The
Australian historian Humphrey McQueen contends in his 1970 book, A New
Britannia: An Argument Concerning the Social Origins
of Australian Radicalism and Nationalism, that 'racism is the most
important single component of Australian nationalism'.
In 1901,
when the White Australia Policy was introduced, Australian society was
overwhelmingly British, and the desire to remain 'one people without admixture
of other races' was one of the powerful forces which impelled the colonies
towards federation.
Indeed, it can be argued that 'Australian nationalism was shaped on the anvil
of racial antipathy, and that in the colonial mind the idea of nationhood was
defined, to a large extent, in racial terms'.
The rationalisation for Anglo-Saxon racism in the nineteenth
century was the application of the Social Darwinist principle that humanity,
like biology, was involved in 'the survival of the fittest'. According to
this, the Anglo-Saxon race was at the top of the hierarchy. 'Racial purity' was
stressed.
1843 Anti-coolie petition against proposal to introduce Indians.
1855 In
1857
1860 Anti-Chinese riot at Lambing Flat.
1861 More serious riot at Lambing Flat.
1863
1867 Anti-Chinese riots at Crocodile Creek goldfield in
1873 Riots at Clunies when Chinese used as strike
breakers at mines.
1877 Anti-Chinese riots at
1878 Seaman's strike in
1879 First Intercolonial Trades Union Congress
opposed Chinese immigration.
1880 First Intercolonial Conference stated a need for uniform
restriction laws.
1881
1884 Trade unions against Chinese in furniture trade.
1885
1886
1887 Chinese Commission said the restriction laws breached the Anglo-Chinese
treaty.
1888 Chinese prevented from disembarking at Sydney and Melbourne.
1888
1888 Term 'White Australia Policy' appeared in
1894
Anglo-Japanese Treaty of Commerce and Navigation signed.
1896 Intercolonial Conference wants to extend
restrictions to all non-Europeans.
1897
1900 Federation, Commonwealth given power to legislate on
immigration.
1901 Immigration Restriction Act 1901 and the
Origins
of Racism Behind the White
Influence of Social
Darwinism is evident in the speeches of the Australian founding fathers who created the White Australia Policy in 1901.
The imagery of the time, ie cartoons, conveys a racial impression and this carries
on throughout much of the twentieth century.
The
Impetus for Federation: To Form an Australian Nation
These quotes can be found in the course notes in the library called
"Commonwealth Parliamentary Debates 1901"
Alfred Deakin, Deputy PM, 12 September 1901 in the
Commonwealth Parliament:
"No motive operated more powerfully in dissolving the technical and
arbitrary political divisions which previously separated us than the desire
that we should be one people and remain one people without the admixture of
other races."
Alfred Deakin,
Deputy PM, 12 September 1901:
"The unity of
The
Intellectuals Roots of the White
Social
Darwinism in The Australian Parliament
Prime Minister Edmund
Barton in his speeches on the debates on the Immigration Restriction Bill cited
the work of Social Darwinist intellectual Charles Pearson's work. Pearson's National
Life and Character described the world struggle of the white black and
yellow races for supremacy:
PM Edmund Barton quotes
Pearson's view of world racial struggle in Parliament, 7 August 1901:
"We are struggling among ourselves for supremacy in a world which we
thought of as destined to belong to the Aryan races and to the Christian
faith...We shall wake to find ourselves elbowed and hustled, and perhaps even
thrust aside by peoples whom we looked down upon as servile, and thought of as
bound always to minister of our needs."
Selected quotations on
nation and race from Paul Kelly's video series 100 Years: The Story of
From the 1901 debate on the
Immigration Restriction Bill which established the White Australia Policy:
Prime Minister Edmund Barton: "The doctrine of the equality of man was
never meant to apply to the equality of the Englishman and the Chinaman."
Alfred Deakin:
"Unity of race is an absolute essential to the unity of
William Morris Hughes
(Labor Party): "Our chief plank is a White Australia. There is no
compromise about that. The industrious coloured
brother has to go and remain away."
Bulletin, 2 July 1887: "All men who
come to these shores with a clean record who leave behind a memory of class
distinctions and religious differences of the
old world are Australians. No nigger, no Chinaman, no laska,
no Kanaka, no purveyor of cheap coloured labour is an Australian".
7 August 1901 Barton rose
to speak in the Commonwealth Australian Parliament to speak on the Immigration
Restriction Bill:
"I need make no apology for calling this one of the most important matters
with regard to the future of
Deakin made the most powerful case for a
White Australia:
"The unity of
James Watson (Labor Party):
"The objection I have to the intermixing of these coloured
people with the white people of
Prime Minister Edmund
Barton: "I do not think that the doctrine of the equality of man was
really ever intended to include racial equality. There is no racial equality.
There is that basic inequality. These races are, in comparison with white
races, unequal and inferior."
Supporting the White
Australia Policy was Jewish MP Isaac Isaacs, who would later become Chief
Justice and the first Australian Governor-General: "I am prepared to do
all that is necessary to ensure that
Origins of Racism Behind
the White
Influence of Social
Darwinism is evident in the speeches of the Australian founding fathers who created the White Australia Policy in 1901. The imagery
of the time, ie cartoons, conveys a racial impression
and this carries on throughout much of the twentieth century.
The Impetus for Federation: To Form an Australian Nation
Deakin, Deputy PM, 12 September 1901:
“…no motive operated more
powerfully in dissolving the technical and arbitrary political divisions which
previously separated us than the desire that we should be one people and remain
one people without the admixture of other races”.
“The unity of Australia is nothing, if that does not imply a united race…Unity of race
is an absolute essential to the unity of Australia.”
Later in the debate he
referred to Japan in particular “…It is not the bad qualities but the good
qualities of these alien races that make them dangerous to us. It is their
inexhaustible energy, their power of applying themselves to new tasks, their
endurance… They are separated from us by a gulf which we cannot bridge to the
advantage of either.”
The Intellectuals Roots of the White
Prime Minister Barton in
his speeches on the debates on the Immigration Restriction Bill cited the work
of Social Darwinist intellectual Charles Pearson’s work. Pearson’s National
Life and Character described the world struggle of the white black and
yellow races for supremacy.
Social Darwinism in the
Australian Parliament:
PM Barton quotes Pearson’s
view of world racial struggle in Parliament, 7 August 1901:
“We are struggling among ourselves for
supremacy in a world which we thought of as destined to belong to the Aryan
races and to the Christian faith… We shall wake to find ourselves elbowed and
hustled, and perhaps even thrust aside by peoples whom we looked down upon as
servile, and thought of as bound always to minister of our needs.”
Perhaps The Influence of
Social Darwinism Persists:
The Nazis also embraced a
racial ideology based upon Social Darwinism. Historian David Day wrote in 1997:
‘Whereas the Nazis decreed
that “no Jew can be a member of the German Race”, Hanson and her ilk have
implicitly asserted that “no Asian can be a real Australian”’.
Was
there ever a time when there was no racism?
Some
historians, such as Arnold Toynbee, and Ivan Hannaford, have argued that racism
was absent before modern times because the world was simply divided between
Christian and heathen.
Other
historians point to the colonisation of
Finding Racism absent in the Images of the Middle Ages and Reformation
There
existed the theme in paintings of the Black Magus, depicting one of the three
Magi (wise men) at the birth of Jesus as black - Black Magus in The
Adoration Hans Baldung Grien
1517.
There
is the depiction of black saints in artistic work - The Meeting of Saint
Erasmus and Saint Mauritius by Mathias Grunewald, 1517
Black
figures were shown in position of equality with Europeans in art works -
Central Panel of the Triptych, The Garden of Delight by Hieronymus Bosch
c.1500
Saint
Saint
He
became patron saint of
In
German art, he was occasionally depicted as black.
Was there an Idea of
Racial Inequality in the early conquest of the
The Evolution of Racism
Ivan
Hannaford traces the evolution of the idea of race in Race: the History of
an Idea in the West (1997).
It
appears that the brutal conquistadors of the
Only
in the late eighteenth century, was the concept of race first used according to
its modern meaning to distinguish people of different nations.
Absence of Racism until
the late Eighteenth Century
Even
the eighteenth century’s idea of the ‘noble savage’ did not dismiss so-called
primitive peoples as innately inferior.
The
concept of the ‘noble savage’ entailed that ‘civilised’
man and the healthy ‘savage’ in the ‘Garden of Eden’ or Pacific paradise were
generally the same except for having different environments.
The Absence of Racism in
European Thinking before the late Eighteenth Century?
Unity
and equality in faith were upheld by Christianity.
Most
writers upheld the equality of the North American Indian in legal terms.
However
in practice there was enslavement of the North American Indian.
After
the mid-nineteenth century, the concept of Race developed into one of the major
ways humanity was divided up.
Perhaps
the idea of Race fully developed in the mid-nineteenth century and modern
imperialism?