Origins: The Making of Australia, 1788–1825

This fascinating book sets aside the clichés of Australian history and asks us to look again.

‘Neither first peoples nor convict colonisers are absent from the written record. That both groups have more often been represented as victims of history rather than as history makers is due less to the limitations of the archive than to how it has been used. It should be unsurprising that the First Nations people who defended, managed and continued to live on colonised land were central to the emergence of a new way of life among the British men and women exiled there. First peoples, convicts and country are central to this book, because, the evidence confirms, they are the founders of what we now call Australia.’

What really happened when exiled criminals made a home in an occupied and defended country? How were they changed by this new world? What can the first years of settlement tell us about Australia today?

The First Fleet left Britain at the height of the enclosure movement, when traditional rights to communal land were being rapidly extinguished. Many convicts brought those older ideas about land with them, and the first years of the colony saw a distinctive new society develop. Later, it was supplanted by a system favouring free settlers, large land grants and a creed of unstoppable progress. But the first thirty-five years of the colony tell a different story.

In Origins, James Boyce brings this formative period to life. The protagonists include convicts, Aboriginal people, soldiers, governors, and the country itself. The picture that emerges will change how you think about Australia's origins.

About the Author

James Boyce is a multi-award-winning historian. His first book, Van Diemen’s Land, was described by Richard Flanagan as ‘the most significant colonial history since The Fatal Shore’. He is also the editor of Inga Clendinnen and the author of Losing Streak, Born Bad, Imperial Mud and 1835, which was The Age’s 2012 Book of the Year.