Origins of Immigration to Australia, 1787-1914

The origins of immigration to Australia are intrinsically connected to the history of this state, that is its British, colonial heritage. Australia had been discovered, and then conquered, by Great Britain relatively late – the British fleet arrived to the Australian territory for the first time only towards the end of the 18th century to start the settlement of the British convicts. The paper concerns the first stage of immigration, which encompasses the time between the landing of the first British ships carrying the first group of convicts/colonists (1787) and the outbreak of World War I (1914) which prompted a rapid change of Australian immigration rules since a lot of citizens of various states desired to emigrate to this safe, calm and prosperous country. The main argument is that it was mainly the Chinese immigration impact which prompted a turn in Australia's migration policy, which started to be much more restrictive and eventually led to the establishment of the White Australia Policy