Political History of Australia

This episode we pause the story of Governor Lachlan Macquarie to take a panoramic tour of Australia’s near-abroad and Australia’s infant settlements in the early 1820s.    With the Napoleonic Wars finally over and Britannia ruling the waves, London was able to focus more attention to its continental claim in the south. We survey the remarkably benign geopolitical setting in this corner o...

In 1813 New South Wales was a fast-growing, optimistic society. The colony’s teenage growth spurt could no longer be contained by the rugged sandstone wall of the Blue Mountains just 50 kilometres west of Sydney.   There were multiple valiant efforts to cross the Blue Mountains but it took the determination of Gregory Blaxland, backed by William Lawson and William Wentworth, to finally c...

After the upheaval of the Rum Rebellion, London finally responds. In late December 1809, Lieutenant-Colonel Lachlan Macquarie arrives in Sydney Harbour. He moves quickly to be sworn in as governor on New Year’s Day 1810. Unlike his predecessors, Macquarie does not ease into power. He seizes it.   From his first days in office Governor Macquarie moves with startling speed and authority. He ord...

The men who led the march on Government House to depose Governor William Bligh in 1808 knew there would be consequences. Yet the Rebel Administration played a weak hand with skill and restraint. Beyond removing Bligh at gunpoint, they worked hard to appear measured and proper at every step.   In this episode we examine London’s firm response to the Rum Rebellion: dispatching 800 battle-harden...

On the evening of 26 January 1808 the New South Wales Corps marched on Government House and did something extraordinary: they deposed Governor William Bligh at gunpoint. It remains the only successful armed overthrow of government in Australian history. What followed was one of the strangest and most revealing chapters in our early colonial story — the Rebel Administration.   For nearly two y...

The label Rum Rebellion was a smear dreamed up decades after the seismic events of 26 January 1808. Those dramatic events were not about rum. It was fight over what the future of NSW should be.   For some including Governor Bligh, NSW was to remain a large-scale open prison with a simply economy of small scale ex-convict farmers and an iron grip control by the state. But 20 yea...

As 1807 unfolded, the little British colony of New South Wales was politically charged. Previous governors had attempted to reassert official authority by writing to letters to London and saying mean words about John Macarthur and his ‘trading faction.’ Governor Bligh arrived knowing the job of bringing down Macarthur was his job and his alone.   There were a series of scandals that...

Captain William Bligh assumed office as the Governor of New South Wales in August 1806. Bligh had had a brilliant career at sea but it had been sullied by reports of him being a horrible boss. The governorship of New South Wales was seen by Bligh as a way to redeem his reputation … but rather than change his ways, he doubled down on all his worst traits. Bligh arrived with the mindset of...

More than anyone, Sir Joseph Banks (the botanist who sailed with Captain Cook) deserves credit for creating modern Australia. For years, before and after the First Fleet, Banks served as the unofficial Minister for New South Wales.   As Banks aged however his judgement slipped and by 1804, his sway over the colony was slipping. So Banks decided to bet big by sending in as governor a famo...

Governor Philip Gidley King had had two big wins – he had secured Bass Strait and Van Diemen’s Land for Britain and he had ruthlessly and quickly crushed the Castle Hill Rebellion. But Governor King was a micro-manager and he heavily regulated not only economic activity but also the social lives of the colonists. All his central-planning resulted in the return of food rationing and gener...

The 1804 Castle Hill Rebellion was the most dramatic convict uprising in Australian history. The rebels were Irish political prisoners who had arrived en masse between 1800 and 1802. They were a powder keg. Almost immediately on arrival they plotted a grand mutiny. The purpose was not just freedom … but freedom to return to fight for Irish independence.   The Castle Hill R...

In 1788 Governor Arthur Phillip had proclaimed that the British Empire was now in charge of two-thirds of a continent. It was an audacious claim for a little speck of 1,500 souls. They did quickly build a second settlement on Norfolk Island because London had said it was a priority … but for the next 14 years there would be no more settlements. The process of continental expansion b...

In 1802 the political focus of New South Wales was not domestic but geopolitical. The British and the French had been at war for nine years already and had well over a decade ahead of conflict ahead … but in 1802 Britian and France were officially at peace. It was during this interval that two French ships sailed into Sydney Harbour and stayed five months. It was the Baudin Expediti...

In September 1801, Captain John Macarthur of the NSW Corps was challenged to a duel by his commanding officer. Macarthur declined the challenge but his opponent was insistent and so the duel proceeded. Macarthur shot and badly wounded his commanding officer. Governor King soon arrived on the scene and Macarthur was arrested. Governor King had already been in a vicious spat with...

In the late 1790s, John Macarthur took a step back from politics as he was pre-occupied with establishing the Australian wool industry. In mid-1800, the new governor Philip Gidley King was sworn in and it was clear he was a man on a mission to restore the prestige of the state … so Macarthur offered to sell everything and return to England. That sale didn’t eventuate but before long Maca...

In the first year of the 19th century Captain Philip Gidley King was sworn in as the third Governor of New South Wales. The second governor (John Hunter) had come to the job expecting to be a ‘gentlemen governor’ and New South Wales a comfy reward for his decades of distinguished service to the British Empire. But Hunter was driven half-mad by the colony and ended up sacked by Londo...

Governor John Hunter served as the second governor of New South Wales during the second half of the 1790s. As Hunter’s governorship progressed, his misery and paranoia grew as he was increasingly ignored by London and his colonial peers.  Hunter was given a warning in 1798, when London advised him a replacement governor had been selected for whenever Hunter may leave the role … but...

After the  John Baughan Affair  political tension returned to the small but now flourishing colony of New South Wales. It was 1796. In this increasingly tense atmosphere some regular troops at 3am stole a couple of turnips from the Governor’s garden. It was hardly a hanging offence but escalation begat escalation and soon it was a proxy war between Governor John Hunter and...

Governor John Hunter arrived in Sydney in 1795 with instructions directly from King George III to clean up the perceived mess in New South Wales. Hunter had first come to Sydney with the First Fleet in 1788 but he hadn’t been in Sydney for four years and so was surprised and delighted to find that, rather than being a mess, New South Wales was thriving. Hunter wrote back to London in pra...

John Macarthur is the biggest personality of early New South Wales.  He arrived with the army aboard the Second Fleet in 1790 … at what was known as the Starving Time.   But Macarthur seems to have relished getting in on the ground floor of a struggling colony that was audaciously claiming two thirds of an undeveloped continent.   Many officers built prosperous farms and enterprises...

Governor Arthur Phillip departed NSW after almost five years in late 1792. For the next three years NSW had no official governor and so the military boss Major Francis Grose stepped up to the role as Acting Governor during this Military Interregnum.   Phillip had been a micro-manager but Grose dismantled the old order in favour of a laissez-faire approach. Fear of hunger was soon replace...

It’s widely assumed Captain Arthur Phillip is not only the hero of the First Fleet but he was also the hero as governor for the first five years of New South Wales. The reality is more nuanced. As a lifelong servant of the Royal Navy, Phillip only knew obedience and hierarchy. Phillip believed New South Wales’s best hope was with him as an autocrat … but the embryonic colony required spo...

The British flag had been raised, the law had been laid down, the French had sailed off and infant Sydney Cove was starting to resemble a settlement. Governor Arthur Phillip had done a sterling job so far but it was about to dawn on him that he didn’t think to bring out those with agricultural know-how. Two years later around 10% of the colony had died of hunger and things were look...

It’s forgotten today but Proclamation Day on 7 February 1788 was more significant than 26 January 1788. Proclamation was the day that all were assembled and Captain Arthur Phillip morphed into Governor Arthur Phillip and the law of New South Wales was declared to all. It was an ingenious blend of a military dictatorship and English law. We also see Captain Laperouse of the Royal Fre...

The British have arrived in Botany Bay but Arthur Phillip quickly decides to relocate to Sydney Harbour.  Just as he is leaving Botany Bay however two large mysterious ships turn up.  Phillip is alarmed that these ships may try and claim the world’s greatest natural harbour … but it is the British who secure Sydney Cove on the first Australia Day – 26 January 1788. Please leave a comment...