describe the economic and political developments of Australia between 1850-1975
Answers
Answer:
1890: the Great maritime strike
1891: the Australian shearers' strike
1891: 16 small banks and building societies collapsed in Melbourne[12]
1892: a strike occurs at the mines in Broken Hill
1892: 133 limited companies went into liquidation in Victoria alone[12]
1893: a major international depression and the speculative property boom of the 1880s, led to the Australian banking crisis of 1893 and a serious economic depression. 11 commercial banks failed or temporarily closed to avoid a run, including the National Bank of Australasia and the Commercial Bank of Australia. On 1 May, the Victoria government implemented a five-day bank holiday to ameliorate the panic.[12]
1894: recovery from the crisis began. Some reforms to regulations and laws were made to try to prevent future financial abuses.[13]
The European settlement of Australia began on 26 January 1788 at Port Jackson (modern Sydney, New South Wales), when the First Fleet arrived with more than 1,000 convicts, marines and a few free settlers, plus a vast quantity of stores to establish a penal colony in New South Wales. The United Kingdom claimed all of eastern Australian as its territory on the basis of terra nullius, though the actual landing and consequent settlement was initially confined to the Port Jackson area. According to the first census of 1788, as reported by Governor Phillip to Lord Sydney, the Home Secretary, the white population in the colony was 1,030, of which 753 were convicts and their children; the colony also had 7 horses, 2903 sheep, 749 swine, 6 rabbits, and 754 cattle.[1] The Indigenous population was not counted or estimated, nor reported at that point. More settlers came with the arrival of the Second Fleet in 1789, and the Third Fleet in 1791, with other convict transports in the years that followed.
Governors of New South Wales had authority to make land grants to free settlers, emancipists (former convicts) and non-commissioned officers. Land grants were often subject to conditions, such as a quit rent (one shilling per 50 acres (200,000 m2) to be paid after five years) and a requirement for the grantee to reside on and cultivate the land. Whaling in Australia commenced in 1791, when Captain Thomas Melvill, commanding the Britannia, one of 11 ships of the Third Fleet, and Captain Eber Bunker of the William and Ann, after landing their passengers and cargo then went whaling and sealing in Australasian waters. Seal skins, Whale oil and baleen (whalebone) were valuable commodities and provided Australia with its first major export industries. Sealing and whaling contributed more to the colonial economy than land produce until the 1830s.[2] When Governor Phillip left the colony in December 1792, the European population was 4,221, of whom 3,099 were convicts.
Hobart in what was then called Van Diemen's Land (modern Tasmania) was established in 1804 as a penal settlement. It was founded more to forestall a possible French claim to that part of Australia than for any immediate economic benefit to the Sydney settlement.
The colony of New South Wales barely survived its first years and was largely neglected for much of the following quarter-century while the British government was preoccupied until 1815 with the Napoleonic Wars. One very important British oversight was the provision of adequate coinage for the new colony and, because of the shortage of any sort of money, the real means of exchange during the first 25 years of settlement was rum. Though it did not solve the problem arising from the lack of coins, but in an attempt to put some order into the economy, in 1800, Governor Philip Gidley King set the value of a variety of foreign coins circulating in New South Wales. During this period the New South Wales Corps, whose officers had benefited most from access to land and imported goods (thus hopelessly entangling public and private interests), defied the authority of the governors. The New South Wales Corps was recalled in 1808.
Governor Macquarie was appointed in the following year. There was a change of policy under his administration towards the promotion of a private economy to support the penal regime, separate from the activities and interests of the colonial government. There was a significant increase in transportation after 1810, which provided cheap and skilled labour for the colony. As laborers, craftsmen, clerks and tradesmen, many convicts possessed the skills required in the new settlements. As their terms expired, they also added permanently to the free population.
The Blue Mountains were a barrier to the expansion of the colony. The crossing of the Blue Mountains in 1813 enabled the settlers to access and use the wealthy land west of the mountains for farming. Bathurst was established as Australia's first inland settlement.[3] The first bank in Sydney, the Bank of New South Wales, was established in 1817. The Bank, and each private bank established afterwards, could issue its own paper money. During the 19th and early 20th century, the Bank of New South Wales opened branches, first throughout Australia and Oceania, including branches at Moreton Bay (Brisbane) in 1850, then in Victoria (1851), New Zealand (1861), South Australia (1877), Western Australia (1883), Fiji (1901), Papua (now part of Papua New Guinea) (1910) and Tasmania (1910).