| Settlers and the Agrarian Question: Capitalism in Colonial Australia Revised Edition Contributor(s): McMichael, Philip (Author) |
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ISBN: 0521523168 ISBN-13: 9780521523165 Publisher: Cambridge University Press OUR PRICE: $39.89 Product Type: Paperback - Other Formats Published: December 2004 Annotation: This book traces the formation of Australian colonial society and economy within the context of the changing fortunes of British hegemony in the nineteenth-century world economy. Australia??'s transition from conservative origins as a penal colony supporting a grazier class oriented to export production, to liberal agrarian capitalism, was not a simple reflex of imperial setting. Domestically, the ???agrarian question??? - who should control the land and to what end? - was the central political struggle of this period, as urban-commercial forces contested the graziers??? monopoly, of the landed economy. Embedded in the conflict among settler classes was an international dimension, involving a juxtaposition of laissez-faire and mercantilist phases of British political economy. Professor McMichael argues that the transition from a patriarchal wool-growing colony to a liberal-nationalist form of capitalist development is best understood through a systematic analysis of the effect of the imperial politicoeconomic relationship on the social and political forces within nineteenth-century Australia. |
| Additional Information |
| BISAC Categories: - Social Science | Anthropology - Cultural & Social - History | Australia & New Zealand - General |
| Dewey: 306.320 |
| LCCN: 84001762 |
| Physical Information: 0.73" H x 6" W x 9" (1.05 lbs) 324 pages |
| Themes: - Cultural Region - Australian - Cultural Region - Oceania |
| Descriptions, Reviews, Etc. |
| Publisher Description: This book traces the formation of Australian colonial society and economy within the context of the changing fortunes of British hegemony in the nineteenth-century world economy. Australia's transition from conservative origins as a penal colony supporting a grazier class oriented to export production, to liberal agrarian capitalism, was not a simple reflex of imperial setting. Domestically, the 'agrarian question' - who should control the land and to what end? - was the central political struggle of this period, as urban-commercial forces contested the graziers' monopoly, of the landed economy. Embedded in the conflict among settler classes was an international dimension, involving a juxtaposition of laissez-faire and mercantilist phases of British political economy. Professor McMichael argues that the transition from a patriarchal wool-growing colony to a liberal-nationalist form of capitalist development is best understood through a systematic analysis of the effect of the imperial politicoeconomic relationship on the social and political forces within nineteenth-century Australia. |
