Settler Society in the Australian Colonies: Self-Government and Imperial Culture

The 1820s to the 1860s was a foundational period in Australian history, arguably at least as important as federation. Convict transportation provided the labour on which the first settlements depended before it was brought to a staggered end, first in New South Wales in 1840 and last in Western Australia in 1868. The numbers of free settlers rose dramatically, surging from the 1820s and again during the 1850s gold rushes. The convict system increasingly included assignment to private masters and mistresses, and offered settlers the inducement of unpaid labourers as well as the availability of land on a scale that defied and excited the British imagination. By the 1830s schemes for new kinds of colonies, on the lines of Edward Gibbon Wakefield's systematic colonization, gained attention and support. The pivotal development of the 1840s and 1850s within the Australian colonies, and the political events that form the backbone of this story, were the attainment of representative and responsible government based on the Canadian model. These political developments were linked to the frontier violence that shaped settlers' lives and became accepted as part of respectable manhood.