The Australian identity, an aboriginal soul
For the Aborigines, various waves of settlement followed one another, but it is still difficult to date them. Around 4,000 years ago, the dog appeared in Australia, probably brought from Southeast Asia by human groups. It triggered major socio-cultural changes: it was at this time that hunting societies were formed that went beyond the practices of hunter-gatherers. Researching the anteriority of aboriginal occupation remains a complex task, but rock art remains a privileged clue for dating the traces of occupation by these first nations: some of these paintings are among the oldest in the world, dating back at least 30,000 years! Centuries before the arrival of British settlers, trade was already taking place between Indonesian fishermen and the aboriginal peoples of the north of the continent. The Yolgnu aboriginal language still bears traces of this period, with words of Asian origin such as rupiah (coin) and balanda (white man).
As hunter-gatherer peoples, the Aborigines were able to adapt to extreme climatic conditions, a sign of their ability to survive in these particularly hostile lands. Long before Europeans set foot on their continent, the Aboriginal people were made up of hundreds of nations and languages. The first inhabitants, from South-East Asia, reached these southern lands in waves during the Ice Ages, giving them access by land. Arriving from the north, they gradually descended southwards, developing cultures and rituals specific to each clan. Adapting to different climates, geographies and resources. Contrary to the beliefs of the settlers who had just arrived on the land, the Aborigines were not a uniform people. For example, the Saltwater People, those living close to the sea, traditionally had very different lifestyles from the freshwater people, who lived further inland. Recent research shows that they were also more sedentary than popularly thought, and that their hunter-gatherer profile is also to be put into perspective, with some traces of proto-agriculture found on the continent. Bruce Pascoe's best-selling book Dark Emu opened up this debate and encouraged a whole section of the population to find out more. As Pascoe writes: "Colonial Australia sought to forget the advanced nature of Aboriginal society and economy, and this amnesia was entrenched when the settlers, who arrived after the depopulation of the entire district, found no structure more substantial than shelterbelts, and no people other than the humiliated, degraded and sickly. (...) It's no surprise that after 1860 people saw no trace of any other pre-existing complex civilization (...) Pioneer attacks on Aborigines at harvest time are highly underestimated warlike parades". Some accuse European settlers of having sought to eradicate the Aborigines, whether through the policy of assimilation, or through massacres in order to illegitimately appropriate their lands. The diseases brought by the Europeans sometimes eradicated populations that had never been in contact with these new viruses (influenza, measles, smallpox...). Although there is no evidence of a systematic desire to eliminate the original inhabitants, the arrival of the settlers was a disaster for the Aborigines.
A land of convicts
Australia is undeniably a land of convicts. Today, Australians claim to be the descendants of these "founding fathers" from various parts of the British Empire. Deported criminals, these convicts were generally convicted of petty crimes during the period of misery in Britain. Of the 859 arrivals, the 11 ships of the First Fleet that landed in Botany Bay carried 751 convicts. The first penal colony was thus founded. The Museum of Sydney, built on the site of the governors' first residence, tells their stories. In all, an estimated 162,000 exiles joined the colony: a settlement system that proved to be the largest exile orchestrated by a European government. The new settlers benefited from the system of assignment and took advantage of the convicts as free labor. After a few years, it was possible for well-behaved convicts to earn their freedom. After serving a certain period of time, convicts could be granted a parole called a " ticket of leave " (a permit to travel and work under certain conditions). Free to live wherever they wished, convicts enjoyed a relative autonomy: concentrated in New South Wales, they were easily employed in all sorts of activities and thus contributed to the colony's finances. The colony also organized a system of release by conditional pardon (a conditional freedom that did not allow them to leave the colony). By 1820, the convicts were in the majority in number compared to the "free" landowners who had come to colonize the future nation. They also constituted the great mass of workers who laid the foundations of Australia. Until 1827, a dozen hectares were offered to former convicts who had served their sentences. Once again free citizens, they had access to much more enviable living conditions than those left in Great Britain: following their emancipation, they integrated the new Australian society. Some of them formed a new class alongside the British settlers and became richer over the years. However, the presence of the convicts gave the new country a bad reputation. So the free settlers fought to obtain the abolition of deportations: this will definitively end in 1840 in New South Wales. In Tasmania, the deportations continued until 1853, and in Western Australia until 1868. And if, for a long time, admitting that one had a convict ancestor could be a shame that one tried to hide, today their descendants claim it as a pride.
Successive waves of migration
Immigration is the backbone of modern Australia. The country's history has been marked by various waves of migration, with people from all corners of the globe trying to escape the hardships of their homelands in search of a better future. Disembarked by ship, European settlers first settled on the Australian coast from Sydney to Perth, via Adelaide. From 1820 to 1850, the colony was united by a community spirit and no racial ideology prevailed: among the newcomers were Jews, Scots and immigrants from Black Africa. The flow of migrants intensified with the gold rush, which brought a veritable ethnic melting pot to the territory. While the economic effects of the " rush of gold " are measurable, the demographic and social consequences are no less significant. This migratory surge broke down the well-established spirit of camaraderie to some extent, and the arrival of Chinese labor in the 1850s initiated a number of tensions. By 1860, the country had a population of over 1.1 million, and twenty years later, in 1880, Australian-born settlers were already outnumbering the Aboriginal population. In less than 10 years, the population, which had been reduced to a mere handful of British settlers, tripled, and in Victoria quintupled. A century after the landing of the first fleet, Australia had more than two million new inhabitants.
At the same time, these frenetic settlements led to a gradual decline in the number of Aborigines in the territory. The new arrivals were indifferent, cared little for the presence of the Aborigines and despised them the vast majority of the time. This disdain was not exclusively directed at the Aboriginal peoples: because of their insularity, the British colonists tried from the very first generations of immigrants to maintain the "white race" by preserving the homogeneity of the British colony. Throughout the 19th century, the Chinese, who helped build the country, settled and made their fortune in the gold mines. The Chinese population jumped to 17,000 in 1855, then to 40,000 in 1859, representing 20% of the adult male population: the colony's population quadrupled in twenty years. Their massive arrival, seen as a "yellow peril", contributed in particular to the emergence of the "White Australia" policy, envisaged as a relief policy to counter the arrival of non-European migrants. In 1855, the new Parliament of the colony of Victoria introduced a measure aimed at reducing the number of Chinese by imposing a high head tax. Under the pretext of limiting economic competition, this concealed racism continued until the 19th century, when numerous riots broke out in the Asian quarters of the country's major cities. Maintaining racial purity was a priority: any mixing with "races" considered "inferior" would inevitably lead to a decadent society. New migrants also aroused the hostility of established Australians, who criticized them for competing unfairly with European workers by accepting much lower wages.
To limit non-British - and even more European - immigration, the Australians resorted to a subterfuge: from 1901 onwards, all prospective immigrants had to pass a short dictation in English. Only people of color were required to do so. The " White Australia " policy lasted until the 1970s, favoring ethnically selective immigration in order to preserve the Anglo-Saxon - in other words, white - character of Australian society. At the same time, the mixed-race population, the result of relations between settlers and Aborigines, grew to the point of threatening the "White Australia" policy. To deal with this "problem", a policy of removing mixed-race children was introduced, in order to forcibly assimilate them into the European population.
After the Second World War
Determined to intensify population growth, while at the same time channelling immigration criteria, Australia set up various immigration programs. One of these offered British families the chance to come by liner for just ten pounds: a political program dubbed the Ten Pound Pom. The policy was also extended to European countries sharing similar Christian values. Two million immigrants soon came to Australia at a rate unmatched at any other time or by any other country in the world. Hitherto predominantly Anglo-Saxon, Australia became, in spite of itself and before its time, multicultural.
After the Second World War, a new program of colonization was announced: the then Minister for Immigration, Arthur Caldwell, invited post-war survivors to come and start a new life in Australia, under the " Populate or perish" policy of mass immigration. In addition to British refugees, this time the lucky country broadened its immigration criteria and welcomed several European nationalities - always with a hidden concern for a white Australia. Later, in the 1960s, a number of refugees from Asia, the Middle East and Africa settled here, as well as Italians, Greeks, Yugoslavs, Germans and Lebanese seeking to make their fortune far from the misery and tribulations of their homelands. It was from the 1970s onwards that the "White Australia" policy began to fracture. In the face of world events, Australia inevitably suffered from its virulent racism in the face of considerable civil rights changes in the United States and later in South Africa. As a result, a policy of multiculturalism was introduced: immigrants were integrated into Australian society without abandoning their cultural heritage. Numerous support programs and measures helped migrants to find their place in their adopted country: language courses for non-English speakers, interpreting services, translated administrative information, etc.
Multicultural and cosmopolitan Australia
Paradoxically, in view of the migration control policies that have prevailed for decades, Australia remains one of the countries where multiculturalism has been most successful. Since 1945, almost 8 million people have emigrated to Australia. After the "yellow peril" policy, Australia has - for essentially geopolitical reasons - cultivated friendship with its Asian neighbors, who have become important allies. Between 2008 and 2015, Australia saw a peak in migration from the world's two most populous countries: China and India. This is what is known as Australia's "Asianization".
A nation founded on migration, Australia welcomes around 200,000 permanent migrants a year, but by 2022 and 2023, net migration will be closer to 500,000. More than one in four Australians was born overseas, and a quarter speak a language other than English at home. In Melbourne and Sydney, 40% of the population was born outside the country. Migration growth (around 0.8% of the population per year) puts Australia on a par with India in terms of population growth. No surprise that Australia is so attractive: it's the only OECD country to have enjoyed uninterrupted economic growth for over 25 years. Multiculturalism is evident on the streets, across the country's different states, territories and cities, where you'll hear all kinds of accents. The fusion of the different cultures that populate this island-continent is undeniably its strength and uniqueness. The blond, muscular, tanned Australian with Anglo-Saxon genetics is no longer just a myth, nurtured for decades by the " White Australia " policy. Today, Australians are Asian, African, European and South American. Within this immigration, the French still occupy a timid, albeit growing, place. At the time of the last census in 2021, there were 35,000 French-born residents in the country, and almost 150,000 claiming French roots.
The multicultural face of Australia today does not, however, withstand the racial tensions that still persist... Like everywhere else in the world, unfortunately. It's still hard to escape the conditioning of " White Australia ", which has left its mark: in the 2000s, riots pitted "white" Australians against Australians of different origins - Lebanese, Chinese or even African. What's more, the country still has a selective immigration policy. But paradoxically, the philosophy of the Australian population, a globalized society, is rooted in a hospitable and benevolent "vivre-ensemble", avoiding conflict between communities. Despite a long-standing reputation as a racist population, Australians are nonetheless very tolerant because they have not had this culture of major conflict: neither civil war nor insurrection. It's a culture of "no worries mate", nurtured by a spirit of freedom, self-fulfilment and comfortable living. This is where the Australian dream differs from the American dream: it's less about making a fortune than finding the right balance between personal and professional life.
