The Australian Dream of an Island Empire: Race, Reputation and Resistance.

The Commonwealth of Australia was founded in dreams of a Pacific empire. One of the first acts of the new nation in 1901 was to request the transfer of British New Guinea to Australian control. Aware of their poor reputation with regard to the treatment of Aborigines, Australian political leaders determined to redeem their reputation in the new colony. At the same time, however, they wanted to encourage white settlement and overcome Papuan resistance to the white take-over of their land. Alfred Deakin recruited professed ‘Australianist' Hubert Murray, the foremost critic of the old regime of Captain Barton, to effect this goal. Papuans were anxious about the transition from British to Australian authority, apprehensive that ‘white men' were coming to steal native land ‘like they had stolen the lands of the Queensland natives'. From the Papuan perspective, the Australian take-over of British New Guinea and Murray's ascendancy represented continuity in colonial practice, rather than the advent of modern imperial ideals. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]