Purdue University Purdue e-Pubs Department of History Faculty Publications Department of History 9-2015 The White Australia Policy, the British Empire, and the World David Atkinson Purdue University,
[email protected] Follow this and additional works at: http://docs.lib.purdue.edu/histpubs Part of the History Commons Recommended Citation Atkinson, David, "The White Australia Policy, the British Empire, and the World" (2015). Department of History Faculty Publications. Paper 4. http://dx.doi.org/10.3366/brw.2015.0191 This document has been made available through Purdue e-Pubs, a service of the Purdue University Libraries. Please contact
[email protected] for additional information. 1 The White Australia Policy, the British Empire, and the World David C. Atkinson In an editorial published during the Australian Commonwealth’s first federal election in March 1901, the Sydney Morning Herald expressed support for the legislative exclusion of Chinese, ‘Hindoos’, and ‘men of other Eastern races’ from the new dominion. Preventing large- scale Asian immigration constituted one of federation’s prime motivations, after all, and inaction augured only misery and ruin. ‘The experience of all countries shows the danger of unrestricted coloured immigration’, the Herald’s editorialists opined, ‘and if we are to have “a white Australia”, the Federal Parliament must devote its attention to the matter at an early stage’.1 At the same time, however, the Herald editorialists also recognised the complex imperial and international sensitivities inherent in Australian