Kate Fullagar, The great counterfactual of Australian history, Australian Academy of the Humanities, January 2025
This Australia Day, spend some time in the eighteenth century learning about the founding treaty that never was. Professor Kate Fullagar FAHA explains why Arthur Phillip might have expected a treaty but did not secure one.
In Australia, being a historian of the eighteenth century is usually considered an obscure occupation. Obscure, that is, until 26 January every year when otherwise quiet devotees of the era suddenly emerge in determined defence of one event that occurred during it. The eighteenth century haunts every discussion of Australia Day—the anniversary of the morning in 1788 that Arthur Phillip finally settled on Sydney Cove as the base for his penal colony.
The eighteenth century also haunted the 2023 debate about an Indigenous Voice to Parliament. This is because the Voice evoked treaty, or the lack thereof. And the lack of a treaty cast back suggestively, but rather shapelessly, to what didn’t happen in 1788.
This 26 January, I invite you to spend five minutes in the eighteenth century, to gain more clarity on what happened in Australia during this century, why the things that didn’t happen were absent, and what it all might mean for today.
