Australia and New Zealand
Overview
Statewide Dual Credit Modern World History: Unit 11, Lesson 5
A discussion of how European settlement affected Australia and New Zealand.
Europeans also expanded into Asia. Most British travelers who settled in the Pacific went to either Australia or New Zealand. First explored by Captain James Cook (1728-1779) in the late 1760s and 1770s, Australia began as a penal colony in 1787. By the time the British government stopped shipping convicts to Australia in 1869, over 160,000 prisoners had been deported to the colony. By the late 1800s, Europeans began voluntarily migrating to Australia in larger numbers. They came mostly to farm or herd sheep. Boasting an impressive export economy, Australia attracted foreign investors and their capital. To encourage migration and the growth of trade, immigrants were offered free passage and free land. The discovery of gold in Victoria in 1851 also accelerated migration. When Cook first came to Australia, he encountered indigenous people who lived by hunting and gathering. As sheep farmers began to settle the outback, they pushed aborigines out of their traditional hunting grounds. Violence and disease would act in tandem to reduce the Aboriginal population and dispossess them of their land.
New Zealand developed along a different path. Resistance from the Māori people made settlement more difficult for Europeans, many of whom chose to relocate to Australia. Australia and New Zealand gained responsible government over the 19th century as the British parliament allowed the larger European- dominated colonies within its empire more control over local affairs. The politics of these places, then and now, were heavily influenced by British traditions. Even today, Australia and New Zealand are a part of the British Commonwealth and remain constitutional monarchies.