INTRODUCTION

The colonial governments addressed the agrarian question in the last four decades of the nineteenth century, setting the framework for twentieth-century Australian political and economic development. Land reforms reshaped colonial society largely by the way they transformed the pastoral economy. The shift of pastoral production to a capitalist basis (through fixed capital investment) at the same time promoted urban development. Urban financial penetration of pastoralism allowed the city to exert its control over the countryside, thereby achieving a more stable, integrated domestic market. Behind this developing agrocommercial complex was active government involvement in social capital formation.

The politics of the land question not only dominated social and economic development, but also largely governed colonial state formation. The whole question of land settlement arose in the urban centers and was a primary concern of politicians and administrators. Consequently, the politics of the conflict with the squatters overshadowed the productive settlement of the land. Whereas exploitation of the land was properly a concern of the rural settlers, exploitation of the land issue took precedence and largely established the framework of rural production.

State building itself was integral to the regulation of landed relations. Revenue from land sales was a critical source of public finance, just as land legislation facilitated the subordination of rural economy to urban capital. This interrelation of state formation, resettlement of the land, and shifting patterns of landed and urban capital accumulation depended on a sustained inflow of British capital and labor.