Forming a Colonial Economy: Australia 1810–1850

by Noel George Butlin

This book is a comprehensive account of the development of Australia's colonial economy before the gold rushes. Noel Butlin's analysis of the developing economy provides background discussion of eighteenth-century British social, economic and military history, and detailed demographic analysis of the Australian population over sixty years. A key focus of the book is the extent to which the economy was independent or externally driven. Forming a Colonial Economy does for Australian history from 1810 to 1850 what Noel Butlin's previous landmark economic histories have done for the period from the 1860s to the 1890s.

256 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1994

About the author

Noel G. Butlin AC FAA was an Australian economic historian, long associated with the Australian National University.

Reviews

[Michael · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is an extraordinary work of scholarship, with two main flaws: (1) it's incomplete; and (2) it is written in the driest of dry academic styles. Nonetheless, it is full of powerful analysis and striking information, presented very clearly, if not engagingly. Butlin explains how the settlers constructed a modern state in Australia, compares the development of the urban and rural economies alongside one another, and considers the impacts of settlement upon Australia's population. This last consideration is striking. British settlement was so destructive to the local aboriginal population, says Butlin, that in 1850, after 62 of British immigration, the total population was actually still smaller than when the British arrived in 1788!

Anyone who wants to understand the Australian economy really must read this book, although its style makes it a bit of a slog.