SETTLERS AND THE AGRARIAN QUESTION by Philip D. McMichael ( 9780521523165 )

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Title:

SETTLERS AND THE AGRARIAN QUESTION
CAPITALISM IN COLONIAL AUSTRALIA

By:

Philip D. McMichael

Format:

Paperback

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£32.00

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ISBN 10:

0521523168

ISBN 13:

9780521523165

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Publisher:

CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS

Pub. date:

15 October, 2003

Pages:

324

Description:

An original interpretation of the development of Australian colonial society and economy.

Synopsis:

This book traces the formation of Australian colonial society and economy within the context of the changing fortunes of British hegemony in the nineteenth-century world economy. Australia's transition from conservative origins as a penal colony supporting a grazier class oriented to export production, to liberal agrarian capitalism, was not a simple reflex of imperial setting. Domestically, the 'agrarian question' - who should control the land and to what end? - was the central political struggle of this period, as urban-commercial forces contested the graziers' monopoly, of the landed economy. Embedded in the conflict among settler classes was an international dimension, involving a juxtaposition of laissez-faire and mercantilist phases of British political economy. Professor McMichael argues that the transition from a patriarchal wool-growing colony to a liberal-nationalist form of capitalist development is best understood through a systematic analysis of the effect of the imperial politicoeconomic relationship on the social and political forces within nineteenth-century Australia.

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Cambridge University Press

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