Did the Australian colonies prior to federation have more self-governing power than the US colonies?

Someone mentioned elsewhere one of the reasons the Australian colonies never rebelled from Britain like the American ones was that they had more self governing powers over themselves than the US colonies prior to the American Revolution had, even setting their own immigration policies. Is that correct?
 
My guess would be that whether this were true or not, that's not the reason the dominions stayed under the Crown. Rather there was a convergence of cultural understanding and sympathy with the nature of the sort of societies British settler colonies would evolve, combined with more shrewd British management techniques, having learned something of what not to do from the American experience. Adequate levels of loyal force stationed in place would have something to do with it too.

The American revolutionaries adopted a secessionist stance rather reluctantly--surely there were elements who were pretty hair-triggered and eager for the opportunities of independence, but revolt and successful secession were only possible when considerably more moderate sectors were recruited to the cause, and this happened because of British ineptness. Tone-deaf colonial policies resulted in part from a cultural dissonance between ruling circles in Britain and colonial society. The colonists in America were evolving a new sort of society, anticipating the institutions appropriate to liberal capitalism. By the time colonies such as those in Australia had developed enough to contemplate the idea of secession and independence, British ruling society expressed in Parliament was much more in tune with the interests and motives of the great and good in their settler colonies; this cultural homogenization meant key sectors in those colonies were more inclined to play within the British system, accruing advantages along any liabilities. The same tradeoffs of interest were available to the American colonists but they had more reason to be skeptical Parliament would rule in their interests. And Parliament, in part being composed of British elites more in harmony with the sorts of motives and forms of opportunism of their colonial offshoots, in part having learned some lessons from the American affair of the 1770s, did justify the faith of colonial elites and I suppose from time to time broader classes, and so the inertia of Crown loyalty prevailed. Clearly being part of the larger British global system had advantages for many sectors of society not to be scorned after all. Also, late in the 19th century British global power was more effective and coordinated much more efficiently, which amplified the weight of both carrots and sticks the London Parliamentary regime had ready to hand.

I would not doubt that part of the wiser course Parliament pursued in the later 19th century did involve a more judicious devolution of local power to local assemblies, but I think this is more an expression of deeper causes than a trick that could in principle have been applied to the American colonies back in the 1760s. It would have required ASB levels of foresight and insight for George III's advisors to hit upon the right plan to keep American secessionist notions in check effectively, because they lacked the experience of observing how things could spin out of control, because they lacked understanding and sympathy of the more purely capitalist society motives that governed American colonists, and because the Empire as a whole was far weaker than it would be a century hence.

Note that there were indeed secessionist risings against the Crown in Australia, and even in Canada despite the fact that Anglophone Upper Canada was founded by and largely dominated by descendants of Loyalists to the Crown from the American coastal colonies--success in Canada then was biased by a peculiar factor, but was not perfect even so. The mass migration of Europeans overseas was a movement that was substantial in the early 19th century already, but the pace rose throughout the century, as Europeans secured control over more territories, as territories were developed to a higher level, and as transport was revolutionized by steam ships and railroads, and as communications advanced to literally the speed of light with telegraphy. At the same time then as the British global system faced a potential crisis of possible secessionist movements overwhelming central control the general transformation of British society at home to be more in harmony with the sort of interests the more successful colonists would evolve had generations to proceed, whereas this same general rise in technical capabilities happened, until late in the century anyway, mostly in British hands and so British centrally controlled institutions like the Navy and Army benefited from them. Thus when the mass wave of emigration creating Australia, New Zealand, and South Africa as we know them today was happening and these colonies had had time to develop infrastructure enough of their own to plausibly rebel, the question did not arise due to the centralizing considerations having time to mature.

I would be interested to know from people who actually understand the details of Dominion colonial histories to address your question and perhaps refute key elements of my understanding. My impression for now remains that any cleverness in devolving powers to the colonies are merely partial and exemplary effects of the basic factors tying the Empire together, not explanatory causes.
 
Someone mentioned elsewhere one of the reasons the Australian colonies never rebelled from Britain like the American ones was that they had more self governing powers over themselves than the US colonies prior to the American Revolution had, even setting their own immigration policies. Is that correct?

Could you provide a bit more background how that idea was explained?

I think the context of the times and the conditions in the respective colonies may have been a big factor, most of Australia being settled after the Napleonic wars so there was no need to quarter the soldiery on the citizenry or raise big taxes like the British did to the Americans after the 7 years war.
 
Could you provide a bit more background how that idea was explained?

I think the context of the times and the conditions in the respective colonies may have been a big factor, most of Australia being settled after the Napleonic wars so there was no need to quarter the soldiery on the citizenry or raise big taxes like the British did to the Americans after the 7 years war.

I'll just quote the passage I'm describing:

Britain never controlled its Australian colonies as tightly as they did North America. The Americans had to fight a revolution for basic political rights, but what were to become the Australian states were all self governing from the mid 1800s, setting their own immigration arrangements and even maintaining their own armed forces.

One of the ironies of Australian history is that within a few decades of their founding, former British penal colonies became far more democratic, open and prosperous than Britain itself. The gold rushes of the mid 1800s made cities like Melbourne some of the wealthiest in the world. And from that time they were governed in accordance with written constitutions by elected legislatures, which Britain doesn't fully have even in 2016.

I don't know enough about Australian colonial history to say whether that's quite accurate? If that's the case I'd wonder if the American colonies had similar apparent liberties would they have gone a different path?
 
As an Australian who got taught Australian colonial history nearly every year at school (they were wonderful at varying it up), I think there were a couple of reasons (this is mostly what I know from school and living here, so bear with me, I could be wrong. This is also my first post on the site, so...). Firstly, Australia was being sent convicts up until 1840, about 52 years after the first British fleet arrived in Sydney Cove. Meanwhile, America had English colonies as early as 1610, and the Americans declared independence about 166 years later. If Australia had waited the same period of time, independence would have been declared around 1954, which was half a century AFTER we federated.

Australia had a very high population of 'lower-class' citizens in the 19th century, with a majority of people either being convicts themselves, or the children and grandchildren of convicts. Education was hardly widespread, and the development of an 'Australian' upper class was not quite in place. Many of the people in power were British, born in Britain and residing here. Until the 1820s, Australia was only a penal colony, meaning that the white population was either convict, former convict, or the marines and their families. Free settlers were not common at all.

English law was attempted to be installed into the courts, with the leaders of each colony (eventually states) being representatives of Britain, but being on the opposite side of the world to the English meant that things could be dealt with in harsher or less severe ways and easily remain unknown to the British - a lot of things were up to the discretion of the people physically in charge instead of taking every issue back to the book or to the English for a decision to be made. Initially the councils to govern the colonies were small and chosen entirely by higher-up people in Britain, but slowly they became representative governments, meaning that the (adult,white, male) people could vote on who would govern them to an extent.

There was an influx of non-British people living in the country, too; obviously, the Aboriginal peoples, but also many Irish and Chinese, particularly in the 1840s and 1850s as the gold rushes across the country boomed. One place in Ballarat (a big mining city in Victoria, a few hours from Melbourne) became home to an small uprising, the Eureka Stockade - sparked by two things, the death of a fellow miner whose killer was a publican and therefore let off, and the increase of cost on the licenses to mine and the brutality in enforcing those laws. It is interesting to note that the miners had a great deal of the average Victorian's support, and if they had triumphed against the British soldiers, perhaps it could've kickstarted a revolution similar to that of America. It began with a group of men meeting and deciding that they wanted votes for all men, and the abolition of the mining license's existence. Approximately two and a half weeks later, an even larger group of men came together and publicly burnt their licenses under a Southern Cross flag, which is often proposed today as being Australia's true flag if we were to become a republic, and is in fact displayed by many people around the country who would consider themselves in favour of Australia breaking away from Britain. These men then built a Stockade and stayed inside there, with some of their wives and children joining them. The battle was on the Sunday of that week, which took all of the diggers by surprise. They were severely outnumbered, had little fighting skill and were not expecting an attack, meaning that they were defeated in just twenty minutes. The legacy of this cannot be overstated; at the time it lead to an inquiry and later reform of certain laws about mining and voting, and it is interesting to note that later, Peter Lalor, who was the 'leader' of the Eureka Stockade, became the first Member of the Legislative Council in Ballarat. In our time, the flag sewn by three women on the minefields has come to represent which side of the debate you fall on, and the idea of the Eureka Stockade is heavily imprinted onto the mind of (most) Australians.

It is possible if action had not taken place, or if the miners had not been defeated, there could have been a bigger movement, and even a proper rebellion against Britain. I would say that Australia did not have as harsh conditions as the U.S.A, did not have as large a population in favour of breaking away as America did, and ultimately was around for a much shorter time than the U.S.A was.
I hope some of this helped and wasn't just incoherent ramble :)
 
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