History of australia
Australia
History
Australia's original inhabitants, known as Australian Aborigines, have the longest continuous cultural history in the world, with origins dating back to the last Ice age. Although mystery and debate shroud many aspects of Australian prehistory, it is generally accepted that the first humans travelled across the sea from Indonesia about 70,000 years ago. The first visitors, called 'Robust' by archaeologists because of their heavy-boned physique, were followed 20,000 years later by the more slender 'Gracile' people, the ancestors of Australian Aborigines.
Discovery
Although Portuguese and Spanish mariners may have seen the east coast of Australia in the 16th century, they concentrate on India, East Africa, and Southeast Asia and explored these parts of the world. It were the Dutch, however, who began to explore the continent. Helped by better sailing ships and greater knowledge of global wind systems, it was the Dutchman Dirk Hartog, who landed on an offshore island of Western Australia.
He was the first known European, who set an foot on Australian soil.
Exploration
In 1768, Captain James Cook left England on a three-year expedition to the Pacific. This expedition also took him to the unknown continent Australia. Cook landed at Botany Bay on the eastern coast and named it New South Wales. It was he and his staff, including the botanist Sir Joseph Banks, who later supported settlement in Australia. Cook made two more voyages, to add information on the Australian landmass and to certify Britain's claims to the continent.
Colonialation
Britain moved quickly after American Revolution ended in 1783. Most important factor was Britain's need to relieve its overcrowded prisons. Several violent incidents at overcrowded prisons lead the Government to the decision, that certain prisoners should be removed from British Prisons.
Additionally, Australia was of strategic importance to Britain, and it provided a base for the Royal Navy in the eastern sea. Also, Australia could be used as an entry point to the economic opportunities of the surrounding region. All these points figured in the decision by Lord Sydney, secretary of state of home affairs, authorised the colonisation of Australia.
The First Fleet, comprising 11 ships and around 1,350 people, was sent to the unknown continent - the only information about New South Wales was that from Cook's voyage of 1770. From these records it was decided the first settlement would be at Botany Bay, and a second settlement would be established at Norfolk Island to provide wood for ships and masts.
However, on arrival at Botany Bay on 18 January 1788, Captain Phillip decided the site was not suitable and decided to look for another. He decided upon Port Jackson and the people of the First Fleet established Australia's first settlement on 26 January 1788.
Until the American War of Independence, Britain had sent convicts to America. American independence ended the practice and the British prisons and prison hulks were full to overflowing.
The island continent at the end of the world seemed a perfect place to send them
The First Fleet was barely prepared for the task which it faced with. Little was known about the climate, animal or plant life of the land mass, and many of Cook's encounters with the Aborigines had been hostile, at least in part. As it is said in a captains diary:
"All they seem'd to want for us was to be gone."
The Fleet consisted mainly of convicts with officers to guard them. Most of the convicts were men, women were a minority of about four to one - and this caused problems in the settlement for many years.
Few people in the Fleet had any experience of cultivating the land and this, combined with poor soil in the area, lead to the development of farms around Parramatta, but, more seriously, to near starvation (*Hungertod) in the first years of settlement.
Food shortages were normal and the new colony awaited the arrival of the Second Fleet in 1790.
The Second Fleet did provide needed food and supplies, but created other problems for the new colony. 48 people had died on the voyage of the First Fleet, this had risen to 278 on the Second Fleet voyage. Officers, convicts and sailors were so sick and ill, that most of those who survived the journey were barely able to walk, the Fleet has come to be known as the 'Death Fleet'.
In spite of the problems, however, the settlement grew, and is now the site of Australia's largest city - Sydney.
By the mid-1800s, Britain had sent more than 150,000 convicts to Australia, and so Australia began to grow rapidly and continually.
Beginning in 1793, free settlers began to arrive. Meanwhile, some Aboriginal people were assimilated into white settlements, while others assisted settlers as guides, trackers, and stockmen. But the frontier, as it moved across the country, was generally a place of conflicts and sporadic bloodshed.
From the 1820s to the 1880s new colonies were established along the coast. Since 1825 Tasmania is an own colony, and since 1829 Western Australia colonialised, in 1835 Victoria was founded in Melbourne and in 1836 South Australia was founded. Especially in Tasmania the conflicts became a full-scale land war at some time, to which colonial authorities responded with declarations of martial law.
On many occasions Aboriginals were deliberately killed by settlers or police.
While they grew, the colonies were pushed further into the Australian continent, where sheep and cattle ranches began to become a major economic base.
Meanwhile, Aboriginal communities began to be destroyed on a large scale. In principle, the official colonial policy throughout the 19th century was to treat the Aboriginals as equals, with the intention of eventually converting them to Christianity and European civilization through schools for Aboriginal children. Such acts, however, stressing good intentions, were infrequently supported and always under-financed. In fact, moving from a policy of protection to one of punishment was typical of the early colonial government.
The culture clash between whites and Aboriginals was especially severe on the frontier. In the 1830s and 1840s, as the frontier pushed inland, some Aborigines were employed on sheep stations, and others were used for police patrols, but even some active church efforts to serve and educate the Aboriginals didn't stabilize race relations. White settlers poisoned and hunted Aborigines and abused and exploited Aboriginal women and children.
In 1850, the "Australian Colonies Government Act" gave the Colonies an almost independent Parliamentarian Government and a constitution.
The deportation of convicts to New South Wales ended in 1840 and 1868 in Western Australia.
Until 1851, there was an immense lack of employees, but this changed, as gold was found in Australia.
A strong economy began to develop very quickly. In only ten years the number of inhabitants grew three times higher.
In 1859 Queensland was separated from New South Wales, four years later, the Northern Territory got separated from South Australia, but it took until 1890 until Western Australia got its first government.
In year 1900, the Commonwealth of Australia worked out a constitution, which became effective in 1901.
Australia was independent.
On the 12.
March 1913 Canberra got new Capital City of Australia, but it took until 1927, for both Parliament and Government to move from Melbourne to Canberra. In this year is also the last recorded massacre between settlers and Aboriginals, when policemen shot 17 Aboriginals.
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