Remaking Australia's Colonial Culture?: White Australia and its Papuan Frontier 1901-1940

Abstract

This article explores imperial Australia and its Papuan colony from 1901 to World War II. Through exploring shifts in imperial doctrine it examines the polemics that Australian governments and colonial officials faced in governing the colony of Papua from 1906 to 1940, and shows how and why Australian colonial practice in Papua altered. This article also explains how understandings of race, the philosophy of 'protection' and British imperial theories and practices influenced Australian imperialism in Papua following the nineteenth-century colonisation of Australia, and in the twentieth-century contexts of the Northern Territory from 1911 and New Guinea from 1914.