Section II: Making A Nation Flashcards
(40 cards)
Describe Australia before 1788.
There were approximately 500 Aboriginal nations before Australia was settled in 1788.
It is estimated that there were roughly 750,000 Indigenous Australians across these 500 nations, and that they collectively spoke over 250 languages.
However, according to the 2016 Census there were only 649,173 Aboriginal and/or Torres Strait Islander people living in Australia, and most of their languages have been lost.
Describe the effects of colonists on Aboriginal people.
Colonists did not recognise Indigenous connections to the land - “terra nullius” (“nobody’s land”).
Aboriginal people were viewed as new subjects occupying Britain’s newly claimed land (terra nullius) rather than as a separate population who’s home the colonists were invading.
Any resistance to mistreatment by the colonists was viewed as a rebellious and criminal act.
Aboriginal people became victims of dispossession, brutality and other injustices committed by the colonists.
Aboriginal victims often could not challenge colonists, as they were not given the legal rights or protection colonists were entitled to as British subjects.
Many Indigenous Australians suffered losses to sickness, violence, and murder by European colonists, and this trauma is still seen in communities today.
Loss of language, landscapes, and cultural identity have also severely impacted Indigenous Australians across many generations.
Describe how European Settlement impacted the Australian Landscape.
Colonists constructed permanent infrastructure such as roads, buildings, bridges, fences, wells, ports and tramways.
They cut down trees for wood, mined for ore and stone, and farmed the land to grow crops (attain resources).
Aboriginal peoples lived in harmony with the land and therefore had little permanent infrastructure - the permanent infrastructure which was established put extreme amounts of pressure on the land, resulting in damaged ecosystems, reductions in biodiversity, and the degradation of soils and waterways.
The environment was damaged by the introduction of foreign plants and animals that did not have natural predators, including cats and foxes, which preyed on small native animals, and rabbits, which destroyed the landscape with their excessive grazing.
Plants such as blackberry and pear plants could quickly overrun and destroy areas of native vegetation.
The farming of foreign animals and plants such as sheep and wheat also destroyed the environment, as they were not adapted to the Australian landscape.
Describe how the Australian Landscape impacted European Settlement.
Early European settlement was mainly established on the coast, where resources such as water and naval forces were easily accessed.
Harsh climate further away from the coast also influenced European settlement.
Abundance of wide-open land also led the colonists to settle in areas that they could use as pastoral fields. This allowed the owners of these fields to raise the livestock necessary to produce wool, meat and hides, all of which were incredibly profitable.
The discovery of gold also affected European settlement, as the prospect of finding gold and getting rich led many to migrate to gold-rich settlements, greatly increasing the population of these areas.
The positive effect that gold had on Australia’s economy led to the even greater and faster development of colonies, which attracted more and more people to Australia, which then led to even faster development.
Australia’s gold-rich landscape affected European settlement by greatly increasing the rate at which Australia could be settled.
Describe the role of convicts in the early settlement of Australia.
Australia began as a penal colony, meaning that much of the early development of Australia was completed by convicts who were sent to do so as punishment for crimes they had committed back home.
Cities such as Sydney, Hobart, Brisbane, and Melbourne began with small convict settlements
Many convicts were trained as tailors, tanners, blacksmiths, bakers and boot-makers, which made them more suited to city life than a rural existence as shepherds and farm labourers.
Around 4000 of the convicts were from non-British origins and around 1000 of them were non-white, sent from regions all over the British Empire.
What were the Frontier Wars?
“Frontier” is a term that is applied to the land that was gradually being taken over by the Europeans.
The Aboriginal people resisted British colonisation and occupation of their land – these conflicts and wars were known as the frontier wars.
The colonists were far more experienced with tactics, organisation, advanced weaponry, and resources which were extremely advantageous when warring against the Aboriginal people, who lacked experience, technology, and resources in this context.
Aboriginal people were often “otherised” due to race, unfamiliar practices, cultures, languages, religions – they were therefore thought of as inhumane, animalistic, and lesser (in comparison to Europeans).
Due to this unequal power balance, Europeans generally held the upper hand during these conflicts, and therefore they can be referred to as “massacres”.
Identify the main offences committed against Aboriginal people by colonists during the Frontier Wars.
Displacement of Aboriginal peoples through colonisation of Australia.
Systematic violence against a group of peoples, including massacres, armed conflicts, and extermination campaigns (genocide).
Unlawful killing (not in self-defence).
Cultural erasure.
Discrimination towards Aboriginal Australians (in social and political settings).
What does this quote reveal about the Frontier Wars?
“We have little or no news – the Natives at the Hawkesbury are murdering the settlers … soldiers are in return murdering the Natives (but it cannot be avoided).”
Aboriginal resistance to their dispossession angered the colonists, who responded with violent attacks (the Frontier Wars).
There are few records of Frontier violence, partly because these incidents were becoming too regular to take any special notice.
Colonists viewed the conflicts and massacres as “unavoidable” and necessary in order to strike terror and force obedience amongst Aboriginal peoples.
What does this quote reveal about the Frontier Wars?
“The natives are… the poorest objects on the habitable globe… I would never consent to hang a white man for a black one. I for one would never see a white man suffer for shooting a black.”
The Aboriginals were viewed as subhuman and inferior to the colonists, both socially and politically.
Colonists who committed acts of frontier violence were rarely punished or convicted, as they were seen as superior to Aboriginals in legal systems and in court.
Describe the extent of the Frontier Wars.
Early massacres are all mostly located around European settlements, for example, Sydney.
Most conflicts and massacres were initiated by Europeans, not by Aboriginals.
Massacres occurred all over Australia.
Massacres occurred over 250 years – for multiple generations, Indigenous people lived in fear of colonists and as a result would be severely impacted.
Centuries of this generational trauma are still seen today where Aboriginals are statistically shown to have a much lower quality of life than other Australians.
Describe the Myall Creek Massacre.
12 white stockmen rode into Myall creek station and massacred 28 Indigenous people in 1838 – it was the first and only time that white perpetrators were brought to justice.
The trial was very controversial – the all white jury cleared the 12 stockmen, but later, they were retried and 7 were convicted and hung.
Today, there is a desire on both sides to acknowledge and reconcile regarding the events of the past and their everlasting impacts.
Acknowledgement and reconciliation events such as those that occur each year at Myall Creek do not occur at other sites due to a lack of recorded evidence, as well as a lack of trial and conviction
Describe the Black War.
The Black War is one of the biggest acts of violence that occurred in the Frontier Wars.
It occurred in Tasmania from 1824 - 1831.
At least 1000 Aboriginal people were killed according to official records, however the actual number is estimated to be much higher.
Towards the end of the war, in the late 1830s the Black Line occurred.
Over 2000 colonists formed a series of offensive lines that stretched across the land and drove the Clans away from their homes and away from land the colonists had taken or wanted to take, with the aim of either killing or moving the Aboriginal Tasmanian people to the Tasman Peninsula in the southeast where the colonists planned to have them remain permanently imprisoned.
The Black War resulted in the near-destruction of all Aboriginal people living in ‘Tasmania’ due to frequent mass killings and can be viewed as an act of genocide (intentional action to destroy a an ethnic, national, racial, or religious group of people).
The experiences of Japanese settlers in Australia:
Why did they come to Australia?
During the 1880s, the Japanese came to Australia to work in pearl diving areas such as Darwin, Broome, and Thursday Island.
They often immigrated from small fishing villages on the southern coast of Japan.
Over time, the Japanese had their own pearling ships, and by 1897 around one-third of the Thursday Island fleet was run by Japanese people.
By 1901, around 3400 Japanese people were in Australia while only 400 of them were women, and approximately 90% lived in northern Australia.
The experiences of Japanese settlers in Australia:
How did they live and work in Australia?
Many Japanese immigrants lived and worked in pearl diving areas.
Deep-water diving was a dangerous occupation, as divers risked injury or death from decompression, sickness, weather events, or shark attacks.
Broome’s Japanese cemetery contains the graves of hundreds of Japanese men who died seeking pearls.
Many Japanese people married Australian settlers and raised families in these regions.
Other Japanese became involved in a range of trading activities.
Some Japanese immigrants came as indentured workers, meaning that they had to pay back their fares before they could keep their own wages.
The experiences of Japanese settlers in Australia:
Describe the contributions of Japanese workers to the development of Australia until 1900.
Japanese workers’ expertise in deep-water diving was crucial to the development of the Australian pearl industry.
The pearling industry was quite profitable, and sold large amounts of pearl shells to international markets to make buttons.
During the early twentieth century, Broome produced 80% of the world’s mother-of-pearl shells.
Other Japanese contributions include those in the trade industry:
e.g. Fusajiro Kanematsu, a Japanese businessman, established a trading company that eventually controlled most of the trade of Australian wool to Japan.
e.g. The Nakashiba family, who ran a store in Cairns that sold local and imported goods, making an important contribution to the wealth of the town.
The experiences of Japanese settlers in Australia:
Describe the impact of discrimination on Japanese settlers.
Japanese immigrants experienced racism from European Australians due to their different appearance and unfamiliar culture.
In 1896, the Japanese government set up a consulate office in Townsville, Queensland to serve the many Japanese citizens in the area, which rejected the humiliating and racist treatment of Australian governments towards its people.
Unlike other Asians, some Japanese divers were exempted from the White Australia policy after Federation due to their excellence in deep-water diving which was instrumental to Australia’s extremely profitable pearl industry.
The experiences of Chinese settlers in Australia:
Why did they come to Australia?
On European settlement, a few convicts were of Chinese background, while most came as indentured labourers.
However, the gold rushes of the 1850s prompted large numbers of Chinese men to immigrate to Victoria and NSW.
Many of these immigrants were from the southern provinces of China around the Pearl River delta and were seeking a better quality of life in Australia.
Many were also political refugees who left China after the Taiping Rebellion which raged across China between 1850 and 1864.
The experiences of Chinese settlers in Australia:
How did they live and work in Australia?
As the gold diggings ran out, some settlers returned to China but many stayed and moved into other occupations.
Some found work in vineyards or by operating pearling luggers, while others played important roles as store keepers, furniture makers, and in import and export businesses.
Many took up market gardening and supplied towns and outback stations with fresh vegetables.
Some became respected community members, such as Mei Quong Tart (1850–1903) and William Ah Ket (1876–1936).
The experiences of Chinese settlers in Australia:
Describe the contributions Chinese workers to the development of Australia until 1900.
Chinese settlers participated and contributed to all aspects of the colonies.
They contributed to the development of local facilities, newspapers, and also brought with Chinese cultural festivals.
In 1879, three Chinese men wrote The Chinese Question in Australia in protest against the laws that discriminated against them.
These writers pointed out that anti-Chinese legislation was illegal, as it contradicted the 1860 treaty between the Chinese and British governments, which meant that Chinese people had “a perfect right to settle in any part of the British Empire”.
This treaty also allowed British and Australian people to settle in China.
The experiences of Chinese settlers in Australia:
Describe the impact of discrimination on Chinese settlers.
By the late 1850s, Chinese immigrants represented 25% of miners in Victoria.
In NSW, 60% of miners were Chinese immigrants.
European miners were critical of the Chinese miners because they weren’t Christian and their unfamiliar culture.
Some colonists thought that the Chinese people were too numerous and should not be allowed on the goldfields – this fear of being overrun also created tensions between European and Chinese miners.
In 1855, the Victorian government imposed a poll tax of £10 on all Chinese immigrants arriving in Victoria.
In response, Chinese miners started entering Victoria via Robe in South Australia, and from 1855 - 1857, 17500 Chinese people walked 400 km to reach the goldfields.
Soon, South Australia and New South Wales also excluded Chinese miners.
As gold diggings ran out, some European miners wanted to drive out the Chinese people.
In January 1861, 1500 miners and traders, some armed with clubs, held an anti-Chinese meeting at Lambing Flat in New South Wales.
The government sent police, soldiers and Special Commissioners to establish peace and to protect the Chinese miners.
However, once the authorities left, tensions rose again and on 30 June, between 2000 and 3000 miners attacked the Chinese camp, burning tents and possessions, hitting and whipping the Chinese and cutting off their hair.
Relatively few Chinese women came to Australia, perhaps because of certain hostilities towards Chinese people that occurred from time to time.
The late nineteenth century saw more anti-Chinese feeling and more laws to restrict immigration.
White workers waged campaigns to force Chinese people from their Occupation.
Chinese people were heavily impacted by the White Australia Policy, which denied them entrance to Australia.
Living and working conditions in Australia:
1860 - 1890.
Working and living conditions improved for many Australian working class people.
Factors involved in this increased prosperity:
Increased wealth as a result of the gold rushes.
Investment in property and industries.
Greater demand for food and goods due to population growth.
Living and working conditions in Australia:
1890 - 1900.
The economic depression:
Property prices rose to extremely high levels and then dropped suddenly → people who had borrowed money to invest in properties suffered extreme financial losses.
Many regions of the country experienced a terrible drought from 1895 to 1903, greatly reducing agricultural productivity and increasing costs for employers.
Employers tried to reduce costs by lowering wages → in response, workers built strong unions and organised widespread strikes
Strikes often failed (wielded little results) → this created an increased support for a political party that would achieve their goals.
Workers believed that having workers’ representatives in government would mean that their interests were heard, which later became the Labour Party.
Living and working conditions in Australia:
1900 <
Following 1901, the situation for workers began to improve.
New immigrants from Britain led to the population rising from 3.8 million in 1901, to 4.9 million by 1913.
Following the end of the drought, agricultural conditions improved, and exports (mainly agricultural products) doubled.
The invention of large-scale refrigeration also meant that exports could now include meat.
Describe working conditions at the time.
Unsafe and extremely crowded industrial working conditions.
Manual labour workers (working class) were mainly men, as women were expected to complete domestic work such as caring for the house and children.
Most children (working class) graduated at the end of primary school and entered the workforce directly after, and some children left school earlier in order to work and support their family financially.
Girls were taught domestic crafts, such as cooking and needlework, in school to prepare them for life working at home. Boys were taught subjects such as woodwork to prepare them for life in the workforce.
