American-Australian Relations

189 Pages·1947·9.838 MB·English

by  Werner Levi

AMERICAN-
AUSTRALIAN
RELATIONS
by
WERNER LEVI
Assistant Professor of Political Science
University of Minnesota
UNIVERSITY OF MINNESOTA PRESS, MINNEAPOLIS
LONDON • GEOFFREY CUMBERLEGE • OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS
Copyright 1947 by the
UNIVERSITY OF MINNESOTA
All rights reserved. No part of this book may
be reproduced in any form without the written
permission of the publisher. Permission is
hereby granted to reviewers to quote brief
passages in a review to be printed in a maga-
zine or newspaper.
PRINTED AT THE COLWELL PRESS, INC., MINNEAPOLIS
Chapter I of this book was first published in The Pacific
Historical Review and is reprinted here by permission.
The material was copyrighted 1943 by the Pacific Coast
Branch, American Historical Association.
Table of Contents
THE FIRST CONTACTS 1
THE ANGLO-AMERICAN WAR 16
WHALING AND SEALING 25
THE GOLD RUSHES 37
AMERICAN PRECEDENTS IN AUSTRALIAN
POLITICS 49
IMPERIALISM IN THE SOUTHERN AND WESTERN
PACIFIC 65
THE AMERICAN-AUSTRALIAN FAR EASTERN
TRIANGLE 81
THE PARIS PEACE CONFERENCE 96
THE SETTLEMENT OF PACIFIC PROBLEMS 112
AMERICAN-AUSTRALIAN ECONOMICS 127
WAR IN THE PACIFIC 141
THE NEW PACIFIC 159
BIBLIOGRAPHY 174
INDEX 181
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CHAPTER I
The First Contacts
THE United States of America initiated its Far Eastern trade
in February 1784, when the Empress of China under Captain
Green left New York for Canton. Many other ships soon fol-
lowed in her wake, and in 1789 fifteen United States vessels
were in Canton.1 They usually sailed by way of Cape Verde,
the Cape of Good Hope, and the Strait of Sunda, but sailing
conditions were such that this route could be used only dur-
ing the spring. This was a serious handicap to extensive and
regular trade, and quite unsatisfactory to the owner of the
Empress of China, Robert Morris. He decided to try another
route.
On June 20, 1787, he dispatched his ship Alliance under
Captain Reed from the Delaware River via the Cape of New
Holland, as Australia was then called. It was a hazardous
undertaking; no other ship had ever tried this passage before
and sailing conditions were unknown. Captain Reed was pro-
vided only with a map of the world. But the trip proved suc-
cessful. Without dropping anchor en route the Alliance ar-
rived safely in Canton on December 22, 1787. The European
captains there were amazed at this out-of-season arrival of
the Americans. The event was so revolutionary that the Brit-
ish Admiralty became interested in it and made inquiries
about the voyage.2
For the first time an American ship had sailed the Tasman
Sea. There was no colony then in Australia; it was not estab-
lished until one month later, in January 1788. The significance
1 Hunt's Merchant's Magazine, iv:468 (1841). This chapter appeared first as
an article in the Pacific Historical Review, xn : 351 (1943).
2 Letters of Phineas Bond, Annual Report of the American Historical Associa-
tion, i:578 (1896); John Sanderson, Biography of the Signers to the Declaration
of Independence (Philadelphia, 1828), n:431; Kenneth E. Latourette, "Early
Relations between the United States and China," Transactions of the Connecti-
cut Academy of Arts and Science, xxi:16, 45 (1917).
1
2 AMERICAN-AUSTRALIAN RELATIONS
of the trip lay in the discovery of a new trade route to China.
But it was clear that through the use of this route commercial
intercourse with American traders was bound to begin, once a
settlement was established in Australia. The plans of the Brit-
ish government for the colonization of "New Holland" were
known to Americans and were eagerly watched. Even before
the first settlers arrived at Botany Bay, Major Samuel Shaw,
the first American consul in Canton, remarked that the colony
"may become an important settlement, especially when it is
remembered that mighty Rome had a similar origin."3 His
task was to discover trade possibilities and to stimulate inter-
est in them, and neither he nor his friends and associates, the
New England merchants, lost any opportunity for commerce
in the Pacific. Hardly had the colony been founded in New
South Wales when the first American ship arrived.
In 1791 Captain Thomas Patrickson, on a trip to China,
had met in Cape Town Philip Gidley King, a member of Cap-
tain James Cook's crew and later governor of New South
Wales. King told the captain about the new colony and sug-
gested to him that a mixed cargo might be sold profitably
there.* Little did King suspect what difficulties he was creat-
ing for himself with this advice. The following March Patrick-
son sailed from Philadelphia as master of the Philadelphia
and arrived in Port Jackson on November 1, 1792, provided
with a letter of recommendation to the governor, Phillip, by
the British minister to the United States, Phineas Bond.5
The ship "had a cargo of assorted notions much needed in
the settlement, and the speculative skipper sold the lot at a
high figure, in addition to which he found employment for his
ship between Sydney and Norfolk island in the transport of
stores."8 The assorted notions consisted of beef, pitch, tar,
tobacco, gin, and rum. The "high figure" was £2829.11.—for
3 Josiah Quincy, ed., The Journals of Major Samuel Shaw (Boston, 1847), 250.
4 George Mackaness, Admiral Arthur Phillip (Sydney, 1937), 397.
5 For another early American ship, see Roderick Flanagan, The History of New
South Wales (London, 1862), i:81.
6 From a manuscript quoted in a letter to the writer from the Royal Australian
Historical Society, dated February 13, 1941.
THE FIRST CONTACTS 3
the beef, pitch, and tar, which were bought by the colonial
administration. The more profitable remainder of the cargo
was bought at an undisclosed figure by the army officers for
resale to the population.7
Governor Phillip bought the Philadelphia and she never
returned to America. Her captain, Patrickson, went to Eng-
land and secured a contract from the British government for
transporting convicts to Australia.
Thus began a trade relation which proved beneficial to the
American shipper but detrimental to New South Wales—be-
cause the cargo that American ships brought to Australia con-
sisted to a very large extent of spirits. This was nothing novel
to the New England exporter. Trading in Newfoundland for
fish, in Guinea for gold, in the southern colonies for ships'
stores, on the Northwest Coast for lumber, he had learned to
appreciate his rum as an internationally welcome commod-
ity.8 It was no different in New South Wales.
Indeed, the clientele in the colony was most receptive. The
colonists were not picked for their character. They were con-
victs sent to New South Wales from Great Britain as a pun-
ishment, and a large contingent of their guardians from 1792
on were soldiers released from military prisons for the purpose
of controlling the young colony. Governor Macquarie re-
ported home in 1812 that "the Nature of the Inhabitants of
this Country is such that Spirits Must be had."9
The Americans (together with the British) provided them
in abundance. The proportion of spirits to provisions in their
cargoes grew larger and larger. One of the main reasons why
the ships carried any other cargo at all was that foodstuffs
and useful articles were convenient means of forcing the co-
lonial administration to permit the landing of spirits too. Often
the colony suffered from shortages of necessary provisions,
and the arrival of an American ship with the needed supplies
7 Mackaness, Admiral Arthur Phillip, 397.
8 Charles W. Taussig, Rum, Romance and Rebellion (New York, 1928), 16.
9 Parliament of Australia, Joint Library Committee, Historical Records of Aus-
tralia (Sydney, 1914- ), ser. 1, vn:593. The source will be cited hereafter
as HRA.
4 AMERICAN-AUSTRALIAN RELATIONS
was then most welcome. When the second American ship to
Australia, the Hope under Benjamin Page, arrived on Decem-
ber 24,1792, Lieutenant-Governor Grose examined the inven-
tory of the commissary. He found it very small, and this fact,
together with fear of a drought, made him decide to buy the
provisions. But "I lamented on this occasion being obliged to
purchase the spirits, without which he would not agree to the
disposal of his provisions," Grose wrote to London.10
A few years later, in 1802, the colony's reserves of salted
meat were dwindling. The timely arrival of the American ship
Arthur with a quantity of meat, other supplies, and spirits
saved the situation. The spirits were landed with the provi-
sions, and Governor King had to purchase both, although he
was "loth to direct any purchase from strangers."11 Obviously,
this kind of American trade was not favored with the gover-
nor's sympathy. The importation of these large quantities of
spirits considerably affected the colony's development in the
early years of its existence, and the effects could be noticed
for many decades.
Under the governorship of Grose, from 1792 to 1794, the
military succeeded in establishing complete dominance in
New South Wales. Grose not only was unable to restrain the
officers; he was actually their tool. They controlled the politi-
cal and economic life of the settlement and used this control
to further their own personal welfare by every means. Spirits
played an important role in their domination of the popula-
tion. They bought them at reasonable prices from the Ameri-
cans and sold them at figures often reaching twenty times the
purchase price.12 It came to be a rule that provisions and other
supplies of the American cargoes were bought by the com-
missary, and that the spirits were bought by the army of-
ficers.13 In many cases, the whole cargo was bought up by the
officers. If the populace ran out of cash with which to buy the
10 Ibid., ser. 1, i:413.
11 Ibid., m:600.
12 Cambridge History of the British Empire (Cambridge, 1933), vii, pt. i, "Aus-
tralia," 72.
™HRA, ser. 1, n: 681; v: 167.
THE FIRST CONTACTS 5
spirits, they paid for them with their labor or the products of
their labor. In many instances spirits replaced currency.
Seemingly the only thing of value to the inhabitants of the
settlement at that time was spirits.
The worst effect of the situation was that the governor was
entirely in the hands of the officers. They obtained from him
huge grants of'land, which they worked with convict labor
or with free settlers who had gone into the officers' debt
through the purchase of liquor. The whole structure of the
New South Wales economy was thus changed. The plan, as
originally conceived by the British government, to develop
an economy of large public and small private farming was dis-
regarded. Instead, a monopoly economy with the military
clique as landowners arose.
Grose's equally incapable successor, Paterson, did nothing
to improve the situation, and although Governor Hunter,
who came to the colony in 1795, tried his best to stop the
flood of spirits, he was not very successful. His successor, Gov-
ernor King, was more determined. He published a number of
orders aimed at prohibiting the import of spirits, in order to
"put an end to the unwarranted and scandalous monopolies
that have existed in this colony, and which has not only been
the cause of much distress and ruin to the settlers and other
institutions, but also of great injury to the public interest,
and that of His Majesty's service."14
When in 1800 the Follensby, with James Parry of New-
port, Rhode Island, as master, arrived with provisions and
thirteen thousand gallons of spirits and seven thousand gal-
lons of wine, and when at the same time the Missouri, under
William Vickery of Philadelphia, arrived with seven thousand
gallons of spirits and seven thousand gallons of wine, Gover-
nor King created a precedent. He bought the provisions but
prohibited the landing of the spirits and wine. Captain Parry
protested. His plea was "the assurance of those who had been
here before that he could not fail of getting an unheard-of
profit." Governor King remained unmoved.
14 ldid., ser. 1, n:623.