How Europeans Almost Divided Australia | History

imagine living in that alternate universe where australia is swedish...

As an Australian I find this scenario very fascinating. Australia would be just like any other continent, divided between various countries. I wonder how the demographics , culture and cities in Australia would be different.

I am Australian. If anyone knew back then what is known now Western Australia would be colonised in a heartbeat. The area shown on your maps undoubtedly has the richest iron ore deposits in the world. Not to mention massive gold and uranium resources. I guess back then they were more interested in agricultural resources and from the coast I do admit that the west doesn't look overly interesting. But things are not as they looked. I don't know where we stand as the biggest wheat exporters in the world but it's definitely in the top dozen countries, and the vast majority of those exports come from Western Australia. Per capita WA (Western Australia) punches massively above its weight on the world stage...BTW I live on the eastern side so this isn't a totally unbiased view!

Really embarrassed that as an Australian I didn't know about the potential that we could have had Swedish history. Even the scale of French interest wasn't what I thought it was. Great video, really enjoyed it.

Petition to make an alternate history video about Swedish Australia

It is a common misconception that Dutch colonialism was about conquering lands and expanding territories. It was not, not until the mid of the 19th century. Governors of the VOC were forbidden to expend the trading posts to territories by the board of directors. Colonialism at that time was about establishing a networking of trading posts and earning money by trade. Not that the VOC was adverse of violence: to protect its commercial interests the VOC used violence and ruthlessly kicked the Portuguese out of the region, kept the English at bay and enforced a monopoly on the local people. But this was to protect commercial interests, not to build an empire. Since Australia did not have any produce that could be commercially exploited, it was not more than logical that the Dutch did not venture there.

I'm Part Spanish born in Australia, I always wondered how Australia would've turned out had the Spanish or Portuguese colonised. I learned a lot from this video. Cheers mate.

Why didn’t we learn this in history in high school or university in the 1960s?! We had to wait for the wonderful Fire of Learning and the great YouTube!!!!

In the end, only the Anglo was naive enough to face the mighty Emu

Nicolas Baudin (France) and Mathew Flinders’ (England) ships briefly drew cannons on each other in 1802 while both on mapping missions. One coming from the west and one from the east. That spot an hour from Adelaide is now called Encounter Bay. As a result of Baudin a number of places in South Australia carry French names, like the well known wine region the Fleurieu Peninsula

Thank you for this, as an Australian I was aware of the British (how could we not!), the French, Dutch, but not so much the Swedish. That was new to me.

The words 'terra australis' (southern land in latin) started turning up on maps in the Roman Empire in the 2nd/3rd century AD. The Romans speculated as to its existence and named it almost 1500 years before any European would see it. Which is wild! It is amazing to me that this fable of sorts about a mythical land of the south existed and was passed down for so so long in Europe, through classical antiquity and all of the middle ages. Its legend was so strong that the word Australis/a started to be used colloquially by convicts and settlers in the 1800's, which is what prompted the British to adopt the word to be the offical name of the country upon the federation of its colonies in 1901.

Thank you for another exceptionally well presented and informative history lesson. As a relatively recent immigrant to Australia, I found this very interesting.

Had the Dutch claimed the western half, Australia could've been South Africa v2.0

A well made, interesting and entertainng video! An Aussie here, who started his schooling in the 1960s. We learned that Captain Cook "discovered" Australia in 1770, and that the colony - all of it - was founded in 1788 when the First Fleet settled Sydney Cove. Most of us later learned, even in school, that the Dutch had discovered Western Australia and Tasmania much earlier. After all, "Tasmania" was named after a Dutchman - Able Tasman - and had also been known as "Van Diemen's Land". Still, any history apart from British was regarded as "obscure". It has always puzzled me that the Dutch East Indies are so close to Australia and had been heavily used by Holland for centuries, yet Holland hardly ventured the few extra hundred miles to Australia. So, as an Aussie I found this fascinating, particular the explanation that the period when other European countries could have laid claims to parts of Australia, and had expressed interest, namely 1770 to 1830, was a period when the European turmoil prevented them. There were also the factors of the great distance from Europe and the unpromising first appearances of the Western Australian coast. For me the most interesting new detail was that the British did not claim all of Australia initially, and wanted to respect prior Dutch claims to the western part. I was almost completely unaware of French interest. And, of course, Swedish! That's a great laugh at 17:20! Three bits of information I have, which were not in the video, or only briefly alluded to, are: - In 1629 the Dutch ship Batavia was wrecked off the coast of Western Australia and the survivors lasted for several years, before dying out in a Lord of the Flies scenario. - There are isolated relics of a Portuguese discovery off the South-East Coast in the 1500s. - While Matthew Flinders was circumnavigating Australia for the first time, for Britain, in 1801 to 1803, the Frenchman Nicolas Baudin was also exploring the coast for Bonaparte. They met at Encounter Bay in South Australia, where the encounter is well-known and commemorated to this day.

Australia is both equally glorious and treacherous. About 75%, maybe more of it, being literally untameable wilderness - massive deserts, tropical wetlands teeming with crocs in the north, tropical rainforests in the north east, alpine in the south east, temperate rainforests down the east coast, rural countryside areas which while small compared to the whole country are still bigger than Europe, and all before you get to the bush where crazy volumes of marsupials live. Truly quite a land to try to conquer. So much so, most of it is still considered unfit for mass human habitation today. Truly a naturalists dream.

We STAN an academic YouTuber that puts sources and further reading in the description!!!

As an Aussie, like I see many commenting thus far, I've known about much of what was mention, including, but not limited to, claims of Nepoleon wanting Tasmania [back in the day obviously]. However, I have often thought of how fascinating it would have been had "world events" of the day not taken place that steered our island continents future to what it is today.

As a Aussie I could probably tell you more about U.S history than my own bloody Countries. This was very enthralling.

In fact, the first europeans who arrived from the sea to the most northern part of this continent, were the Portuguese, around the XVIth century. They were too much already occupied in Africa, Brazil and Asia, including the nearby island of Timor, so close of Australia.