights, and codes of conduct, and determine the way we interact with other individuals and with the government.² Well-developed institutions reduce uncertainty, improve information, and lower the cost of trade. They determine whether it is feasible for merchants and business people to take calculated risks and enter into complex economic agreements.

      In a state that respects the rights of individuals to own property, has courts and laws set up to enforce contracts, readily supplies information on prices, measures, customs, and exchange rates, and provides insurance for goods that are damaged or stolen in transit, the climate is ideal for traders to take calculated risks, and thus expand trade and grow the economy.³ But the opposite is true of a state in which no institutions are established to enforce contracts, prices are arbitrarily imposed, and no concept of property rights exists, so that the government is free to take land for its own purposes as it sees fit.⁴ Due to the high degree of uncertainty and the high transaction costs in such a state, most trade will remain localised, the costs of basic necessities will remain high, and living standards are unlikely to improve significantly for the majority of people.

      Overall, it is our institutions—both formal and informal—that place constraints on the way we interact with each other, that create or destroy certainty, and that establish or break ideal conditions for economic growth. The institutions that allowed Australia to flourish—in the 19th century and today—did not develop here, but were heavily modelled on those that developed in England or elsewhere in the British Empire. The most important lessons that we can gain from history are to be gleaned from the evolution and development of institutions, both in our own state and elsewhere, and the impact

      Enjoying the preview?
      Page 1 of 1