Claiming that the history of Australia is unique would be pointless since the specifics of cultural, economic and political development of any state has a range of specific features, which stem from the state’s identity and predetermine the uniqueness of the patterns of historical development (Allen 1989).
However, in case of Australia, the evolution of the continent should be considered unique both compared to the rest of the continents and on its own merits, judging by the traditional patterns occurring in the history of every single state. When talking about the uniqueness of the Australian evolution, one traditionally mentions its colonial stage of development, i.e., the point at which the state was used as a prison for political convicts (Aveling 1979).
Though colonial Australia is traditionally represented as the location for the European convicts to serve their sentence, whereas little light is shed on the conflict between the local people and the colonialists, the armed resistance of the latter to the forces of the United Kingdom and other states is also represented in a range of ways, starting from the attempt at pointing at the failures of the colonists in their diplomatic endeavours (Reynolds 1989) to depicting the deplorable state of the Australian women in the realm of the chauvinist environment and the first attempts at introducing the feminist principles into the realm of the Australian culture.
Despite the numerous differences in the approaches towards describing the colonist era of the Australian history, the works by Reynolds and the collection of works compiled by Quartly share a range of common ideas regarding the environment, in which the Australian policies were shaping and the changes that the state was yet to undergo, as well as the effects that these changes would have on Australians’ social life, economics and culture.
Reynolds’ work has several strengths, the key one being its accuracy and an impressive overview of rather broad evidence concerning the Australian colonial society. Reynolds seems to be sympathetic towards the native Australians, yet he does not shy away from mentioning the mistakes that both sides made when the process of colonization was taking place.
Nevertheless, some of the details of Reynolds’ book do not leave room for doubts regarding his opinion on the issue; for example, the very title of the paper sets the mod for the interpretation of the colonial period, with the British people being called “invaders” (Reynolds 1996, p. 4).
It is worth noting that Reynolds asks the question that seems to have slipped out of Quartly’s work: in contrast to Quartly, Reynolds considers the actions of the white Australians – or the lack thereof, to be more exact – from an ethical standpoint. Herein lies the key weakness of the paper: Reynolds tries to be objective, yet fails for the most part.
As it has been stressed above, Quartly provides an entirely different way of looking at the situation in colonial Australia. While Quartly dos not exactly deviate from discussing the political dilemmas, such as the confrontation between the native Australians and the British invaders, she, nevertheless, manages to make a very strong statement about the origin, evolution, and influence of the Australian feminism (Quartly, Janson and Grimshaw 1995, p. 43).
It is remarkable that both authors seem to be making very similar arguments concerning the effects that the tactics of Great Britain had on the Australian society, mentioning the fact that the regulations, which the British colonies provided as the basis for the Australian state policy to be based on (Crowley 1973), triggered considerable negative consequences for the local population.
More to the point, both authors make it clear that the very idea of turning Australia into a political prison and using it as a venue for the prisoners to be sent to to serve their lifetime sentence, from an ethical perspective, was a very controversial solution at the very least. Also, the layout of the historical facts, which Quartly has included in his works, seems to be very close to the one that Reynolds uses in his research.
Nevertheless, Quartly takes an entirely different approach in his paper as he starts considering the positive effects that the Australian colonial society had on gender issues. Herein the strength of Quartly’s paper lies.
Instead of searching for the solution to the ethically dubious conflict between the native population of Australia and the colonists, the author provides an overview of the positive and the negative effects that the political changes in question triggered in the Australian society. It should be noted, though, that, unlike Reynolds, Quartly focuses on the people inhabiting the Australian colonies (Quartly, Janson and Grimshaw 1995, p. 118).
The results that both types of research list provide a lot of food for thoughts. On the one hand, the era of colonial Australia has affected the residents negatively, leaving them to witness economic desolation of the state and the experience of political repressions, as well as the fact that their land was used as the place for convicts to serve their sentence.
On the other hand, the feminist movement, which started in the Australian colonies for women, seems to have made a great impact on the feminism movements all over the world, triggering the further evolution of the emancipist ideas.
On the other hand, the unique culture of the Australian people was gradually being destroyed and replaced by the culture of the British colonists, as Reynolds explains, Representing the Australian colonial society in their unique way, the two sources provide a fairly decent overview of the socio-cultural and economic dilemmas of the Australian society.
It goes without saying that Australia’s evolution as a state, both in terms of its economics and culture, differed greatly from the rest of the states not only because of Australia’s geographical isolation, but also as a result of the colonial politics of Great Britain, which used Australia as the location for its political prisoners and the new lands to be explored as the possible place for the expansion of the colonies. Because of the ambiguity of the situation, various ways of looking at the conflict between the residents and the colonialists exist.
Reynolds, for example, prefers to focus on the race aspect of the conflict, as well as the ethical dilemmas that the confrontation between the Local Black population and the White colonists predisposed. Quartly, in his turn, preferred to provide an overview of the ambiguous gender situation, which the conflict between the Australians and the colonists prompted.
Nevertheless, the two authors come up with similar conclusions concerning the political problems, which Australia was facing at the time. While the perspective, from which the two authors considered the Australian society and the effects of the colonies on the latter, they seem to provide similar considerations on the effects that the British colonies have had on the development of the Australian economy and politics.
Reference List
Allen, M. (1989). Fresh evidence, new witnesses. Adelaide: Wakefield Press.
Aveling, M. (1979). Westralian voices. Wedlands, W.A: University of Western Australia Press.
Crowley, F. K. (1973). A documentary history of Australia: colonial Australia. Melbourne, AU: Nelson.
Quartly, M., Janson, S. and Grimshaw, P. (1995). Freedom bound I: documents on women in colonial Australia. St. Leonards, N.S.W.: Allen & Unwin.
Reynolds, H. (1995). Dispossession: Black Australians and white invaders (Australian Experience series). St. Leonards, N.S.W.: Allen & Unwin.