How Australia Became British by Howard T Fry
To many, Australia suggests a corner of the Commonwealth with a close natural kinship to home - Blighty with sun and beaches. But the tale of its discovery, colonization and eventual settlement by the British is one fraught with conflict, diplomacy, trade and geopolitical forces, involving such actors as China and the European Triple Alliance of France, Spain and the Netherlands. Wilson's discovery of the Eastern Passage was the event that opened up the South China Sea to burgeoning European trade. The political situation, however, was a difficult one. The Seven Years War followed by the American war had created great friction between Europe's rival imperial powers - struggles that continued in the new frontier of the South China Sea. The French, assuming an initial dominance in Cochin China (now South Vietnam), rivaled the interests of the Dutch East Indies; the Spanish Philippines came up on the region's eastern flank. To the north lay China itself, then in great political disarray, as the long reign of the aged emperor drew to a close. This struggle for trade monopoly and political dominance was played out on the vast Australian continent. Since the time of Dalrymple and Baudin, the existence of a vast and virgin land in the Southern Hemisphere had fascinated Europeans. Originally ringfenced by Napoleon for a French colony, both the Dutch and British made their own stake on the strategically important location. In this magisterial study, Howard T. Fry shows how, through the complex relations of European power and the ever-present influence of a new Chinese Empire, Australia came to be British.
Howard T. Fry is a historian specialising in the expansion of British trade during the long eighteenth century. Having served in the Second World War in the army and RAF, he returned to academia, serving first as a schoolmaster and then taking his Ph.D from Cambridge with a thesis on Alexander Dalrymple. He established and taught a course on South-East Asian history for the University of North Queensland, spending two decades of his career in Australia; in 1984 he was awarded a Harold White Research Fellowship at the National Library of Australia.
| SKU | Unavailable |
| ISBN 13 | 9781445664989 |
| ISBN 10 | 1445664984 |
| Title | How Australia Became British |
| Author | Howard T Fry |
| Condition | Unavailable |
| Binding Type | Paperback |
| Publisher | Amberley Publishing |
| Year published | 2016-12-15 |
| Number of pages | 288 |
| Cover note | Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary. |
| Note | Unavailable |