Buy this book on Amazon: A Short History of the World
One unintended consequence of the American Revolution was a focus on the peopling of Australia. From the time of antiquity people had thought that Terra Australis Incognita – or an unknown land of the south – existed as a counterweight to the continents north of the equator. Already occupied by Aborigines for some 50,000 years, Australia had been cut-off from the rest of the world by rising sea levels after the end of the last ice age. It was not till 1606 that Europeans first became aware of the continent after a Dutchman, Willem Janszoon, landed on the west coast while seeking new trade routes to the East. However, he failed to realise that it was a separate continent.
In 1644 another Dutchman, Abel Tasman, explored the northern part of the continent and named it New Holland – a name the continent carried for over a hundred years. Tasman had also previously discovered New Zealand in 1642, which the Dutch had named Nieuw Zeelandia, most probably after the Dutch province of Zeeland, but Tasman never set foot on the island and the Dutch never followed up on this discovery.
The Dutch did not colonise Australia for two main reasons. First, they were more interested in trade with the established Asian markets; Australia seemed dry and barren, and so was predominantly used as a navigational aid in the journey from Europe to the East Indies, or otherwise as a stopping point to take on fresh water. Second, the 17th century was a time of war between the European powers and the Dutch had limited extra resources with which to colonise a new continent.
It was not until 1770 that the Englishman, Captain James Cook, having already claimed New Zealand for the British Crown in 1769, did the same for Australia, landing on the hitherto unexplored east coast and naming the territory New South Wales. When it became clear that the American colonies, which had previously served as a dumping ground for prisoners for many decades, were winning their War of Independence, Australia was soon promoted as a place for Britain to rid itself of its unwanted criminals.
In January 1788 a penal colony was set up near Port Jackson (later to be renamed Sydney after the British Home Secretary) to house the 736 convicts that had left England eight months previously. With the prisoners came a number of entrepreneurs seeking adventure and looking to take advantage of an inexpensive labour force. Thus began the proper settlement of Australia.
The indigenous Aborigines were treated like other peoples who had been discovered by European settlers elsewhere in the world – with murderous contempt. It was not uncommon for them to be hunted like animals, and many of them were wiped out further by European diseases to which they had no immunity.
It was not until 1840 that the Maori, the indigenous tribe of New Zealand, accepted sovereignty of the British Crown under the Treaty of Waitangi and became British subjects. Both Australia and New Zealand became a good source of wool and wheat to Britain, as well as providing men to support it during the world wars of the 20th century. Both countries remain tied to Britain to this day as part of the British Commonwealth.