Britain, China and Colonial Australia, by Benjamin Mountford

Abstract

Writing about Britain’s imperial involvement with China has a long history. Over the past decade and more, Australian historians have become increasingly interested in Australia’s relationship with China, and, as Australia grapples with the challenges of a rising China, the generally forgotten fact that Australia has been involved with China virtually from the first establishment of European settlement in 1788 is gaining greater attention. Histories of Australia’s relationship with the Mother Country, throughout the imperial era and beyond, also abound. Benjamin Mountford, in this tightly packed and well-argued monograph, offers us a different perspective, and in doing so breaks what (at least to this reviewer) is new ground, triangulating the British, Chinese and Australian stories. He demonstrates how this three-way relationship impacted on each country and its interests, with significant implications for each, including on broader thinking about the meaning and future of the British Empire, not to mention the growing divergence, within this general imperial identity, of Australian and British (using the word narrowly and anachronistically) ideas about Australia’s role and identity. The book anchors this story in a series of regional, transnational and global developments between the 1780s and the early twentieth century. In his own words, ‘By reintegrating the histories of the Far Eastern and Australian branches of the British Empire, it brings to the fore a series of bilateral and triangular relationships linking Britain, colonial Australia, and China and considers the wider imperial significance of those engagements.’