Australian Imperialism in the Pacific: The Expansionist Era, 1820-1920 - Hardcover

Thompson, Roger C.

9780522842074: Australian Imperialism in the Pacific: The Expansionist Era, 1820-1920

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0522842070 ISBN 13: 9780522842074

Publisher: Melbourne Univ Pr, 1980

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Roger C. Thompson defines Australian colonial policies in the Pacific as programs of British annexation or occupation of island territories. The first chapter covers the Australian colonies' interests in the islands between 1820 and 1853. Persuasive activists such as John Dunmore Lang believed Britain's destiny was to occupy New Zealand and later envisaged an independent Australian Pacific empire. As early as 1854 Australians were calling on Britain to annex Fiji, and they played some part in the British takeover at Suva twenty years later. In the 1870s, Graham Berry and others pressed for an Australian "Monroe Doctrine" regarding the Pacific islands, and, beyond this, there was a fairly strong move to annex, or have Britain annex, all the unoccupied Pacific islands. During the First World War, Australian forces occupied Rabaul, beginning the takeover of German New Guinea - a source of irritation to Australia since the early eighties. The alliance with France during the war cooled the issue of the New Hebrides, except for a persistent Presbyterian lobby in Australia. As Thompson notes, Australian expansionism was over by 1920. Queensland had given the main thrust for taking New Guinea, and Victoria was the driving influence to obtain a British influence in the New Hebrides. The author feels that Australian sub-imperialism paralleled similar developments in New Zealand and South Africa, involving a combination of economic ambitions, missionary hopes, and fear of foreign incursions into adjacent territories. The book is based on comprehensive research.

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