History

The history of Australia began when people first migrated to the Australian continent from the north, at least 40,000-45,000 years ago. The Aborigines are believed to have arrived in Australia about 40,000 BC during an ice age when Australia was connected to Asia by a land bridge. Tasmania was cut off from Australia around 8,000 BC when the last ice age ended and sea level rose. The Aborigines were a hunter-gatherer society. However dingoes were domesticated by Aborigines about 4000-3,000 BC. The Aborigines hunted with wooden spears and sometimes with stone or bone blades. They also used nets. The written history of Australia began when Spanish, French and British explorers first sighted the country in the 17th century.

In 1770 James Cook, an English explorer, landed on the world's smallest continent and claimed it for Britain, which put it to immediate use. Britain needed a new dumping-ground for its convicts, and in 1788, 11 ships, with more than 700 British convicts, sailed into present-day Sydney and established a settlement in New South Wales. Over the next century, five further self-governing colonies were set up: Tasmania, Queensland, Victoria, South Australia and Western Australia. By 1868, Britain had transported at least 150,000 convicts to Australia. They were joined by free immigrants, many of whose passages were subsidised by the colonial governments. Having been native to the territory for at least 50,000 years, the aborigines painfully made way for the new arrivals. A population estimated at 750,000-1m in 1770 dwindled to 150,000 by 1822, thanks mainly to smallpox brought by settlers, violent resistance to settlers' land-grabbing, and occasional systematic extermination. Aborigines suffered further displacement in the 1850s, when gold was discovered in New South Wales and Victoria. Fortune-seekers poured in from Britain, China, Africa and Europe, pushing aborigines further into Australia's harsh, largely "undiscovered" Outback. The gold rush transformed Melbourne and Sydney into bustling cities, and during the late 19th century Australia was the richest country (per head) in the world.

In 1901 the colonies formed the Commonwealth of Australia, with a constitution that mixed British parliamentary rule and federalism. The British monarch was the head of state, represented by a governor-general. Pro-union and welfare legislation established Australia as liberal and progressive (three women stood for election in 1903). During both world wars Australia fought on Britain's side, but in the second it was America that protected it from the Japanese. Industrialisation after the second world war attracted huge numbers of immigrants-more than 2m over 30 years (although until the late 1960s, nonwhites had a hard time getting in). In 1975, the government introduced restrictions on unskilled immigrants. In 1967 aborigines gained full citizenship, and the first Aboriginal member of parliament was elected in 1971.

Today, aborigines make up about 2% of the country's population, and many remain desperately poor. The post-war period also saw a gradual realignment of foreign and defence policy towards America. The ANZUS security treaty was signed with America in 1951. Japan became Australia's main trading partner in 1966, and Britain joined the EU in 1973, shifting its trade patterns away from its former colonies. In 1975 the governor-general sacked Gough Whitlam's Labor government, leading to a Liberal victory at the next election and a sharp rise in republican sentiment (though in 1999 a referendum over becoming a republic failed). In the 1990s Australia, newly a member of the Asia-Pacific Economic Co-operation group, turned increasingly to this region for its foreign policy and trade. Economic liberalisation over the past two decades has made the "lucky country" competitive, and shielded it from the Asian crisis of 1997-98.