Ideas of Nationhood

This chapter describes the principal ideas of nationhood that have operated during the European history of Australia. It describes how late Enlightenment beliefs in liberty and progress and their expression in revolutionary France and North America informed campaigns for democratic rights in Australia. While some activists were influenced by republican sentiment, most sought to claim what they believed to be their British birthright. The independent nationalism of the late nineteenth century, with its secular and socialist inflections, dissipated as geopolitical uncertainty drove Australians more deeply into the arms of the British Empire. Federation was driven by a progressive and idealistic nationalism, less radical than the late-nineteenth century version, which was soon snuffed out by the geopolitical ructions that resulted in the First World War. Contemporary Australians are more likely to source their nationalist sentiment from the Anzac mythology than from the literal moment at which the nation was created, leaving Australian ideas of nationhood curiously detached from the civic apparatus of the nation state.