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MHIS217: Australia, Britain and the Empire in the Nineteenth Century

Over the course of the 19th century, the Australian colonies underwent one of the most dramatic transformations of global modernity—from a scattered group of penal colonies to, a federated nation in 1901 with enormous promise. Like the other white settler colonies—soon to be called dominions—of the British Empire, most of Australia was a frontier contact zone in which squatters, settlers, miners and others pushed the Indigenous people off their lands. By the middle of the century, convict transportation was nearly over, the gold rush had brought thousands of prospectors to Australia, and towns and cities were booming. In the 19th century the Australian colonies worked out their most fundamental features: a capitalist economic system; a gradual evolution towards Responsible Government and democracy; a federation of states based partly on the United States of America model; and a society stratified by class, race and gender, despite a culture that emphasised egalitarianism. In this unit, we study these radical transformations of the Australian colonies, and place them in a broader imperial context—considering how the Australian colonies were shaped by and in turn influenced the British Empire. We look closely at various episodes in which the imperial relationship to Britain and other British colonies sheds light on Australian history.

Timetable Information

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