WI: Australian balkanization

Today, Australia possesses one of the most powerful economies in the world and is well-known as being the only country to cover a whole continent. What would it take for Australia to balkanize into several different countries? What different ideologies could these countries adopt? How would the world interact with this shattered continent and what would the relations be like between the different countries of the Australian continent?
 
What would it take?

For one, a larger population by 1900, in each of the different states/colonies/whatever. I think the total Aussie population in 1900 was around 3 to 4M, spread across the six or so independent entities you are looking for. NSW and Victoria will have a little over 1M each, but the others will just be more-or-less empty. It doesn't make sense to form an independent country with only 200k people in it when there are other neighbouring countries that are culturally similar and also don't have an overwhelming amount of people.

The other option is settlement by multiple countries. British claims in the 1790s only covered about half of the continent. Someone else could have claimed the west if they wanted to. The only issue here is Napoleon: France couldn't take the land because they were being blockaded and were at war with them. The Dutch couldn't take it because they were overrun. The Spanish couldn't take it because they would put effort towards keeping their stuff in America before they would worry about the half of Australia that is just desert. Portugal maybe could have, but I think they too would be more inclined to worry about Napoleon than a large amount of terrible land in the South Pacific. Really the only option here is for Britain to not extend their claim past 135? East, giving the other powers time to walk in.
There's two problems with that though:
1. It is stupid of the British to do this, because they are basically handing the land over to one of their rivals.
2. It only gives you a small colony in the Perth area, while the rest of Australia is British and will probably still become united. Because population.

Talk of ideologies &c at this point becomes pointless because butterflies starting in the 1810s will give a totally different world by the 1880s or so, which is when there will actually be enough people in Australia to make countries out of.

As for interactions of the world: Say Victoria and NSW are independent, they will probably go a way similar to how Aus and NZ did IOTL. They're from the same region and are culturally similar, so there's no reason for Britain to not lump them together for something like alt-WWI. Although the alternative acronym to ANZAC will be something pretty silly.
If we have something like a Dutch Western Australia and British Eastern, the Dutch part will probably be considered like a greater part of the Dutch East Indies. But that was still seen as an ally by the rest of Australia during the World Wars.

So apart from there being a different language in the west and different national borders, I don't think anything too drastic occurs differently at least until the later 20th century.

- BNC
 
Originally, Australia was six different colonies, which were all under the UK but independent from one another. They federalized in 1901, due to nationalism. If you want to prevent Australia from unifying, an easy way to do this is by killing off nationalism in its cradle.

Damaging Australia's economy in the mid 19th century might do the trick. If the continent is dirt poor, no one will build railroads and telegraph lines, and the colonies have more time to develop their own independent identities. Poverty will also stop immigration from China, which will cut down on the xenophobia that drove the Australians to stick together. Lastly, a more fragile economy will make protectionism more important, which creates another roadblock for the idea of federalization.

Now we just need a reason for Australia to be poor. That's hard, since Australia was a part of the British Empire, one of the wealthiest and most powerful countries of its time. Either Australia has been terribly neglected, or the whole British Empire is failing economically, which would have a lot of implications outside of Australia.
 
The easiest way is for different colonisation patterns of Australia. The other way is for Western Australia to secede, which it voted to in 1933 but the British decided to not grant WA's request.
 
Not enough population. Any breakaway state can easily be brought back to the fold by the British.

So you need some very early settlement of the continent by France/Netherlands/Protugal/Spain. Problem is, it's not quite prime real estate at that time. Maybe have the British take a large part of Indonesia, so they don't care much about Australia, which leaves it open for colonization by others.
 
Originally, Australia was six different colonies, which were all under the UK but independent from one another. They federalized in 1901, due to nationalism. If you want to prevent Australia from unifying, an easy way to do this is by killing off nationalism in its cradle..

I'm not sure if it really is easy to "kill off" nationalism...

I could see some combination of the Dutch/French/Portuguese establishing colonies though.
 
Easiest solution, for a certain value of easy, that I can think of is for Western Australia to get a clause inserted during the Federation process that allows for states to peacefully secede if a public referendum is passed reflecting the will of the people. This does however run into the whole 'indissoluble' issue though.
 
Now we just need a reason for Australia to be poor. That's hard, since Australia was a part of the British Empire, one of the wealthiest and most powerful countries of its time. Either Australia has been terribly neglected, or the whole British Empire is failing economically, which would have a lot of implications outside of Australia.

Argentina, a virtual economic dominion of Britain, had an economy extremely similar in growth and well-being to Australia until the 1930s. It's a classic economic problem, really, why Argentina fell behind Australia.
 

Isaac Beach

Banned
Phwoar, well if you were looking to split them off into the most geographically sensical units using the existing states, the best you could do imo would be Western Australia (obviously), Queensland + Northern Territory, NSW + Victoria + South Australia, and an independent Tasmania. Here's what you get:

Balkanised Australia.png


However that wouldn't be very plausible as the Northern Territory was historically a part of South Australia. So maybe an independent South Austalia including the Northern Territory would make more sense:

Balkanised Australia - Copy.png


The issue is of course plausibility, and in my mind that means economics. Tasmania historically had a strong economy despite it's small population due to it's fisheries, wool and location as a center of shipping; this of course waned in comparison to the other states as they developed and expanded in population but if the balkanization was early enough they might think themselves capable of going it alone.
NSW and Victoria will always be strong enough to be independent but I just can't bring myself to believe that they'd be independent of one another; they're too similar geographically, demographically and economically for it to make sense. So I always consider them as one unit, siblings if you like.
Queensland had a strong plantation economy that was actually cuckolded by the White Australia policy due to their utilization of Pacific Islander labour. So if the other states want to bring in that policy and their plantation economy is large enough and sugar prices are strong they might decide to abstain from acceding to the Commonwealth. Herein, perhaps they'll compel Britain to transfer more of the North Australian coastline where it was most tropical and appropriate for their plantations.
Western Australia was very underdeveloped for most of it's history, ditto for South Australia, so if they don't want to be dominated by Victoria and NSW they might decide to stick with Britain until a later date. All that gets you this:

Balkanised Australia - Copy - Copy.png
 
Phwoar, well if you were looking to split them off into the most geographically sensical units using the existing states, the best you could do imo would be Western Australia (obviously), Queensland + Northern Territory, NSW + Victoria + South Australia, and an independent Tasmania. Here's what you get:

View attachment 361647

However that wouldn't be very plausible as the Northern Territory was historically a part of South Australia. So maybe an independent South Austalia including the Northern Territory would make more sense:

View attachment 361648

The issue is of course plausibility, and in my mind that means economics. Tasmania historically had a strong economy despite it's small population due to it's fisheries, wool and location as a center of shipping; this of course waned in comparison to the other states as they developed and expanded in population but if the balkanization was early enough they might think themselves capable of going it alone.
NSW and Victoria will always be strong enough to be independent but I just can't bring myself to believe that they'd be independent of one another; they're too similar geographically, demographically and economically for it to make sense. So I always consider them as one unit, siblings if you like.
Queensland had a strong plantation economy that was actually cuckolded by the White Australia policy due to their utilization of Pacific Islander labour. So if the other states want to bring in that policy and their plantation economy is large enough and sugar prices are strong they might decide to abstain from acceding to the Commonwealth. Herein, perhaps they'll compel Britain to transfer more of the North Australian coastline where it was most tropical and appropriate for their plantations.
Western Australia was very underdeveloped for most of it's history, ditto for South Australia, so if they don't want to be dominated by Victoria and NSW they might decide to stick with Britain until a later date. All that gets you this:

View attachment 361650
Regarding demographics, would Queensland be more ethnically mixed, attracting Indonesians, Papuans and Pacific islanders, while the rest be more "British"?
 

Isaac Beach

Banned
Regarding demographics, would Queensland be more ethnically mixed, attracting Indonesians, Papuans and Pacific islanders, while the rest be more "British"?

Well under the right circumstances any of them could be ethnically mixed in whatever way you like; it depends on internal politicking and external economics. However in this instance in particular it can go down one of two routes;

1. Deep South, where Melanesians and Papuans make up a significant but not overwhelming minority around about 25% of the population.

2. Jamaica, where the colony is overwhelmingly of Melanesian and Papuan extraction due to poor immigration from white settlers and mass importation of indentured labour who are then released with no passage home.

Which one it is depends on how large the plantation economy gets, and I'm not given to granting it favourable odds because of how volatile sugar as a commodity is. They have competition from within and without the British Empire who can produce it at much higher rates at cheaper prices, doubly so given shipping to relevant markets will usually be far cheaper for any of Queensland's competitors. I imagine they can produce enough at a large enough profit to sustain themselves independently for a few decades, but will fold strikingly at the first crash of the sugar price, meaning expansion of plantations will be mitigated, meaning less labour is imported.
On the flipside, one has to wonder if the white population will be able to grow with so much competition from their southerly neighbours, who are in much better climes with better infrastructure and a more developed economy.
All this basically demonstrates why an independent Queensland shouldn't be independent, but failing that you're really rolling dice as to the disposition of the country's demographics.
 
I'd suggest that while Australia was colonised by one country within one human lifetime Balkanisation is unlikely.

So maybe other countries set up colonies before Britain, and further, populate them with people imported from their other Asian colonies. This would set up centrifugal tendencies that might lead to Balkanisation.
 
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