The Fourth of July

It's Independence Day here in the US, and for a country that loves it's flags and its fireworks that adds up to a whole lot of patriotism today.

Australian history is bound up with US independence. The 13 colonies of the US declared independence on this day in 1776. After a few years the British realised they actually meant it, which meant they could no longer send their convicts to the Virginia, Maryland and Georgia penal settlements. After a couple of years of leaving prisoners in ships in the Thames the British thought they might try out that great southland which James Cook discovered before he went and got himself killed in Hawaii. And lo, the First Fleet arrived in Botany Bay, eleven and a half years after the Declaration of Independence.

So that's the history. But I sometimes wonder about the alternatives.

1. What if the US  didn't declare independence, but waited another century and just federated like Australia's British colonies. No need to have a war. The US would be part of the British Commonwealth. There'd be Governor-General Trump. Or rather, there wouldn't be - the US style of directly elected presidential primary then general elections lends itself to extremes of right and left. And Michael Phelps would scoop the pool at the Commonwealth Games.

2. What if the British had arrived in 1788 to an Australian Aboriginal nation which was industrialised and had guns and canons with which to shoot back? Why didnt't they? How did Western Europe industrialise in just a few thousand years (though mostly in the in the last 400) to build ships and weapons, and the Aboriginal people didn't in the 40,000 + years of their habitation of Australia? Jared Diamond proposes the answer in his book Guns, Germs and Steel - Australian animals are useless. You can't domesticate a kangaroo or a wallaby. You can't fence them in. We have no large animals which could be domesticated for meat or horsepower. Every other continent found ways to domesticate some animals. Once you can do this, you don't need to be nomadic, and you can develop agriculture. Productivity increases, labour can diversify, and human effort can do more than just keep people alive. But, kangaroos are useless. Cows, horses, sheep and goats allowed Europe to develop.

So, there's a few random thoughts for the fourth of July!

Comments

  1. Dominic6 July 2018 at 00:09

    Thanks for these random wandering of your brain! You really do have too much time on your hands! Haha. As for Aboriginal development of guns, as you said nothing really big was going to kill them, so they evolved to their level of necessity. Europe’s cave man had tribes to fight off to protect lands so maybe that’s why they developed weapons of mass distributions!
    I talked meaning of life with dad today, very interesting concepts. I love the flexibility of our minds for free thoughts like these.

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  2. Unknown11 July 2018 at 06:33

    Like your musings Jim. One thought however... "more than just keep people alive" - pretty sure the Aboriginal people were doing more than that! In fact, though not industrialised, they worked an average of 4 hours a day and spent the rest exploring life and spirit through each other and artforms etc. And as we all know, very little was damaged beyond saving in their 40 to 60, 000 years, though it took less than 200 years for the industrialised to stuff up so much!
    Ps. I thought we rode tame kangaroos to school and put our books in their pockets??!

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