Colonial Australia
Not offered in 1995
HSY2310
The British Empire and Australia, 1642-1852
Bruce Knox
8 points * 2 lectures and 1 tutorial per week * First semester * Clayton
Australian political and constitutional history is in many respects continuous with that of Great Britain. The subject is concerned with that continuity. It begins with the emergence of a strong parliamentary monarchy under the Tudor and Stuart dynasties, passing through the English Revolution of the seventeenth century and the involvement of the British State in America and India in the 1700s. We will examine the establishment of the penal settlement of New South Wales in the age of the American and French Revolutions, and place Australian developments, constitutional and other, in the British Empire's `age of reform' to the mid-nineteenth century.
Assessment
Essays (4000 words): 60% * Examination (2 hours): 40%
Prescribed texts
Lloyd T O The British Empire, 1558-1983 OUP, 1984
Martin G (ed.) The founding of Australia: the argument about Australia's origins SUP, 1978
McMinn W G A constitutional history of Australia OUP, 1979
Recommended texts
Fieldhouse D K The colonial empires: A comparative study from the 18th century to the present Wiedenfeld and Nicolson, 1966
Gash N Aristocracy and people: Britain 1815-1865 Edward Arnold, 1979
Hirst J B Convict society and its enemies: A history of early New South Wales Allen and Unwin, 1983
Ward J M Colonial self-government: The British experience 1765-1855 Macmillan, 1976