History of Australia

The History of Australia covers the continent from earliest times to 2008. For recent history see Australia

Pre European Contact

Aboriginal art, Adelaide Museum, South Australia

Prior to European settlement, Australia was inhabited by people who are commonly known as Aborigines although they come from over 700 smaller nations each with their own tribal name and language. Over time, many of these nations and tribes lost their identity or were decimated by disease, poor nutrition, massacres by white settlers and the forced removal of children from their parents into white families or mission stations. Nevertheless, many Aboriginal languages and traditions have survived the more than 200 years of white settlement. Under recent legislation recognising native title, Aboriginal communities now have the right to claim back land dispossessed from them where they can prove that lasting cultural links still persist and where the native title has not been extinguished by freehold or leasehold title.

The original inhabitants of the Torres Strait Islands and far northern Queensland are different and are known as Torres Strait Islanders. These people are more closely related to Melanesians than to Aborigines. The term usually used to include all indigenous Australians is "Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders".

Post European Contact

European discovery of the mainland of Australia was by Dutch sailors heading to the spice isles of what is now Indonesia, in the 16th Century. Most of their descriptions of Australia are based on the exploration of the North West coast which is very rugged and inhospitable.

British settlement

In 1770 the English navigator, Lieutenant James Cook, Captain of the Royal Navy bark, HMS Endeavour, discovered the east coast of Australia which is much more capable of maintaining life and settlers. In 1788 the First Fleet arrived at Sydney Cove, New South Wales - comprising officers, Marines, convicts and a very few free settlers. Later fleets brought more convicts who were dispersed also to Tasmania and other remote settlements. Over time, when freed, the former convicts settled areas beyond Sydney Harbour.

As the 18th century came to a close convicts were given land packages and more free settlers came to the land in the hope of setting up farms and businesses. A number of colonies started to be formed - the most populated being New South Wales (whose capital city is Sydney). These colonies later became the states.

Gold

The 1850s saw the discovery of gold and large number of people moved to Australia to find new wealth. Most of these people were British, although there were also many dispossessed by the "land clearings" in Scotland and the Irish famine, and there was a significant number of Chinese immigrants during this rush. Americans were drawn to Australia to participate in various enterprises such as the gold fields

20th century

Society

"Wowser" was a negative smalng term for Christian moralists, especially activists in temperance groups such as the the Woman's Christian Temperance Union. Historian Stuart Macintyre argues, "the achievements of the wowsers were impressive;" they passed laws that restricted obscenity and juvenile smoking, raised the age of consent, limited gambling, closed down many pubs, and in 1915-16 established a 6pm closing hour for pubs, which lasted for decades.

=World War II

see John Curtin

Basic Bibliography

• Basset, Jan. The Oxford Illustrated Dictionary of Australian History (1998)
• Denoon, Donald, et al. A History of Australia, New Zealand, and the Pacific. (2000).
• Hughes, Robert. The Fatal Shore: The Epic of Australia's Founding. (1986) very well written popular account of Australia's founding
• Macintyre, Stuart. A Concise History of Australia. (2000)*Powell JM . An Historical Geography of Modern Australia: The Restive Fringe. (1988)

References

• Bambrick, Susan ed. The Cambridge Encyclopedia of Australia (1994)
• O'Shane, Pat et al. Australia: The Complete Encyclopedia (2001)
• Shaw, John, ed. Collins Australian Encyclopedia (1984)
• Serle. Percival, ed. Dictionary of Australian Biography (1949)online edition
• Vaisutis, Justine et al. Lonely Planet Sydney & New South Wales (2007) excerpt and text search

Economics

• Kelly, Paul. The End of Certainty: Power, Politics and Business in Australia, (1994)
• McLean, Ian W. "Consumer Prices and Expenditure Patterns in Australia 1850-1914." Australian Economic History Review(1999) 39(1): 1-28; includes a consumer price index (CPI) for the period 1850 to 1914. Issn: 0004-8992 Fulltext: Ebsco
• Moran, Anthony. Australia: Nation, Belonging, and Globalization Routledge, 2004 online edition
• Robinson GM, Loughran RJ, and Tranter PJ. Australia and New Zealand: economy, society and environment.(2000)

Environment and Geography

• Appleton, Richard, and Barbara Appleton. The Cambridge Dictionary of Australian Places (1993)
• Dovers, Stephen. Australian Environmental History: Essays & Cases (1995) excerpt and text search
• Garden, Don. Australia, New Zealand, and the Pacific: An Environmental Hisory. ABC-CLIO, 2005. 398 pp.
• Hutton, Drew, and Libby Connors. History of the Australian Environment Movement (1999) excerpt and text search
• Lines, William. Taming the Great South Land: A History of the Conquest of Nature in Australia (1992)
• Robinson GM, Loughran RJ, and Tranter PJ. Australia and New Zealand: economy, society and environment.(2000)

History

• Alomes, Stephen. A Nation at Last? The Changing Character of Australian Nationalism (1988)
• Atkinson, Alan. The Europeans in Australia: A History. Vol. 2: Democracy. (2005). 440 pp.
• Barker, Anthony. What Happened When: A Chronology of Australia from 1788. (2000). online edition
• Basset, Jan. The Oxford Illustrated Dictionary of Australian History (1998)
• Bolton, Geoffrey. The Oxford History of Australia: Volume 5: 1942-1995. The Middle Way (2005)
• Clark, Manning. A History of Australia 6 vol (Melbourne University Press, 1962, 1968, 1973, 1978, 1981, and 1987)
  • A History of Australia: From the Earliest Times to the Age of Macquarie (1962) online edition
• Clarke, Frank G. The History of Australia 2002. online edition
• Crowley; F. K. Australia's Western Third: A History of Western Australia from the First Settlements to Modern Times 1960 online edition
• Davison, Graeme, John Hirst, and Stuart Macintyre, eds. The Oxford Companion to Australian History (2001) onloine at OUP also excerpt and text search
• Day, Alan. Historical Dictionary of the Discovery and Exploration of Australia. Scarecrow, 2003. 321 pp.
• Day, David. Claiming a Continent: A New History of Australia (2001);
• Day, David. Reluctant Nation: Australia and the Allied Defeat of Japan 1942-45 (1992),
• Goodall, Heather. Invasion to Embassy: Land in Aboriginal Politics in New South Wales, 1770–1972 (Allen&Unwin, 1996)
• Davison, Graeme, John Hirst, and Stuart Macintyre, eds. The Oxford Companion to Australian History, (2001) excerpt and text search
• Edwards, John. Curtin's Gift: Reinterpreting Australia's Greatest Prime Minister, (2005) online edition
• Hearn, Mark, Harry Knowles, and Ian Cambridge. One Big Union: A History of the Australian Workers Union 1886-1994 (1998)
• Hughes, Robert. The Fatal Shore: The Epic of Australia’s Founding (1988). excerpt and text search
• Kemp, Rod, and Marion Stanton, eds. Speaking for Australia: Parliamentary Speeches That Shaped Our Nation Allen & Unwin, 2004 online edition
• Kingston, Beverley. The Oxford History of Australia: Volume 3: 1860-1900 Glad, Confident Morning (1993)
• Kociumbas, Jan. The Oxford History of Australia: Volume 2: 1770-1860 Possessions (1995)
• Lowe, David. Menzies and the 'Great World Struggle': Australia's Cold War 1948-54 (1999) online edition
• Macintyre, Stuart. The Oxford History of Australia: Volume 4: 1901-42, the Succeeding Age (1993)
• Macintyre, Stuart. A Concise History of Australia (2004) excerpt and text search
• McLachlan, Noel. Waiting for the Revolution: A History of Australian Nationalism (1989)
• Martin, A. W. Robert Menzies: A Life (2 vol 1993-99), online at ACLS e-books
• Reynolds, Henry. The Other Side of the Frontier: Aboriginal Resistance to the European Invasion of Australia (1990).
• Serle. Percival, ed. Dictionary of Australian Biography (1949)online edition
• Taylor, Peter. The Atlas of Australian History (1991)
• Ward, Smart. Australia and the British Embrace: The Demise of the Imperial Ideal (2001)

Historiography

• Attwood, Bain, and Fiona Magowan. Telling Stories: Indigenous History and Memory in Australia and New Zealand (2001) online edition
• Davison, Graeme. The Use and Abuse of Australian History (2000) online edition
• McLean, David. "Australia in the Cold War: A Historiographical Review", The International History Review, Vol. 23, 2 (June 2001)
• McQueen, Humphrey. Gallipoli to Petrov: Arguing with Australian History (1984),
• Meaney, Neville. "Britishness and Australian Identity: The Problem of Nationalism in Australian History and Historiography", Australian Historical Studies, Vol. 32, 116 (April 2001),
• Nugent, Maria. Botany Bay: Where Histories Meet (2005) online edition

International Relations and Military

• Bridge, Carl ed., Munich to Vietnam: Australia's Relations with Britain and the United States since the 1930s, Melbourne University Press 1991
• Dennis, Peter, Jeffrey Grey, Ewan Morris, and Robin Prior. The Oxford Companion to Australian Military History. 1996)
• Firth, Stewart. Australia in International Politics: An Introduction to Australian Foreign Policy (2005) online edition
• Grant, Ian. A Dictionary of Australian Military History - from Colonial Times to the Gulf War (1992)
• Lee, David. Search for Security: The Political Economy of Australia's Postwar Foreign and Defence Policy (1995)
• McLean, David. "From British Colony to American Satellite? Australia and the USA during the Cold War," Australian Journal of Politics & History" (2006) 52 (1), 64–79. Rejects satellite model. online at Blackwell-Synergy
• McLean, David. "Australia in the Cold War: a Historiographical Review." International History Review (2001) 23(2): 299-321. Issn: 0707-5332
• Murphy, John. Harvest of Fear: A History of Australia's Vietnam War (1993)
• Watt, Alan. The Evolution of Australian Foreign Policy 1938–1965, Cambridge University Press, 1967

Culture and society

• Bebbington, Warren. A Dictionary of Australian Music (1999)
• Bennett, Bruce et al. The Oxford Literary History of Australia (1999)
• Bennett, Tony, and David Carter. Culture in Australia: Policies, Publics and Programs (2001) excerpt and text search
• Breward, Ian. A History of the Churches in Australasia. (2002). 474 pp.
• Carey, Hilary. Believing in Australia: A Cultural History of Religions (1996)
• Horton, David. The Encyclopedia of Aboriginal Australia: Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander History, Society and Culture (2001)
• Huggan Graham. Postcolonialism, Racism, Transnationalism (Oxford Studies in Postcolonial Literatures) (2007) excerpt and text search
• Jupp, James, ed. The Australian People: An Encyclopedia of the Nation, its People and their Origins (2nd ed. 2002) 960pp excerpt and text search
• Jupp, James. The English in Australia (2004) excerpt and text search
• Kleinert, Sylvia. and Margo Neale. The Oxford Companion to Aboriginal Art and Culture (2001)
• Leitner, Gerhard. Australia's Many Voices: Australian English--the National Language (2004) excerpt and text search
• Love, J.W. ed. Australia and the Pacific Islands (Garland Encyclopedia of World Music, Volume 9) (1998) excerpt and text search
• McAllister, Ian, Steve Dowrick, Riaz Hassan; The Cambridge Handbook of the Social Sciences in Australia Cambridge University Press, 2003 online edition
• McCulloch, Alan. Encyclopedia of Australian Art 2 vol (1984)
• McDonald, John. Federation: Australian Art and Society, 1901-2001. Natl. Gallery of Australia, 2002. 264 pp.
• Moran, Albert. Historical Dictionary of Australian Radio and Television (2007)
• Nile, Richard. The Making of the Australian Literary Imagination. (2002). 315 pp.
• Rickard, John, Australia: A Cultural History (1988)
• Webby, Elizabeth. The Cambridge Companion to Australian Literature (2000) excerpt and text search
• Wilde, William H. et al eds. The Oxford Companion to Australian Literature (1995) online at OUP excerpt and text search
• The Oxford Literary History of Australia.
• Samuels, Selina, ed. Australian Writers, 1915-50. (2002). 510 pp.
• Sayers, Andrew. Australian Art (2001) excerpt and text search
• Webby, Elizabeth, ed. The Cambridge Companion to Australian Literature (2006)
• Wannan, Bill. A Dictionary of Australian Folklore: Lore, Legends, Myths and Traditions (1988)

Primary sources

• Australia: Literature and History 136 e-books