Góðan daginn -

Ég er að mjög yfirgripsmikið verkefni um Ástralíu. Verkefnið nær allt frá því að fjalla um sögu landsins til þess að fjalla um do's and dont's á viðskiptafundum í Ástralíu. Rétt í þessu, þá var ég að ljúka við kaflann um sögu Ástralíu, og í Word eru þetta rúmar 7 blaðsíður með 1,5 földu línubili. Ef að það eru einhverjir sem hafa áhuga á að lesa þetta þá verður það hægt hér að neðan, svo framarlega sem að greinin sé samþykkt.

Ég er ekki viss hvernig menn stundi þennan hluta Huga, en mig grunar að það sé allt frá því að vera áhugamenn um sagnfræði á grunnskólaaldri, allt upp í það að vera hámenntaða sagnfræðinga.
Það kunna að vera smávægilegar málfræðivillur, en ég bið ykkur um að líta framhjá þeim ef að þær eru aðeins minniháttar. Ef að þið getið bent mér á einhverjar upplýsingar til að bæta kaflann, þá væri það einstaklega vel þegið. Einnig væri skemmtilegt ef að þið gætuð bent mér á staðreyndavillur ef að um einhverjar er að ræða.

Með fyrirfram þökk,
Tígurinn

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History of Australia

The arrival of the Aboriginal

“Australia was the last great landmass to be discovered by Europeans.” They had been dreaming of finding a land, full of treasures and abundance, long before the British claimed it as a colony. This continent that they eventually found (lat. terra Australis) had been inhabited for tens of thousands of years.

Australia has its history back to the last Ice age. I seems almost certain that the first human beings came to Australia across the sea from Asia. Australia’s first inhabitants are called ‘Robusts’ by Archeologists who describe them as heavy-boned people. Archelogists and historians believe that this people arrived in Australia about 70.000 years ago. About 20.000 years later, people called ‘Graciles’ arrived in Australia. They are described as lighter and faster than Robust people. Gracile people are belived to be the ancestors of Australian Aboriginal people.
Even though Australia is today arid, the Aboriginal people found much more wetted continent. The fauna included animals that weren’t even known in South-East Asia, such as giant marsupials such as the kangaroos, and huge birds, the emu, that couldn’t fly. This continent was relatively not dangerous, because it had very few carnivorous predators.
When the last Ice age came to an end 15.000 – 10.000 years ago, the sea level arose quickly as well as the climate. Vast areas of the country became inundated in only few decades and many of the inland lakes dried up. However the Aboriginal people spread evenly throughout the land and the costal areas became occupied quickly.

European discovery

Captain James Cook is usually credited as the first European who arrived in this new continent. However, it is believed that Portuguese explorers were the first European explorers to arrive in Australia in the first half of the 16th century. Historians have also found some resources about a Spanish explorer, Luis Vaez de Torres, who sailed through the strait between Cape York and New Guiana. This strait bears his name today.
In the 1600s Dutch sailors sailed from Europe and arrived in the west coast of Cape York in search for gold and spices. They didn’t find anything except from dry and very unattractive country, so they packed their belongings and departed. Few months later, this voyage ended in Dutch East Indies (Indonesia). In 1642 a Dutch voyage discovered a country in the south of Australia who was named Van Diemen’s Land (renamed Tasmania some 200 years later).
In 1768, the British Admiralty instructed Captain James Cook to lead a scientific voyage to Tahiti. After the researches in Tahiti he was sent to find the Great South Land. After a transit in New Zealand, his expedition continued and on April 19th 1770, the easternmost part of the continent was sighted and it was named Point Hicks. Captain Cook decided to look out for a suitable landfall in Australia and nine days later Cpt. Cook found an exellent anchorage in a harbor named Botany Bay. When the scientists had done what they had to do, Cpt. Cook decided to sail his ship, Endeavour, in north. Endeavour was damaged on a reef off north Queensland and Cpt. Cook was had to make temporarily settlement. While the craftsmen repaired the ship, Cpt. Cook went exploring the country with the scientists. Most of the time he only made contact with the Aboriginal people. After the repair of Endeavour, he sailed his ship norther until he arrived in Cape York where he renamed the continent New South Wales and claimed it for the British in the name of King George III.

Settlement

Britain was no longer able to send convicts to North America because of the American Revolution in 1776. The prisons in Britain were already overcrowded so in 1779, Joseph Banks suggest that Australia was an excellent place for convicted thieves. Few years later the king announced that he would now start to move criminals to his new colony. It had no revelance for the king that this new continent was already inhabited.
Two years later the First Fleet arrived in Botany Bay under the command to Captain Arthur Phillip. He became the colony’s first governor. He was very disappointed with the new colony and he sent a small boat north to find more suitable land. The crew soon returned and announced that Port Jackson had the world’s finest harbour. The total of 1150 people and two years of supplies were returned back to the ships who were sailed to Port Jackson.
In 1790-91 the Second and the Third fleet arrived in Australia and the population increased to around 4000 people. The new colony was very dependent on Britain because of supplies. But when the crops began to yield, Australia became less dependent and the threat of starvation vanished.
The first years, a very small part of the continent was explored. However Governor Phillip instructed that every attempt should be made to befriend the Aboriginal.
Phillip did not believe that the new colony would progress solely on the labour of convicts, who were already busy making roads and buildings for the government. He decided to grant land to soldiers and people who had served their time. However this only began when Phillip returned to England and the second Governor, Francis Grose took over.

The Rum Rebellion

When the officers had land and free labour at their disposal, they became exploitable, making profits at the expence of other farmers. They started to give rum to the convicts to encourage them to work. Within few years, they were able to buy shiploads of products and resell them for much higher value. Australia became one of the most important trading countries in the world. The officers acted like they could just do anything that they wanterd, just because governor Phillip granted them small area of land each. The officers leader was Officer John Macarthur who managed to defy and manoeuvre three governors.
As governor William Bligh faced his second mutiny in 1808 he got arrested. That was the final straw for the British government which decided to send Lieutenant-Colonel Lachlan Macquarie to Australia. He used his force to arrest Mcarthur who was moved to England where he convicted of his rebellion, the Rum Rebellion.
Governor Macquarie felt that convicts who had served their time should get rights as citizens. This meant that the long-term future for the convicts wasn’t as grim as they expected. When the transportation of convicts was abolished in 1868, almost 170.000 convicts had been shipped to Australia.

Expansion

The exploration and expansion took place for only three reasons in the new colony. Number one is that the British needed a place to put convicted criminals. Number two is that they wanted to occupy the land before someone else did. The third reason is gold, however people didn’t know that there was any gold in Australia.
In the year 1800 there were only two settlements in Australia. The larger one was at Sidney Cove and the smaller one on Norfolk Island. The ensuing 40-50 years was a period of great discovery. The inlands of Australia was explored as well as the islands outside of Australia. A settlement was established at Hobart (Tasmania), Brisbane, Perth, Adelaide, Melbourne and Canberra, which is the capital of Australia today.

Extermination of the Aboriginal

When British explorers first arrived in the new continent, it is believed there were around 300.000 Aborigines in Australia. They spoke more than 250 different languages, many “as distinct as English is from Chinese” . Despite the presence of the Aboriginal, the explorers considered the new continent to be a land that did not belong to anyone (lat. terra nullius). Because of the difference from the Aboriginals they could not see any system of governance or permanent settlements. Many Aborigines were dislodged by force and many other died from fatal diseases, such as smallpox, pneumonia and tuberculosis, previously unknown diseases in Australia.
The British invaders also brought new animals to Australia. By 1860 there were more than 20 million sheeps in Australia. Sheeps and cattle destroyed the flora and the habitats which had for a long time been necessary for the reptiles and mammals of Australia.
The Aborigines reacted by killing the sheeps and the cattle by throwing spears to it. Intelligible the British invaders became really angry about it, so they simply started to exterminate the Aboriginals. For the first hundred years, very few Europeans were convicted for killing an Aboriginal. The Aboriginals defended their lands with guerilla tactics until the 1850’s. Then it became impossible for the Aboriginals to defend anymore because the Europeans had imported Australia’s first rifles. In Tasmania, full-blooded Aboriginals were wiped to the last individual.

Gold Rush and consequences

The Gold rush in the 1850’s brought the most significant changes in the social and economic structure in Australia. Especcially in the Victoria territory where most of the gold was found. The Australian govenment was to abandon the law of ownership. Instead they introduced compulsory diggers license fee of 30 shillings a month. That was the amount af money that you had to pay, wheter you would find gold or not. That was necessary for the country to earn some revenue from the wealth that miners dug from the earth.
The following years Irish, Scottish, American and European diggers started began arriving to Australia in their searches for gold. The majority of those diggers never moved back to their old country. Instead they helped Australia raising it’s population and gross domestic production by becoming farmers, shoekeepers and workers.

Federation

One of the Australia’s biggest disadvantage is that it is and has always been seperated into many smaller colonies. In the early 20th century, the British governance in Australia got into a problem when they started making the first constitution. In the 1890’s the inhabitants of all the colonies started talking about that the colonies must federate to improve the economy and the position of the workers by abloish intercolonial tariffs. However each colony was determined to protect its own interests. The constitution was finally finished and published on the 9th of July 1900. It gave only very specific powers to the British Commonwealth, but left all residual powers with each state. It also gave each state equal representation at the parliament.
Australia became a nation on the 1st of January 1901 when the federation was established. However Britain still wanted military support from Australia if needed.

The White Australia policy and depression

Australia has always considered itself as an European outpost. Therefor they created the Immigration Restriction Bill in 1901. The bill is known as the White Australia policy and it was designed to prevent the immigration of Asians and Pacific Islanders. People who wanted to move to Australia were forced to pass a dictation test in European language.
Australia was hit by a depression in the 1930’s. The reason is that the price for wool and wheat plunged. In 1931 more than 30% of the total labour lost their jobs and poverty was extremely widespread. However in 1933 the economy started to recover. The wool price raise very fast and most of the people got their jobs back.

WW I and WW II

When the first World War broke out in Europe in 1914 thousands of Australian troops were sent to fight far away from their homes. Most of the troops were sent to dig a the Dardanelle passage (Mediterranian Sea to Marmara Sea). When they arrived in Turkey they were slaughtered by Turkish troops. Each year on the 25th of April, Australian people commemorate the troops who died in the war.
In the years before WW II Australia became very nervous about the Japanese forces. When the war broke out in Europe, Australian troops were sent to fight beside the British. But when the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbour, the Australian government started to think about their own nation as priority. When the Japanese bombed Singapore, Australians became extremely frightened and refused to send more troops to Europe. However the Australian military forces were still to weak to defend their own country, so they got some assistance from the US.
Australia was in urgent need to improve their military. The solved that problem by offering refugees from eastern Europe to move to Australia in order to increase the population. In the years between 1947 and 1968 more than 800.000 refugees migrated and today they have enormous contribution to the country.