White Supremacist Attitudes During The Writing Of The Australian Constitution

The Australian Constitution, enacted in 1901, called for the six separate British colonies on the Australian continent to come together as one. The union of these six colonies was named the Federation of Australia. White Australian men envisioned that the new Australia would be a white man’s paradise, and so race was one of their core considerations during the writing of the Australian Constitution. The separate colonies of Australia were founded on principles of racial discrimination and white unity and thus it is no surprise that these same principles dominated the constitutional conventions of 1897-1898. The white supremacist attitudes instilled in Australian whites by the Evangelical British during the early colonial period gave way to the ideals that helped to form the later Federation. “The Evangelicals rated their own culture as incomparable. Assumptions were …show more content…
When it came time to join as a Federation, the colonies were able to overcome their petty rivalries and small differences because they felt that it was more important to come together as a superior British race. This desire to unite the white race on the Australian continent was one of the main reasons for Federation. Not only did the first British promote white unity, but they also helped to promote racial discrimination. They helped write the first drafts of the White Australia Policy in 1841, and this was perhaps their biggest contribution to racial discrimination