australia plus india

7/27/2019 Australia Plus India

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History of Australia

Historyof Australia

The Aborigines first arrived in Australia from somewhere in Asia at least 40,000 years

ago, and probably up to 60,000 years ago. They had occupied most of the continent by

30,000 years ago, including the south-western and south-eastern corners. Tasmania at this

point was still part of the mainland; it was only separated by rising sea levels some

16,500 to 22,000 years later. Their successful adaptation to a wide range of environmentshad enabled the population to grow to between 300,000 and 1 million by the time of the

first European settlement. Macassan traders from what is now Indonesia are thought to

have been visiting Arnhem Land well before the 17th century to harvest sea cucumbers

for export to China. There were also contacts with New Guinea, and Chinese, Malaysian,

and Arab sea captains may also have landed in northern Australia after the 15th century.

Australia remained unexplored by the West, however, until the 17th century.

Early European Exploration

Although Australia was not known to the Western world, it did exist in late medieval

European logic and mythology: a "Great Southern Land", or Terra Australis, was thought

necessary to balance the weight of the northern landmasses of Europe and Asia. Terra

Australis often appeared on early European maps as a large, globe-shaped mass in about

its correct location, although no actual discoveries were recorded by Europeans until

much later. Indeed, the European exploration of Australia took more than three centuries

to complete; thus, what is often considered the oldest continent, geologically, was the last

to be discovered and colonized by Europeans.


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Portuguese and Spanish Sailings

In the 15th century Portugals systematic drive southwards along the west coast of Africa,

seeking a trade route to India, rekindled European interest in finding Terra Australis.

Portugal itself, however, soon successful in Indian and also East African trading, lost

interest in moving any farther to the east and south. Australia remained undiscovered by

Europeans for other reasons as well. One was that it was located off the Oceanic-island

trading corridor of the Indian and South Pacific oceans. In addition, the winds in the

southern hemisphere tend to veer northwards in the direction of the equator west of

Australia, whereas east of the continent the strong head winds discourage sailing into

them.


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In the 16th and early 17th centuries, Spain, having established its empire in South and

Central America, began a series of expeditions from Peru into the South Pacific.

Encouraged by the discovery of the Solomon Islands (north-east of Australia) by lvaro

de Mendaa de Neyra in 1567, Spanish New World officials launched expeditions in

1595 and 1605 in hopes of finding gold for the Spanish Empire and Terra Australis for

the Roman Catholic Church. After the failure of these voyages to find either precious

minerals or significant new landmasses, Spain abandoned its interest and no new

expeditions were mounted.

Dutch Interest

Portugals involvement in India, and Spains discouragement, allowed the rising power of

the Netherlands to establish a string of trading centres from the Cape of Good Hope to the

Dutch East Indies (Indonesia) in the 17th century. The Dutch, stationed chiefly in the


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Indonesian ports of Bantam and Batavia (Jakarta), quickly made Europes discovery of

Australia a reality. Helped by better sailing ships, they were able to overcome the

challenges in the southern Pacific. At the beginning of 1606 Willem Jansz sailed into

Torres Strait, between the Australian mainland and New Guinea, and sighted, and named,

part of the Australian coastCape Keer-Weer, on the western side of Cape York

Peninsula. The strait was later named after the last of the Spanish explorers, Luis Vaez de

Torres, who sailed into the same area a few weeks later and determined that New Guinea

was an island but who almost certainly did not sight Australia.

Bottle Nosed Dolphins at Shark bay.

Encouraged by Janszs voyages, Dutch governors-general at Batavia commissioned

expeditions into the southern oceans. In October 1616, the Eendracht, commanded byDirk Hartog, became the first ship to land Europeans on Australian soil, at Shark Bay,

Western Australia, where they left a memorial. Between 1626 and 1627, Peter Nuyts

explored some 1,600 km (1,000 mi) of the southern Australian coast. Other Dutchmen

added information about the north and west coasts, but the most important work was

done by Abel Janszoon Tasman. In 1642, after having made a great circuit of the seas, he

sailed into the waters of southern Australia, sighting the west coast of the island now

known as Tasmania, but which he named Van Diemans Land, after the governor of the

Dutch East Indies who had commissioned the expedition. Tasman then sailed farther east

and north to explore New Zealand. He led a second expedition in 1644 to the north coast.

Despite their increasing knowledge of the continent, which they called New Holland, the

Dutch did not follow up their oceanic discoveries with formal occupation; in their

contacts, they found little of value for European trade. Thus, the way was open for the

later arrival of the English.

British Expeditions and Claims

At first Englands involvement in Australia appeared likely to go the way of the Spanish

and Dutch. In 1688, the English buccaneer, William Dampier, landed in the north-west.

When he returned to England, he published a book, Voyages, and persuaded the naval

authorities to back a return trip, to search for the continents supposed wealth. His second


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expeditionalong 1,610 km (1,000 mi) of the western coast in 1699-1700 resulted in

the most detailed report on the continent yet, but couched in such dismal terms,

criticizing both the land and its people, that English (after 1703 British) interest in further

exploration of Australia was suspended for almost 70 years.

The 18th century in Western Europe ushered in the Age of Reason, when philosophers

and scientists stressed the value of global discovery, of learning more about the earth and

in collecting unusual flora and fauna from around the globe. There was also a resurgence,

after the middle of the century, in the commercial potential of the southern seas and Terra

Australis. These trends fitted well with Britains growing commercial and maritime

power.

In 1768, supported by the British Admiralty, Captain James Cook left England on

the first of his three voyages of exploration. The three-year expedition to the Pacific alsotook him to Australia. In 1770Cook landed at Botany Bay on the eastern coast and at

Possession Island in the north where, on August 23, he claimed the region for Great

Britain and named it New South Wales.It was he and his staff, including the botanist

Sir Joseph Banks, who later supported settlement in Australia. Cooks two additional

voyages in the 1770s added information on the Australian landmass and cemented

British claims to the continent.

Frances interest in Australia was less sustained than that of Great Britain. Marion

Dufresne, on his 1772 voyage, concentrated upon charting and describing the less

hospitable western coast of Tasmania, and later French explorers investigated Australias

southern coast. By then, however, the British had planted their first settlement and had

claimed the eastern half of the continent.

Even with sustained British efforts, Australias coasts were not fully explored until the

19th century. Matthew Flinders, a naval officer, was the first to circumnavigate the

continent from 1801 to 1803. He charted most of the coastline, proving conclusively

that Australia was a single landmass. Earlier, in 1798, Flinders had made the first

circumnavigation of Tasmania, with naval surgeon George Bass, proving it was an

island. It was also Flinders who urged that Australia, and not New Holland, should

be the continents name; this change received official backing after 1817.Although


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the coast was now largely charted, it was not until the 1870s that Australias major

interior features were known to the Europeans.

Penal Settlements

Australia was usually portrayed as a remote and unattractive land for European settlement,

but for Great Britain it had strategic and, after the loss of the American colonies (1783),

socio-economic value. Control of the continent would provide a base for British naval

and merchant power in the eastern seas, supporting Great Britains growing commercial

interests in the Pacific and east Asia. It also offered a solution to the problem of

overcrowded domestic prisons. Food shortages, a harsh penal code, and the social

upheaval caused by rapid industrialization and urbanization had led to a sharp rise in

crime and the prison population. Great Britains defeat in the American War of

Independence meant that it could no longer relieve the pressure on prisons by shippingconvicts to America.

In 1786 the British government announced its intention to establish a penal settlement at

Botany Bay, on the south-east coast of New South Wales. Mindful of British economic

interests and keen as always to save public expenditure, the government planned that

Botany Bay would become a self-financing colony through the development of its

economy by convict labour. Captain Arthur Phillip of the Royal Navy was made

commander of the expedition. He was to take possession of the whole of Australia,

including Tasmania and islands off the east coast, east of the 135th meridian, and given

near absolute powers over the territory as governor.

Sydney Founded

On May 13, 1787, Phillip set sail from Portsmouth, England, with the First Fleet. The 11

ships carried 759 convicts (568 men and 191 women); 13 children belonging to the

convicts; 211 marines and officers to guard the convicts; 46 wives and children of naval

personnel; and Phillips administrative staff of 9. Phillip arrived at Botany Bay on

January 18, 1788.Finding the bay a poor choice, he moved north to Port Jackson, which

had been marked but not explored by Cook and which Phillip discovered to be one of the

worlds best natural harbours. Here, on January 26 (now commemorated as Australia

Day), he began the first permanent European settlement in Australia. The settlement,


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deep within Port Jackson, was named Sydney after Britains home secretary, Lord

Sydney, who was responsible for the colonization plans. Phillips domain covered half of

Australia but the human resources at his disposal were limited. In particular, he lacked

the horticulturalists, skilled carpenters, and engineers needed to develop a self-supporting

colony. Adding to Phillips problems, the soils around thenew settlement were mediocre,

pests and diseases were abundant, and the Aborigines were often hostile. Only the arrival

of a second fleet, in 1790, saved the fledgling colony from swift collapse. Phillips major

concern, until his departure in 1792, was maintaining control, virtually single-handedly,

over the small penal settlement. His solution, strongly influenced by his naval

background, was to impose an authoritarian structure that persisted through the early

years of colonization.

Three major problems confronted Phillip and other early governors: providing a

sufficient supply of food, developing an internal economic system, and producing exports

to pay for the colonys imports from Great Britain. The sandysoils around Sydney were

unsuitable for farming, and the colony faced perpetual food shortages throughout the

1790s. Phillip established farms on the more fertile banks of the River Hawkesbury, a

few miles north-west of Sydney. The land here was often flooded and also used by the

Aborigines. This exacerbated hostility between the two sides; the lack of cooperation

with the Aborigines also meant that the colonists were unable to discover any indigenous

food sources beyond fish and kangaroo. Food supplies, as a result, came mainly from

Norfolk Island, nearly 1,600 km (1,000 mi) away, which Phillip had occupied in

February 1788. The island served as a jail for convicts who broke the colonys laws after


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1825; after 1856 it became a home for descendants of the Bounty mutineers, who by then

had become too numerous for Pitcairn Island.

The New South Wales Corps

In 1792 the Royal Marines were replaced with the New South Wales Corps, which had

been specifically recruited in Great Britain. Given grants of land, members of the corps

became the colonys best and largest farmers, but they also posed a threat to the authority

of the governor by their dominance of the economy. With a sharp eye for enhancing their

income, the corps members specialized in controlling the price of rum (here used in the

genuine sense of any type of liquor), which served as the colonys main internal means of

exchange.

Captain John Hunter, Phillips successor as Governor, who arrived in 1795, tried in vain

to gain control of the rum trade. The next Governor, Captain Philip G. King, who servedfrom 1800 to 1806, was no more successful. Both governors also had to house additional

arrivals, and in 1804 King had to use the corps to put down a rebellion by Irish convicts.

In 1806 Captain William Bligh, the former commander of the ill-fated Bounty, replaced

King. Bligh threatened the corps with the loss of their monopoly. The result was the so-

called Rum Rebellion, of January 26, 1808, when officers of the corps deposed Bligh.

Recalled to London, Bligh successfully defended his policies, but was not restored to the

governorship. The Rum Rebellion, however, also proved a short lived victory for the

corps, which was recalled by the Imperial government. Meanwhile, one of its ringleaders,

John Macarthur, had found the solution to the colonys lack of valuable exports: in 1802

he had shown British manufacturers samples of Australian wool. It was only after 1810,

however, with the breeding of the merino sheep, with its staple wool, that sheep-grazing

gradually developed into a major economic activity.

Macquaries Government

Blighs replacement, Lachlan Macquarie, served as Governor from 1809 until 1821.

The most talented governor since Phillip, he also became the most powerful. The

recall of the New South Wales Corps, combined with improvements in the economy,

gave the government greater stability. Macquarie began an extensive public works

programme, employing the ex-convict and architect Francis Howard Greenway to design

churches, hospitals, and government buildings in Sydney. The population of the colony


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also increased after Britains defeat of Napoleon in 1814. The arrival of more free settlers

brought more claims to farmland on which the increasing number of convicts could serve

as labourers.

This was, however, also a time of growing tensions within New South Wales. As

convicts completed their sentences or were eligible for release due to good behaviour,

they wanted land and opportunities. They were known as the emancipists, and their

leaders urged that they be given more rights. The free settlers, like former corps members,

now farmers, maintained that convicts, even after their release, should not be treated as

equals. They were known as the exclusives. Macquarie, as had Bligh, tended to support

the emancipists, granting them land and appointing them to minor offices. The exclusives,

therefore, became critical of both Macquarie and the emancipists.

Constitutional Reform

Macquaries government was expensive, and most of the burden had to be carried by the

British Treasury. Overseas punishment, however, did not appear to have reduced the

number of convicts, and many wondered if New South Wales was the proper solution to

Britains crime problems. There was also concern within the British government about

Macquaries pro-emancipist policies. In 1819, the British Colonial Office sent Judge John

Thomas Bigge to inspect and report on Macquaries administration. He recommended

cuts in government spending but assumed that New South Wales should continue as a

convict settlement. He also, however, recognized the colonys growing importance to the

British Empire as a home for free settlers, and he popularized the name Australia for the

southern continent. Bigges enquiry led to official support for the migration of wealthier

settlers, who were given large land grants. It also resulted in a major change in the

constitution of New South Wales. By an 1823 act of Parliament the governors autocratic

powers were reduced with the appointment of a nominated legislative council.

In 1825, by an executive order of the British government, the island settlement of

Van Diemens Land (present-day Tasmania) became a separate colony. A penal

colony had been established there in 1803 out of fear that France was ready to claim the

island and sizable settlement by free migrants quickly followed. Although settlements

south and north of Sydney had been attempted in the same period, including the penal

outstation at Newcastle (established 1804), only Van Diemens Land had become a large


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permanent settlement by the 1820s. During the 1820s, however, the pace of settlement

speeded up. In 1825, the western boundary of British claims was shifted west to the 129th

meridian, again to counter fears of French intervention, and a settlement was established

in the Bathurst region of the far north. In 1827 Edmund Lockyer began permanent

settlement at Albany, Western Australia, and Great Britain laid claim to the whole

continent.

Early Australian Society

The convictsand reaction to thembecame the major theme of early Australian

history. By the time the British government abolished the transportation of convicts to

eastern Australia in the 1850s, more than 150,000 had been sent to New South Wales and

Tasmania (see Transportation). Approximately 20 per cent were women, and about 30

per cent were Irish. Drawn predominantly from the urban poor, many had beenrepeatedly convicted of petty crimes; many of the women had been prostitutes. Most of

the convicts were poorly educated; only about half of them could read or write. A

minority of the prisoners was from the wealthier classes and were serving sentences for

crimes such as forgery; these convicts were often able to use their training in business

and in government offices. In general, however, because they were unskilled and

unaccustomed to the rigours of colonial or prison life, the convicts were a particularly

difficult group with which to build a new society.

Until the 1830s, colonial officials endorsed harsh punishments for convicts who

committed crimes in the colony. Flogging was a common penaltyup to 200 lashes for

crimes of theft. Although most convicts were fed and clothed by the government, many

were "assigned" to private employers. Those with cunning and skills might accumulate

wealth, and a few became the founders of prominent colonial families.

Although seals were hunted before 1820 along the coast, and especially in the rich waters

of Bass Strait, it was wool which connected Australian society with the metropolitan

economy. Gregory Blaxland and William Charles Wentworth opened up the route

through the Blue Mountains, about 80 to 120 km (50 to 75 mi) west of Sydney, in 1813,

initiating the westward settlement of New South Wales. Together with the southerly treks

of Andrew Hamilton Hume and William Hovell in 1824, and Major Thomas Mitchell in

1836, Blaxland and Wentworths explorations spurred the transfer of flocks and herds to


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inland pastures. By 1829 an arc of about 241 to 322 km (150-200 mi) around Sydney had

been settled, and designated the Nineteen Counties. However, the colonial government

had become concerned about the rapid dispersal of the graziers, who were known as

squatters because they obtained licences to "squat" on the land they wanted rather than

buying it. Fearing loss of control, the government tried to discourage settlement beyond

the Nineteen Counties. These efforts failed, in part because of the rising demand for wool

from British textile mills.

Like England, the Australian colonies were officially Anglican in religion. The

authorities, however, neglected religious instruction, and the Anglican faith was not the

religion of the bulk of the population. Roman Catholicism, the faith of the Irish convicts,

and Methodism vied with the official religion, but overall the settlers of New South

Wales tended to be indifferent to religion.Education was also neglected by the colonial government; only a few schools were

established, primarily for orphans. Wealthier colonists employed private tutors for their

children. The colony, however, did develop a lively press, beginning in 1803 with the

publication of the Sydney Gazette and the New South Wales Advertiser. The Gazettes

editor, George Howe, also published the first books in Sydney, including a volume of

poetry (1819) by Judge Barron Field. Earlier, David Collins, who had been with Phillip,

had published in London the first history of Australia, An Account of the English Colony

in New South Wales (2 vols., 1798-1802). Wentworth, who was born in the colony,

meanwhile had followed up on his Blue Mountain crossing and published Description of

New South Wales in 1817 and a book of verses, Australasia, in 1823. The following year

he founded The Australian, a newspaper that campaigned for the emancipists.

Expanding Colonization

Between the late 1820s and the 1880s, Australia underwent rapid changes that laid the

foundation for its present society. These included the formation, between 1829 and 1859,

of four of the six colonies that eventually became the states of Australia, the expansion of

sheep- and cattle-raising into the interior, and the discovery of gold and other minerals.


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Land Exploration

The first European explorers of the interior played an important role in Australias early

economic history, and an even more important one in the formation of the national

psyche. It was their exploits, rather than those of the sailors who had mapped the

continents coasts and first made it known to the wider world, which caught the

Australian imagination. In the process, they laid down a rich deposit of myth and legend

which has stimulated successive generations of Australian poets, painters, and writers.

The pioneering work of Blaxland and Wentworth across the Blue Mountains was

followed up by George William Evans, who retraced their route to Bathurst (founded

1815). In the 1820s, John Oxley further mapped the inland plains and rivers, especially

the Lachlan and Macquarie. Oxley also explored the southern coasts of the future

Queensland; in 1827 Alan Cunningham pioneered European exploration of the interior ofthat state. Possibly the most famous of this group of explorers was Captain Charles

Sturt who, in 1828-1830, traced the chief arteries of the Murray-Darling Basin, now

the agricultural heartland of Australia. Sir Thomas Livingstone Mitchell confirmed

Sturts work, and opened the route from New South Wales to the rich land of western

Victoria (1836).

The coastal hinterland of Western Australia was mapped by Sir George Grey (1837-

1840) and by Edward John Eyre. Both Eyre (who succeeded in going overland from

Adelaide to Albany in 1840), and Sturt failed in their attempts to reach the centre of the

continent from Adelaide. John McDouall Stuart was successful in 1860, and went on

(1862) to reach Darwin overland. The most famous of the immigrant explorers of the

central and North-east was Ludwig Leichhardt, who led two successful expeditions

(1844; 1846-1847) into the region from Sydney, before disappearing in mysterious

circumstances while trying to cross the Darling Downs to Perth. An even more famous

tragedy was that of Robert OHara Burke and William John Wills, who perished

attempting to return from their mismanaged expedition (1860-1861) to the Gulf of

Carpentaria from Melbourne. Exploration of Western Australia during the 1870s

created several new Australian explorer-heroes, including John Forrest and Ernest

Giles.


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New Settlements

In 1827 Captain, later Sir, James Frazier Stirling explored the Swan River on the western

coast; two years later, with a group of British investors, he returned as the Governor of

the colony of Western Australia. Underfinanced, Stirlings settlement of free colonists at

Perth stagnated. In 1850 the colony requested convicts to increase its labour supply and

received about 10,000 before transportation to Western Australia was ended in 1868.

Only with the discovery of gold in the 1890s, however, were the fortunes of Western

Australia reversed.

South Australia, with its capital of Adelaide, was established in July 1837. Proposals to

establish the colony were inspired by Edward Gibbon Wakefield, the English social

reformer, and supported by the British liberal intelligentsia and dissenting religious

groups. Wakefield wanted to create new colonies reflecting British socio-economiccultural values. By selling land rather than giving it away, as had previously been the

case in Australia, Wakefield believed that the colonists would be forced to maximize its

value by cultivation. The proceeds of land sales would be used to sponsor the

immigration of labourers, who would have to contribute to the development of the colony

by working for the colonial farmers before becoming land owners themselves. By

controlling land prices, he assumed he could regulate colonial expansion. The new colony,

after much initial hardship, eventually succeeded as a society of small grain farmers, with

a distinct ethos based on its founders emphasis on family migration, religious equality,

and free markets in land and labour.

Growth of Sheep-Grazing

Australias soils, low rainfall, and recurrent droughts were better suited, however, for

large-scale grazing than for arable farming and the most successful and dramatic

transformation of the Australian continent occurred in the 1830s and 1840s, as squatters

established huge sheep runs. Paying only 10 a year for a licence, squatters could claim

virtually as much land as they wanted.

The expansion of sheep grazing resulted in the colonization of the Port Phillip district of

southern New South Wales after the mid-1830s. The settlement of Melbourne began in

1835, and the town flourished immediately. During the 1840s there were growing

demands from the colonists for separation from New South Wales. This was granted in


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1851, when the Port Phillip district became the colony of Victoria, with its capital at

Melbourne. To the north, beginning with the Moreton Bay district, colonization was

slower. However, graziers gradually established the outlines of Australias sixth colony,

Queensland, with its capital at Brisbane. Queensland was separated from New South

Wales in 1859.

Between 1830 and 1850 the value of wool exports increased from 2 million to 41

million. With new immigrants and the growth of the capital cities, each of which served

as the major port for its region, the Australian colonies began to agitate for more control

over their governmental systems.

Development of Political Institutions

The transfer of more authority to the Australian colonies was helped by Great Britains

adoption of free trade in the late 1840s. Free trade, which meant that Britain would buyfrom the lowest priced supplier and sell in the most profitable market, eliminatedat

least in principlethe need for colonies. Thus, in 1850, without having to unite into a

common front, the eastern colonies received new constitutions giving them responsible

self-government. Victoria, South Australia, and Van Diemens Land (which changed its

name to Tasmania in 1854) were given legislative councils, with two-thirds of the

membership to be elected. New South Wales had been granted the same provision in

1842.

By the mid-1850s each of the eastern colonies refashioned its governmental system and

gained control over its land policy; the land grant system had already been ended in

Australia in 1831, replaced by sale. The new systems vested power in a cabinet or council

of ministers responsible to the lower house of the bicameral legislature. The lower house

was popularly elected; by 1860 in all the eastern states, except Tasmania, elections were

based on a nearly universal adult male franchise. Combined with voting by ballot (instead

of by the raising of hands) and other innovations, these changes made the new

governments extremely democratic for their time. The new constitutions reflected the

interests of the rapidly expanding urban populations, who wanted to reduce the political

power of the graziers; the latter, however, still managed, during the 1850s and 1860s, to

gain more security in their landholdings.


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Gold Rush and Consequences

The gold rush of the 1850s sped up the development of these young social and political

systems. In April 1851, Edward Hargraves found gold at Summer Hill Creek in east-

central New South Wales. With the recent experience of the California gold rush in mind,

others joined in the rush, which quickly became centred in Victoria at Mount

Alexander, Ballarat, and Bendigo.Gold was later found elsewhere in New South Wales

and Queensland. In the following ten years, Australia exported more than 124 million-

worth of gold alone. By 1861 the settler population had reached almost 1.2 million, a

threefold increase over the 1850 population of 400,000. Britons, Americans, and

Canadians joined the immigrants to the eastern colonies. In Victoria, the miners quickly

became irritated with the high cost of mining licences and restrictions on their right tosearch for gold. Before the fees were reduced, a small band of miners staged an uprising

at the Eureka stockade at Ballarat in December 1854.

Both miners and colonists responded with alarm, however, to the influx of Chinese

immigrants, also attracted by gold. In 1856 Victoria restricted the entry of Chinese.

Eventually, the exclusion of all but European settlers gave the colonies a "White

Australia" policy that was defended vigorously whenever there appeared to be new

threats to the jobs or culture of white Australians. For a time it seemed that Queensland,

which began to import Polynesian labourers for sugar cane plantations in the 1860s,

might remain at odds with the other colonies, but it eventually conformed; the plantations

were replaced by small-scale sugar farms run by whites. The white Australia policy,

proving popular across the country, was taken up and elaborated into a national policy by

the new Federal government after 1901.

Economic Controversy

In the 1860s the gold fields began to decline. Although wool exports kept the colonies

fairly prosperous, colonial debate soon centred on the role of government in the economy.

In particular, railway construction, due to the high cost and the absence of internal market

centres, became a government activity; between 1875 and 1891 the length of railways

rose from 2,575 km (1,600 mi) to more than 16,100 km (10,000 mi). In 1866 Victoria,


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followed by South Australia and Tasmania, imposed high tariffs on imported goods in

order to protect its own small industries and markets. New South Wales (and Queensland

to a lesser extent) continued to stay with a free-trade policy.

Throughout the 1870s and 1880s, the arguments over free trade versus protection divided

the press, the political parties, and the colonies. This, together with the continuing

jealousies among them, hindered any significant attempts at cooperation and possible

union among the six colonies until the 1890s.

Treatment of the Aborigines

Phillips 1788 settlement marked the start of regular contact between Europeans and the

Aborigines. Although many Aborigines used the land around Sydney as their campsites

and hunting domains, only a few major confrontations took place between the colonists

and the indigenous population in the first decade of white settlement. With the settling ofVan Diemens Land, however, Aboriginal communities began to be destroyed on a large

scale. Unable to overcome colonial weapons, and despite the official British policy of

protection, the 5,000 Aborigines of the island were quickly reduced to a mere handful.

On the mainland, where the graziers sought lands for their sheep runs, the Aboriginal

communities were forced to retreat into the drier interior.

In principle, the official colonial policy throughout the 19th century was to treat the

Aborigines as equals, with the intention of eventually converting them to Christianity and

European civilization. Governor Macquarie established a school for Aboriginal children.

Such acts, however, poorly supported in practice and always underfinanced, were the

exception. In fact, moving from a policy of protection to one of punishment was typical

of the early colonial government. The culture clash was particularly severe on the frontier,

as, during the 1830s and 1840s, the pastoral frontier pushed inland. Some Aborigines

were employed on sheep stations, and others were used for police patrols, but general

attitudes towards Aborigines as a whole are reflected in the fact that they were brutally

hunted and poisoned by settlers. Aboriginal women were abducted and raped and

children were separated from their parents. Although there were individual exceptions,

Australian colonists in the 19th century generally assumed that Aboriginal culture would

die out. On the local and colonial levels, the active destruction or neglect of Aboriginal


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culture was often accompanied by segregational practices that herded the indigenous

population on to reserves and excluded them from colonial life.

Forced to survive on ever scantier supplies of food, the Aborigines were steadily reduced

in number. By the 20th century sizable communities of Aborigines able to practice

traditional lifestyles were confined primarily to the Northern Territory, Queensland, and

New South Wales. Not until the 1950s did the Aboriginal population begin to inch back

to its pre-European level and the government begin to review and correct past treatment.

Society and Culture in the 19th Century

The rapid increase in Australias population between1830 and 1860 contributed to the

growth of the six capital cities. Unable to support dense settlement of their interiors, the

colonies became increasingly urbanized around the initial points of colonization on thecoastal plain. With the decline of gold-mining in Victoria and New South Wales in the

1860s, even the prospectors drifted to the cities. By the end of the century, Sydney and

Melbourne were among the worlds largest cities, even though Australia as a whole still

had a small population.

Each capital served as the major port for its respective colony. Perceiving others as rivals,

each cityand colonytended to emphasize its own identity. Contacts among individual

colonies were secondary to their ties with Great Britain, and rivalry was common;

Victoria and New South Wales, for example, each used a different gauge for their

railways.

All the colonies, however, shared a culture that was heavily influenced by the capital

cities. In the 1850s it was merchants and professionals who agitated for political reform

and the making of new constitutions. Small urban manufacturers and the growth of mass

trade unionism after the mid-century aided in the formation of cabinet governments and

the passage of legislation favourable to the urban populations; Victorias workers

pioneered the eight-hour day in 1856. Following the lead of New South Wales, the

colonial political systems tended to keep the large grazier estate owners and other

wealthy families from controlling colonial life. Wool and continuing mineral discoveries

nevertheless provided the economic base on which this way of life was based.


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Enjoying mid-century prosperity, Sydney and Melbourne set the pace in cultural

activities. Each founded a university and initiated the construction of museums and art

galleries; wealthy families built large houses. Sport, especially cricket and football,

complemented the activities of clubs and societies. Joined by Adelaide, with its even

stronger streak of British liberalism, the three cities succeeded in establishing free,

compulsory, and secular primary educational systems by the 1860s. Each city also had

several major newspapers that championed its colonys uniqueness.

Despite intense loyalty to Great Britain, the colonists soon began to romanticize their

frontier images of sheep shearer, farmhand, and miner. The image was that of an

individual struggling against authority as well as the environment. By the 1880s and

1890s folktales and ballads were a major part of Australias popular culture. Even earlier,

the vibrant slang of Australia had come into being, transforming the language of thesettlers into a distinctive variant of English.

Although British authors remained far more popular than Australian writers, colonial

contributions to the arts kept pace with the increasing economic and social development

of the six colonies. Henry Kingsleys The Recollections of Geoffry Hamlyn (1859), was

considered at the time to be the first Australian novel. However, Catherine Helen Spence,

author of Clara Morison (1854), like Marcus Clarke, author of For the Term of His

Natural Life (1874), produced a distinctive novel that dealt with local themes. See Also

Australian Literature.

Australia had a special fascination for 19th-century scientists. Botanists like Ferdinand

von Mueller, who was based at Melbournes Botanic Gardens towards the end of the

century, as well as zoologists, anthropologists, and geologists found ample material there

for their research.

Movement Towards Federation

Federation of the Australian colonies came late and without the display of nationalism

that characterized similar movements elsewhere. The idea of unification appeared as

early as 1847 in proposals by Earl Grey, then Great Britains Colonial Secretary. In the

1850s John Dunmore Lang, a Scottish Presbyterian cleric in New South Wales, formed

the Australian League to campaign for a united Australia. Conferences among the


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colonial governments in the 1860s also considered closer cooperation and unification.

With the formation of the Dominion of Canada in 1867, British officials began to expect

a similar effort among Australians. No plan, however, received serious attention, due to

the intense rivalries among colonial societies.

Australian fears of incursion from the north by Europeans (as distinct from Britons) and

Asians, first triggered during the 1850s by the Crimean War, provided the spur for the

first practical step towards unification in the 1880s. In 1883 Queensland, anticipating

German moves, claimed Papua on New Guinea but, unable to support this claim, had to

urge Great Britain to rule the territory and to claim other islands. Concerned to improve

their defence and that they might not be able to direct British policy in their interests, and

also aware of the emergence of new powers in Europe, the Australian colonies created a

Federal Council in 1885. However, the refusal of New South Wales to participate meantthat the council was little more than a debating forum with no executive powers.

Other developments during the 1880s, however, served to reinforce the idea of

unification within the wider population. Debate over the white Australia policy

demonstrated the need for uniform immigration rules. A large increase in trade union

membership, especially among sheep shearers and miners, encouraged the development

of centralized unions, extending across colonial boundaries. Unstable economic

conditions and outright depression by 1892 reinforced this idea, and contributed to the

development of labour parties which could defend worker interests. It was evident to the

supporters of the labour parties, which quickly gained electoral success, that unification

would permit the standardization of labour laws.

New South Wales began the movement to replace the Federal Council in 1889, when its

premier, Sir Henry Parkes, announced that the colony would support a new form of

federalism. A conference in Sydney in 1891 laid the basis for a constitutional convention

which did not, however, meet until 1897-1898. Further disputes followed, but eventually

referenda in all six colonies approved the plans for federation. The Commonwealth of

Australia was accordingly approved by the British Parliament in 1900 and became a

reality on January 1, 1901.

The federal constitution reflected both British and American practicesthat is,

parliamentary government, with cabinets responsible to a bicameral legislature, was


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established, but only specifically delegated powers were given to the federal government.

The new House of Representatives, like the British House of Commons, was based on

popular representation, but the new Senate, like its American counterpart, preserved the

representation of the colonies, which now became states. As neither Sydney nor

Melbourne was an acceptable federal capital, in 1911 the Australian Capital Territory

was established for a new capital, Canberraagain based on the American model of

Washington, D.C.

The Commonwealth

Central to the history of Australia in the 20th century has been the development of both a

national government and a national culture. Commonwealth governments, led by such

architects of federation as Alfred Deakin, quickly established a protective tariff onimports to foster internal development, designed procedures for setting minimum wages

in industry, and preserved the white immigration policy. Nevertheless, Australians tended

to retain their old colonial identities, and the political parties at the national level tended

to be loosely defined.

Identity Forged by War

World War I, much more than federation itself, began the transformation of Australia

from six federated former colonies to a united state aware of its new identity. Responding

to the allied call for troops, Australia sent more than 330,000 volunteers, who took part in

some of the bloodiest battles. More than 60,000 died and 165,000 were wounded. This

casualty rate was higher than that of most other participants, and Australia became

increasingly conscious of its contribution to the war effort. At Gallipoli, the Australian

and New Zealand Army Corps (Anzac) tried in vain to launch a drive on the Turkish

forces in the Dardanelles. The date of the fateful landing, April 25, 1915, became equated

with Australias coming of age, and as Anzac Day it has remained the countrys most

significant day of public homage.

In 1915 William Morris Hughes, popularly known as Billy, became Prime Minister and

leader of the Labor Party. Representing Australia at councils in London, Hughes

personified Australian energies. When he failed to carry the electorate in two attempts to


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supplement volunteers with conscripted men, the parliamentary Labor Party passed a vote

of no confidence in his leadership. Hughes remained in power by forming a "national"

Government, much to the annoyance of his former Labor colleagues. He attended the

Paris Peace Conference in 1919, acquiring German New Guinea as a mandated territory

and establishing Australias right to enter the League of Nations. The powers designated

to the federal government in the constitution proved sufficient to allow a strong central

government. Economically, World War I largely benefited Australia, and especially the

textile, vehicle, and iron and steel industries. Australian products like wool, wheat, beef,

and mutton found a ready market in Great Britain, at inflated prices.

Inter-War Years

An internal backlash within the Nationalist Party, which had been formed by Hughes,forced his retirement in 1923. Stanley Melbourne Bruce, leader of the conservative

business wing, which had led the revolt, became Prime Minister. The Country Party,

founded in 1919 as a patriotic, conservative movement to protect the interests of farmers

and graziers, joined the Nationalist coalition, although it kept its own identity. The chief

opponent of the coalition was Labor, which had to redefine its social policies. To

maintain wartime levels of production and expansion the government sought to build up

basic industries, but the depression of the 1930s cut deeply into the health of the

Australian economy, increasing public and private debt at a time of massive

unemployment.

Recovery from the depression, led from 1929 to 1931 by James H. Scullin and the Labor

Party, was extremely uneven. Deflationary economic policies contributed to economic

effects that were far harsher than those felt elsewhere in the world. Disagreement on

government policy led to new splits in the Labor Party. The Government disintegrated in

1931, and for the rest of the 1930s the United Australia Party, composed of former

members of both the National and Labor parties, held the reins of power, under the

leadership of Joseph A. Lyons.

From its first assumption of responsibility over its own foreign affairs, Australia had been

guided by its cultural and political ties with Great Britain. Emphasis was therefore placed

on following Britains leadership in solving the problems of the depression. Chief among


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these was an attempt to redirect more trade between Britain and the dominions. As early

as the 1920s, however, Japan and the United States were among Australias best

customers for its wool. Against its own interests, but motivated in part by fear, Australia

sought to re-establish British trade at the expense of its relations with Japan. In the

League of Nations and within the Commonwealth of Nations, Australian governments

also tended to support appeasement and other policies in an effort to prevent war with the

Fascist powers.

World War II

When war came again to Europe in 1939, Australia dispatched its armed forces to assistin Great Britains defence. After the Pacific war between Japan and the United States

broke out in 1941 and Great Britain was unable to provide sufficient support for

Australias defence, the new Labor government of John Joseph Curtin sought alliance

with the United States. Until the liberation of the Philippines, US General Douglas

MacArthur and his staff used Australia as their base of operations. Although casualties

were less heavy than in World War I, Australians were more psychologically affected

because of their fears of a Japanese invasion. Again Australian industry was transformed

by the needs of war. The economy was redirected towards manufacturing, and heavy

industries ringed the capital cities. Post-war development built further on the foundations

established during the war.

Curtin died in 1945. The new Labor government under Joseph Benedict Chifley

strengthened Australias relationship with the United States in the ANZUS pact for

mutual assistance; New Zealand was the third partner. As a charter member of the United

Nations, Australia also agreed to the decolonization of the islands in the Pacific,

including the preparation of Papua New Guinea for independence (achieved in 1975).

Contemporary Australian Culture

Australias cultural life in the 20th century can be divided into two distinct periods. From

1901 to World War II, Australians continued to reflect the basic tenets of their British


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origins. Cultural activities were dominated by the city populations within the framework

of the old colonial divisions. The siting of the federal government in Melbourne until

Canberra was built may have contributed to the preservation of the older orientation.

Certainly, few writers and commentators addressed Australia-wide themes or problems.

World War I produced the first form of mass nationalism. Proud of their

accomplishments in the war, yet humbled by its horror, Australians commemorated their

experiences. The war hero was portrayed in larger-than-life monuments, with features

suggestive of the individualism and gangliness of the Australian common man. Wartime

literature as well as social organizations de-emphasized old class lines and gave credence

to the commonality of all Australians.

Australians expected the 1920s and 1930s to reflect a new nationalism in international

affairs; yet they themselves tended to reassert their provincialism both within the Leagueof Nations and the Commonwealth of Nations. World War II therefore administered a

shock to Australian culture. Recognizing their immediate dependency on US military

support and their need to understand better their own place in the world, Australians in

fact launched a cultural revolution.

First to be changed was the ethnicity of Australian culture. Beginning in 1946, thousands

of immigrants were transported from eastern and southern Europe to the Australian

suburbs. This migration rivalled the earlier transportation of convicts and made the

Australian population more cosmopolitan in fact as well as in orientation. The prosperity

of the 1950s encouraged new efforts in education. Almost overnight the number of

universities in each state tripled, the governments providing free university-level

education to all those who were qualified.

In the 1960s, more acknowledgement was made of the rights of Australias Aborigines;

they were finally granted full citizenship and the right to vote in 1967. They were also

included in population statistics for the first time in 1967 as well. However, far greater

efforts were still needed to address the profound social, health, educational, and

economic inequalities facing Aborigines efforts that still need to be made.

At the same time Australians began to dissent more vigorously from the assumptions held

by those in political power. Reaction to the Vietnam War was in part responsible, as

public outcry over the military draft instituted in 1964 eventually ended conscription


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eight years later. But a generation gap also seemed to divide the Australians. The

qualities of Australian life were re-examined in new periodicals and newspapers, on

campuses, and in town halls. Although such soul-searching had waned by the mid-1970s,

the experience clearly contributed to the dissolution of older attitudes. Among the larger

cultural issues with which Australia grappled in the 1980s and early 1990s was the

question of Aboriginal land rights (see earlier). Like other colonial and settler countries,

Australia was challenged to address the land claims of the indigenous inhabitants, which

had been disregarded for centuries.

The Menzies Era

In 1949 Robert Menzies became Prime Minister, ushering in a long era of political

stability. During the war, the old United Australian Party had disintegrated. In its steadarose the Liberal Party, which attracted those who opposed Labors internal policies.

Menzies, prime minister until 1966, gave Australia centralized and personal leadership.

He stressed the sentimental linkage with the British Crown but took a more active interest

than his predecessors in Pacific and south Asian affairs. Under the Colombo Plan, Asians

began to study in Australian institutions. By 1966 the White Australia policy was

moribund and it was formally discarded in 1973. The entry of immigrants has since been

based on criteria other than race.

Notwithstanding Menzies sentimental attachment to Great Britain, Australias alliance

with the United States continued to grow closer, and it followed the US lead in foreign

policy, fighting in the Korean War, participating in the South East Asia Treaty

Organization (SEATO) from 1954 until its dissolution in 1977, and fighting in the

Vietnam War as an ally of the United States. At the same time, Australias domestic and

foreign policies were adjusted to recognize its growing ties with Japan.

Time of Uncertainties

From 1966 until 1972, the Liberal Party, with the assistance of the Country Party,

provided several prime ministers who sought to extend the Menzies era. However, in

1972, uniting after years of internal disputes, the Labor Party under Gough Whitlam

again came to power. Whitlams plans for increased social services, however, were in


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conflict with both the traditional rights of the states and declining economic prosperity.

The Liberal-Country coalition was returned to power under Malcolm Fraser in 1975

following the controversial dismissal of the Whitlam government by the Governor-

General, Sir John Kerr. He reinstated the domestic and foreign policies followed by the

earlier Liberal Party governments and laid the foundation for Aboriginal land right claims,

in the 1976 Aboriginal Land Rights Act, for the Northern Territory.

Frasers coalition survived the 1980 election with a much-reduced majority. Shaken by

defections from Liberal Party ranks and by foreign trade scandals, Fraser suffered a sharp

defeat in the elections of March 1983. His Labor successor, Bob Hawke, sought to

promote labour-management cooperation and stimulate the economy; his foreign policy

was staunchly pro-American. Labor retained its majorities in the elections of December

1984, July 1987, and March 1990. Australia celebrated its bicentennial in 1988. InDecember 1991, with Australia mired in recession and Hawkes popularity waning,

Labor chose Hawkes former Treasury Minister, Paul Keating, as party leader and Prime

Minister. Pledging to change Australia to a federal republic and underlining the need for

reorientation towards Asia, Keating led Labor to victory in the March 1993 election. In

1993 Sydney was selected to host the Olympic Games in the year 2000.

Australia and I ndia

It is analytically sensible to divide Australias links to post-Independence India into four

phases: the first corresponds to the years immediately surrounding Indian Independence

when Labor was in power in Australia. The second period is the Menzies Years, the third

we may term the post-1971 Re-discovery of India, and the last is the current engagement


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with Emerging India. While the first three periods correspond largely to changes of party

in power in Australia, the most recent is largely bipartisan.

Phase I: Indias Independence and Australia

When India became independent in 1947, Australias relations with India under Labor,

which remained in power until 1949, were close and sympathetic (Watt 1968, p. 220).

At Indias invitation, two representatives fromAustralia participated at the 1947 Asia

Relations Conference held in New Delhi. Reports presented by the two delegates back to

the Australian government noted little negativity in the relationship, although the

question of restrictions on immigration was raised during the conference (Watt 1968, pp.

222-223).

Phase II: Nehru and Menzies:The Doomed Legacy of a Clash of Dominant

Personalities?What emerges in striking fashion from the interpretations of a number of the studies of

the first two decades after Indias Independence in 1947 is the argument that relations in

those formative years pivoted around the strong personalities of Sir Robert Menzies and

Jawaharlal Nehru. In her Ph.D. thesis and works derived from it, Meg Gurry placed

greatest explanatory weight for the failure to develop closer relations squarely on the

clashing personalities of

Menzies and Nehru (Gurry 1992-1993, p. 511; cf. , Gurry 1996, p.15 ).

In his Ph.D. thesis which sought to analyse bilateral ties from the Indian perspective,

Nihal Kuruppu arrived at similar conclusions. He also identified the importance of

clashes of personality, background and ideology between Nehru and Menzies as being of

major importance in this first period (Kuruppu 2000). In a section he subtitled The Clash

of Titans, Kuruppu explores the inevitable conflicts between the strong personalities of

Menzies, the anglophile Empire loyalist, and Nehru, the leader of struggles against

colonialism in India and the Third World. Menzies thought India not yet fit for self-rule

(Kuruppu 2000, p. 193), regretted the passing of the White Commonwealth of the 1930s

(Kuruppu 2000, p. 137) and decried Indias unwillingness to offer loyalty to the Crown in

the changed post-colonial Commonwealth (Kuruppu 2000, p. 130). It was not until

Indiasborder clashes with China in 1962 that the two nations were firmly on the same

side of a major international crisis.


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Differing Positions in the Cold War

An alternative position to the emphasis on personality clashes is one which focuses on the

broad differences in strategic position adopted by Australia and India, in particular the

incompatibility in their positions on the Cold War.

In his Ph.D. thesis- one of the first detailed studies of the India-Australia relationship- F.

A. Mediansky placed the primary emphasis on the differences in approaches to security

which emerged soon after 1947. While Australia hoped to establish a regional security

arrangement which included India, India expressed no interest in the proposal. Australias

growing alignment with the USA in the emerging Cold War virtually removed any

possibility of bilateral defence co-operation (Mediansky 1971, p. 27).

As an aside: Mediansky adds several other issues on which the two countries differed

including Australias Trusteeship position in Papua New-Guinea and the clash betweenIndia and Pakistan over the accession of Kashmir. Regarding the latter he quotes from a

confidential Foreign Affairs document:

In determining the line to follow [on Kashmir] the fundamental principle should be to

cultivate Pakistan rather than India if we must make a choice. (Mediansky 1971, p.61

emphasis in original document) Kuruppu argues that the differences in strategic outlook

can be understood in Indiasadoption of idealism in its approach to international affairs,

while Australia under Menzies opted for realism (Kuruppu 2000, p. 25, pp. 28-32).

Phase III: Relations 1971-1998-Silence Punctuated by Occasional Hiccups

Too little trade

A theme which becomes increasingly important in studies from 1980 onward is the lack

of substantial economic reinforcement in Indo-Australian relations. Then Senator Baden

Teague argued that what he identified as a post-1986 renaissance in relations had its

basis in diplomacy, trade and investment (Teague 1994,p. 21).

Episode 1: Concern over Indian Intentions in the Indian Ocean

In the past 20 years, the Australian government has paid considerable attention to India as

both a security threat and as a potential trading partner. One of the early manifestations of

the renaissance of interest was the establishment of the Indian Ocean Centre for Peace

Studies at the University of Western Australia in 1990.1 This may well have been a


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response to emerging concerns in the late 1980s over the build-up of India's defence

forces, especially the extension of its naval capability. So, too was a pioneering report by

the Senate Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs, Defence and Trade (of which Teague

was Deputy Chairman) in 1990 (1990). Some of the testimony to the Committee utilised

a distinctly alarmist tone about Indian intentions in the Indian Ocean. The National

Council of the Australian Defence Association for example, in their submission to the

Committee expressed their fears that India might use its new naval capabilities to annex

Australian territory in the Cocos Islands. The Association wishes to emphasise the

significance of Cocos as potentially Australia's FalklandsIt is the Association's view

that Australia could marginally deter an [Indian] attack on Cocos by demonstrating a

commitment to the islands' defence but would find their recovery virtually impossible.

(Hansard 1989, p. 191)The Committee, wisely, did not accept the alarmist views of the Australian Defence

Association. It did urge government to invest increased resources into the study of India,

greater internal coordination within government, and better support for Australian firms

seeking to do business with India (Senate Committee on Foreign Affairs 1990). In

addition to its other recommendations, the Committee recommended the establishment of

an Indian Studies Centre, a proposal which led to the all-too-brief establishment of the

National Centre for South Asian Studies in Melbourne in 1993. The Australia-India

Council was also established in 1992 as an immediate outcome of a recommendation in

the report.

Episode 2: Selling Mirages to Pakistan

Another hiccup in the Australia-India relationship also arose in the sphere of defence

when in 1990 Australia sold 50 mothballed Mirage III jets to Pakistan during a period of

heightened tension over Kashmir (Cheeseman 1992).

The Senate Standing Committee Report of 1990 was followed by a succession of others.

An outstanding example was the report produced by the East Asia Analytical Unit of the

Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade Indias Economy at the Midnight Hour:

Australias India Strategy (1994). Based on impressive work by the late Meredith

Borthwick, the report was a comprehensive survey of the Indian economy following the

initiation of reforms in 1991. This ground-breaking report also introduced a change in


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emphasis: instead of reiterating the slenderness of Indo-Australian ties, it placed

emphasis on the opportunities which Indias reforms had opened to Australian business.

In 1996 the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade sponsored New Horizons, a major

relationship - building event which brought business, academic, political and cultural

leaders from Australia to India.

In 1998 the Joint Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs, Defence and Trade issued a

report the focus of which was exclusively upon the trade relationship (1998). As with

Indias Economy at the Midnight Hour, the emphasis was again on opportunities to

deepen Australias trade and investment relationship with India.

The most recent addition to the detailed reports on the Indian economy was India: New

Economy, Old Economy published in 2001 (Economic Analytical Unit 2001).

The shift in focus in official reports from political to economic relations is also reflectedin the scholarly literature which has emerged since 1961. One of first of these studies was

the collection edited by Marika Vicziany in 1993 (Vicziany 1993a) contributors to which

explored politics (Gurry 1993b), conditions for market success (Vicziany 1993b), the

trade performance of each partner (Mathur 1993), business culture in India (Mayer 1993),

a major Australian transfer of coal mining technology (Paligaru 1993), and the migration

of Indian IT professionals to Australia (Lakha 1993).

In 1994 the National Centre for South Asian Studies and the Indian Ocean Centre for

Peace Studies produced a wide-ranging study of Australias relationship with the

countries of South Asia (Vicziany and McPherson 1994). Intended to complement Indias

Economy at the Midnight Hour, the 30 contributors looked at political, economic and

cultural facets of the relationship with India and its neighbours.

In the early 1990s, a number of postgraduates in Australian universities produced theses

which explored the economic relationship between the two countries in depth (Mathur

1999, Khan 1999). the relationship we have been just about to have' (Henningham 1995,

p. 5) ? As this brief review indicates, if there is a consistent theme in the literature

devoted to the Australia-India relationship, it is that, in its greater attention to Japan,

China and Indonesia, Australia has devoted too little effort in building a firm relationship

with India. Although this might almost deserve to be termed the mating cry of

specialists working on India, it is appropriate to ask if it is, indeed, valid to charge


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Australia with neglect of its relationship with India. We would argue that rather than

engage in repetitive exercises in self-flagellation, it is time to recognise that if there has

been neglect in the relationship, it has been largely because of indifference on the part of

India that the relationship has never achieved the depth which many Australian observers

have hoped for.

This is not an entirely original observation. What Kuruppu in his thesis observed of India

in the period 1947-1949 may well be said to be true of much of the past sixty years:

[N]on-aligned India, with its major international stature at the time and its sheer size in

population, was neither conscious of being neglected by Australia, nor particularly

interesting in upgrading the relationship. Australia did not excite the attention needed

to figure in Indias global interests. To say otherwise is to skirt the truth.

Kuruppu also cites an earlier observation to this effect by R.G. Neale:The first thing to strike the inquirer into Australia's relations with India is, I think, the

contrast between the tremendous importance attached by Australia to India's role in

Asian and world affairs and the insignificant extent to which Australia has figured in

India's view of Asia and the world (Neale 1968, p. 67 cited in Kuruppu, p. 58)

One way of illustrating Indias lack of interest in deepening the relationship is provided

by a comparative schedule of visits to the other country by prime ministers of the two

countries.

Indias neglect of the Australia relationship can most usefully be seen as part of its

broader neglect of its relationship with Asia in the years before the adoption of the Look

East policy. The collapse of the principal structure of Indian foreign policy which

followed the implosion of Soviet Union in 1989 led the country to give serious attention

to its relationships with the countries of Southeast Asia and North Asia (Thakur 1995).

One significant recent development which runs counter to the broad pattern sketched here

is the emergence of a group of Indian scholars engaged in Australian Studies. The annual

meetings of the Indian Association for the Study of Australia may mark the beginning of

a significant shift in attitudes and attention from the subcontinent.

Phase IV: Nuclear Bombs and Terrorist Threats

Episode 3: Indias nuclear tests and after

The Australia-India relationship that had shown a degree of warmth in the 1990s with the


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publication of several reports containing recommendations for further strengthening the

relationship dipped fast in the wake of Indias nuclear testing in May 1998.

Prime Minister John Howard condemned it saying it was an an ill-judged step that

would have damaging consequences for security in South Asia and globally. His

foreign minister Alexander Downer called the tests outrageous acts perpetrated by India.

In the aftermath of the tests, not only did Canberra withdraw its High Commissioner from

New Delhi, it imposed severe sanctions on India (and later on Pakistan when it also tested

nuclear devices) including suspension of ministerial and official level visits and defence

relations, and cancellation of naval ship and aircraft visits, officer exchanges and other

defence-related visits. India was not surprised at Australias condemnation but rather by

the severity of its condemnation (Bonnor 2001, p. 6), stronger than those of the US, UK

or Canada. Stung by the reproof, India reacted by announcing that it too would severe allmilitary ties with Australia. The following two years after Indias nuclear tests were

without doubt the most difficult period in the bilateral relationship.

With the US attitude softening towards India, especially as US President Bill Clinton

visited India in March 2000, Canberra also began to warm up to New Delhi. As the

reality that India was a nuclear state hit the world and Canberra, politico/security ties

began to be restored slowly and upgraded vastly in the post 9/11 security environment.

Then Foreign Minister Alexander Downer visited New Delhi in March 2000 and

announced resumption of defence ties. He laid the groundwork for the visit to India of

Prime Minister John Howard in July.

Both on political and official levels signs of improvement in the relationship began to

appear as official pronouncements began to acknowledge Indias importance to Australia.

The 2000 Defence White Paper, for example, mentioned India in numerous places

recognising its growing importance in the context of Australian security by stating that it

is Indias growing role in the wider Asia Pacific strategic system that will have more

influence on Australias security. (Department of Defence 2000, p. 19). It further noted

that India is increasingly important to the wider regional strategic balance. The document

stated that effort should be made to set up the kind of dialogue that will allow both

nations to explore and better understand one anothers perspectives (Department of

Defence 2000, p.38).


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The importance of India noted in the Defence White Paper was further reinforced in the

defence update papers published every two years by the Department of Defence.

Although the 2003 Defence Update did not mention India and South Asia in its report,

the 2005 Update (Australias National Security) recognised both strategicand economic

importance of India (Department of Defence 2005, p.1).

In the post 9/11 environment, a Memorandum of Understanding on Co-operation in

Combating International Terrorism was signed in August 2003 followed by a

Memorandum of Understanding on Defence Cooperation in 2006.

Apart from signing the MoUs at government level, interactions at non-official levels to

discuss and debate security and defence cooperation have also occurred in a structured

way. Since 2001 a second-track security dialogue meeting between the two countries has

taken place about every eighteen months consisting of leading security and defenceexperts and observers from government departments of both countries. This is an

informal process where participants take part in their private capacities and do not

necessarily represent their countries or governments. But the outcome of their

deliberation and recommendations are presented to government departments of both

countries for their consideration. The navies of Australia and India together with the US,

Japan and Singapore participated in an exercise off the coast of India coded the Malabar

Exercise. Navy-to-navy talks began in January 2007 and proposals were made to joint

talks between the Indian and Australian air forces (Dodd 2007).

Quadrilateral framework

A proposal was floated to expand the existing trilateral framework consisting of the

United States, Japan and Australia to include India and start a quadrilateral process.

Former Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe was one of the chief proponents of this

proposal and according to its supporters, these four democratic nations in the Asia Pacific

had shared security concerns and together they must discuss their concerns in a

multilateral setting. Attractive as it might seem, there was little enthusiasm in Australia as

the Chinese leadership criticized the proposed grouping as ganging up against Beijing

(Jain 2007). While ministers of these four nations met once in Thailand in 2007, the

quadrilateral framework has virtually fizzled out especially as Abe is no longer in his

position and the new government in Canberra pronounced it dead when Foreign Minister


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Stephen Smith announced Australias withdrawal from it in the presence of the Chinese

Foreign Minister. India clearly resented the way the shift in Australian policy was

announced as it was construed as crude diplomatic support for China at the cost of India.

With the arrival of the Rudd government in Canberra, the developing Australia-India ties

under the later half of the Howard government have suffered several setbacks. The most

serious of which was Canberras announcement of scrapping the uranium sale deal

agreed by the Howard government in 2007.

Episode 4: To sell or not to sell: Uranium

Supply of uranium to India has become a huge political issue in the Australia-India

bilateral relationship. After a civilian nuclear technology deal signed between the United

States and India in 2006, pressure on Australia to consider supplying uranium to India

grew from different quarters, but most notably from India. Then Prime Minister JohnHoward resisted the pressure by asserting that Australias policy was not to supply the

yellow cake to a country that has not signed the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT).

Indian policymakers and strategists have the habit of comparing Indias relations with

other nations in the context of China. Such commentators criticised Australias

hypocritical approach to the issue. They ask how Australia justifies its policy of exporting

uranium to China which, though it is a signatory to the NPT, is a known proliferator as

Beijing has reportedly supplied nuclear technology and materials to North Korea and

Pakistan, states run by autocrats and military dictators, and has nuclear ties with Iran. On

the other hand India claims it has never proliferated nuclear weapons or technology to a

third party despite not signing the treaty due to its discriminatory nature. Providing access

to Communist China and withholding such access to India, the worlds largest democracy

does not go down very well among many commentators and officials in India.

Under pressure Howard later changed his tune by accepting that Indias behaviour as a

nuclear weapons state had been impeccable; since the country first exploded a nuclear

device in 1974. In August 2007 he announced that Australia was willing to sell uranium

to India under strict conditions and Howard communicated his decision to his Indian

counterpart. (Shanahan and Ryan 2007). The agreement would have allowed Australian

nuclear inspectors to ensure that the uranium was used only for the power generation


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purposes (Dodd 2008). Then in Opposition, Kevin Rudd had vowed to "tear up" any

nuclear deal with India if he won government.

Soon after it came to power, the Rudd Labor government reversed Howards decision and

announced in January 2008 that Australia would scrap the deal that was signed by the

Howard government in August 2007 concerning the sale of uranium to India on the

grounds that India was not a signatory to the NPT, reverting to Australia's long-held

stance on the issue. The volte-face by the Rudd administration on the sale of uranium to

India came as a significant blow to India's energy security needs especially as Australia

holds the world's largest known reserves of uranium, approximately 40% of the total

worldwide supplies. It is not just the Indian strategists who have criticised Rudds

reversal of Howards policy on legal, political, strategic and pragmatic grounds

(Chellaney 2008), but in Australia, too, politicians on the opposite side in federalparliament have ridiculed Rudds reversal policy (See for example, Johnson 2008,

Australian, 2007).

Strategic commentators such as Sandy Gordon have also supported supply of uranium of

to India on grounds of Indias clean record of non-proliferation and its energy

requirements (Gordon 2007, p. 56).

The uranium issue will remain as the most important bilateral matter which does not

seem to be resolved easily. India will keep pressuring the Labor Government to change

its policy, although it is highly unlikely that the Labor Party is going to make changes in

its no uranium to India in a hurry.

Given Rudds hard-line approach towards India on the nuclear and uranium issues, it is

unlikely that intensive security and strategic ties will develop between the two.

Commentators in the past believed that Australia and India have limited bilateral

security interests in common (Bonnor 2001, p.13). Bonnor further observed that Neither

country is central to the others strategic planning, yet both are influential in regions

about which the other wants a deeper understanding (Bonnor 2001, p. 17). Indias

continuing perception of Australia is something of a pale shadow of the US (Dodd

2007). The onus of engagement lies on both parties. Gordon commented that Australia

has mostly been the suitor and Indian the reluctant bride (Gordon 2007, p. 46). But India

must realise that it also needs to court Australia and present its case to Canberra through


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diplomatic and other means. External Affairs Minister Pranab Mukerjees visit to

Canberra in June 2008 was a step in the right direction. New Delhi needs to be patient

with Canberra until a final outcome of the US deal emerges. Similarly, it is no good for

Canberra to make hasty announcements one way or the other on the issue. Although this

is a most significant and difficult bilateral matter at the moment, the two nations have

many other issues on which cooperation can be pursued both bilaterally and multilaterally.

Despite Rudds and Labor Partys hard-line approach to India on the nuclear and uranium

issues, India has not given up on Australia and is trying to engage Canberra

diplomatically through ministerial visits. By June 2008 India already dispatched seven

ministers including Mukerjee with the aim of strengthening ties with Australia. Although

of course a prime ministerial visit to Australia is long overdue since Rajiv Gandhis visit

in 1986.Economic and Trade

Australia began to take greater notice of India after the Indian economy began to grow

substantially and eventually became the second largest growing economy in the world,

following China. Indias economic growth presented an opportunity for Australias

suppliers to sell their products in the expanding and liberalised Indian market. This has

led to rapid growth in Australia-India trade in the last five years, growing even faster than

trade with China. Australias main merchandise exports to India are coking coal and gold.

In early 2008 DFAT reported that India was Australias sixth largest goods export market

and eight largest services market (Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade 2008, p.1).

However, bilateral trade remains hugely is in favour of Australia as the graph below

shows. India has not made it an issue, as the Indian economy is on the upswing and its

total global trade is in Indias favour.

The pattern is unlikely to change as demand for Australian goods (primary products) will

further rise, given the projected growth of India and imports from India will remain

highly limited. Bilateral trade in services tells the same story as the merchandise area.


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Growth in this sector is due primarily to education-related travel services originating

from the large increase in Indian students studying in Australia. In 2007 alone, more than

65,000 students enrolled in various educational institutions throughout Australia. Indias

service exports consist of IT, software and business process outsourcing (BPO). Although

India has strengths in exporting BPO services, opportunities remain limited due to

sensitivities in Australia of job losses and the security of information involved (Gordon

2007, p. 54).To further strengthen their bilateral economic relationship India and Australia are now

considering moving towards a Free Trade Agreement for which joint study of its

feasibility is already underway and is scheduled to be completed by early 2009.

Conclusion: Australias Asia and Regional Institutions

Australias definition of Asia in the past was too frequently limited to Northeast and

Southeast Asia and focused on the Pacific side of Asia, not on the Indian Ocean side. For

example, Paul Keatings book published in 2000 had little discussion on India (2000).

The former prime minister made it clear that he wanted India to be excluded from the

APEC. The famous 1989 Garnaut Report Australia and the Northeast Asian Ascendancy

mainly dealt with northeast Asian states (Garnaut 1989). The 1997 White Paper on

Foreign Trade Policy as outlined by then Foreign Minister Alexander Downer had no

mention of India in it (Downer 1997).


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This changed by the time of the 2003 White Paper. While launching Advancing the

National Interest Foreign Minister Downer in his speech made several references to India.

He said Japan, Korea and China remain vitally important, as do the emergi ng giant of

India and the recovering region of South East Asia.

India is not quite on the centre stage of the new Labor governments Asia diplomacy, but

Rudd while launching his vision of a Asia Pacific Community did include India along

with the US, China, Japan and Indonesia. His foreign minister Stephen Smith seems to be

India inclined.

During his meetings with the visiting External Affairs Minister from India, Smith

strongly supported India's bid to join APEC after the moratorium on its expansion

expired in 2010 and he also supported Indias bid to become a permanent member of the

UN Security Council.From the Indian side, External Affairs Minister Mukerjee in return has supported the

inclusion of Australia as an observer in the South Asian Association for Regional

Cooperation (SAARC), a status already enjoyed by countries such as Japan and China.

Overall, since 2005 there has been steady progress in the bilateral relationship, despite

disagreements over Indias stance on the NPT. For Australia, India is still on the

periphery of its Asia vision and for India Australia is not high on its diplomatic agenda,

although there seems to be some shift reflected in half a dozen senior Indian ministers

visiting Canberra in the first six months in 2008. Nevertheless, after six decades of

neglect on both sides, the Australia-India relationship may be poised to embrace more

than cricket.

References

India, Australia sign MoU on defence cooperation Redif News, March 06 2006 [cited

12 May 2008]. Available from http://www.rediff.com/news/2006/mar/06mou.htm.

2007.

Free Trade with India: embrace the beauty of economic growth (Editorial). The

Australian, 21 August.

Agrawala, Reena. 2002. Australia and Globalisation: Economic Integration with

India. In Australia in the Emerging Global Order: Evolving Australia-India

Relations, edited by D

australia plus india

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