When Kochachiro Takahashi (1978, p. 96) drew attention to the “deep inner relationship between the agrarian question and industrial capital, which determines the characteristic structures of capitalism in the various countries,” he emphasized the role of political forces in the transition to capitalism. The agrarian question is necessarily political when the genesis of capital transforms landed property relations and produces social conflict between the traditional landed classes and an emergent commercial bourgeoisie. The latter' historical attempts to subordinate landed property as an instrument of production contributed to the rise and transformation of the modern nation-state (Marx 1965–7, vol. III, p. 618). Such conflict was a structural feature of the absolutist state, a power apparatus divided between securing traditional forms of landed property and promoting commerce for financial and military purposes (Anderson 1974; Moore 1968; Skocpol 1977). Military security was necessary to territorial sovereignty in the emerging European states system. This system was premised on the developing world market, within which states competed through mercantilist policy (Wallerstein 1974b; Arrighi 1978b). The commercial framework of state policy thus not only affected the domestic conflict between landed and mercantile classes, but also revealed the international origins and consequences of the agrarian question as an issue of social policy within states.

The purpose of this book has been to investigate the world historical origins of the capitalist transition in nineteenth-century Australia.