What factor has most shaped Australian history?

History Today is a leading history magazine, published monthly in London. The June edition has four Australian historians attempting to answer the above question. Here are some extracts. The complete (brief but compelling) article deserves a close read.

‘Indigenous dispossession haunts Australian history’

Kate Fullagar is Professor of History at Australian Catholic University

Failure to come to terms with Indigenous dispossession haunts Australian history at every turn ...

The ghost of dispossession motivated the revamped colonies [from the 1850s] to impose more regulatory and then coercive forms of protection, culminating in the power to neck-chain Indigenous prisoners and to remove Indigenous children from their families ... The absence of treaty in a society ruled by law was a glaring paradox felt deeply within Australian society, with violent repercussions.

Federation in 1901 addressed the problem by excluding any mention of it in the Constitution. In 2023 the Indigenous Voice referendum sought a modest redress: to acknowledge original theft in the Constitution and to include a mechanism by which Indigenous people could advise on problems resulting from their historic marginalisation. The ‘No’ result suggests that the haunting persists.

‘The spirit of the British commissariat continues to animate Australian life’

Frank Bongiorno is Donald Horne Professor of History and Public Ideas at the University of Canberra

When the British arrived in 1788 to establish a penal colony, they encountered Indigenous peoples with their own tried and tested ways of governing. But the colonisers did not consider they had anything to learn in the art of self-government. They could barely recognise Indigenous political structures as government at all ...

In due course, the Australian state would take on responsibility for giving workers a living wage, manufacturers protection from foreign competitors, and farmers subsidies to keep them afloat.

‘Australia is home to the oldest continuing cultures on the planet’

Angela Woollacott is Distinguished Professor Emerita of History at the Australian National University

Australia’s geographical location has shaped its history more than any other factor. While our First Nations arrived essentially overland more than 60,000 years ago, the later rise of sea levels allowed their systems of environmental management, culture, and laws to evolve relatively undisturbed. That we are home to the oldest continuing cultures on the planet is a fundamental fact of our current polity and its debates. We are faced with the moral responsibility to preserve and restore those cultures. Yet that task is formidably complicated by the destruction that has been wrought by 250 years of capitalist settler colonialism ...

Racism and religious prejudice led to the White Australia immigration restrictions from the late 19th century. Pacific Islanders, having been recruited often through ruse to work Queensland’s sugar plantations, were mostly deported. Up to the 1960s Australia joined Jim Crow America and South Africa as a society based on racial restriction and segregation.

‘It is difficult to overstate the importance of race’

Agnieszka Sobocinska is Professor of Global History and Director of Australia Studies Institute at King’s College London

The idea that Asia would have a decisive influence on Australia’s future is a central theme in the nation’s history. For nearly two centuries, Australians have been warning each other that a ‘new’ Asia looms over the horizon, and that they must prepare to meet the threat – or promise – that an Asian future will bring.

This is related to a uniquely Australian perception of geography. Since the early 20th century, Australians have referred to Asia as their ‘neighbourhood’ or even ‘backyard’. Proximity to Asia placed Australia at the front lines of decolonisation and the Cold War. It made the need for a strong protector – whether ‘Mother Britain’ or a ‘great and powerful friend’ like the United States – appear imperative ...

It is, I think, difficult to overstate the importance of race in Australian history. Federation-era Australia was deeply imprinted with ‘race patriotism’. For many, discussion about the proximity of Asia touched a raw nerve, threatening miscegenation if not a coming race war. But today, more than 50 years after the White Australia policy was dismantled, nearly one in five Australians claims Asian ancestry. Few Australians regard the region with the trepidation their grandparents did.

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‍Picture credit: First day of the Aboriginal Tent Embassy, outside Parliament House, Canberra, 27 January 1972 (Wikimedia Commons). The men, left to right, are Billy Craigie, Bert Williams, Michael Anderson and Tony Coorey. Ghillar Michael Anderson today is one of Defending Country's distinguished Supporters.