The struggle between Australia's history and geography--the history dominated by British influence, the geography by proximity to Asia--has been an enduring theme in the country's contemplation of itself. But while the contest is not new, it is becoming more intense and its ramifications are widening. A range of activities and institutions is involved, including the monarchy, the special species of Australian democracy, trade, languages, military security, and cultural ties.
Settled by Aborigines more than forty thousand years ago and first colonized by the British at Sydney in 1788, Australia was peopled by waves of migrants from the United Kingdom. Though Germans began to arrive as farmers in the 1840s and Chinese landed in the 1850s to dig for gold, the Australians on the eve of the Second World War were overwhelmingly British in ancestry. Most of Australia's exports--wool, foodstuffs, and minerals--went to Britain and about half of its imports came back from there. Australia was also tied to Britain in defense, and Australian volunteers fought on its side in the Sudan, Boer, and First and Second World Wars; more Australian than U.S. troops were killed in the First World War, and that out of a population of under five million.
Between Europe and Asia
