Forming a Colonial Economy: Australia 1810-1850

by Noel George Butlin

Overview

This book is a comprehensive account of the development of Australia's colonial economy before the gold rushes. Noel Butlin's analysis of the developing economy provides background discussion of eighteenth-century British social, economic and military history, and detailed demographic analysis of the Australian population over sixty years. A key focus of the book is the extent to which the economy was independent or externally driven. Forming a Colonial Economy does for Australian history from 1810 to 1850 what Noel Butlin's previous landmark economic histories have done for the period from the 1860s to the 1890s.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780521440066
Publisher:	Cambridge University Press
Publication date:	12/12/1994
Pages:	256
Product dimensions:	7.17(w) x 10.08(h) x 0.91(d)

Table of Contents

List of tables; List of figures; Acknowledgements; Part I. Forming an Economy: Introduction; Part II. The Colonial Peopling of Australia: 1788–1850: 1. Introduction; 2. Gross additions to the Australian population; 3. The colonial population stock; 4. Human capital in convicts; Part III. Public Funding of Colonial Development: 1788–1850: 5. Introduction; 6. British fiscal characteristics; 7. The imperial fisc in New South Wales and Van Diemen's Land; 8. Broad relations between British and Australian fiscs to 1821; 9. The beginning of local budgeting: real and subterranean budgets; 10. The conventional legal fisc in NSW: 1822–1950; Part IV. The Colonial Australian Economy 1810–40: A Historical, Statistical and Analytical Account: 11. Summary and questions; 12. Towards a private market economy in Australia 1810–40; 13. Structural adjustment and development 1810–40; 14. Growth performance; 15. Instability with special reference to the Depression of the 1840s and recovery; Bibliography; Appendices; Index.

Editorial Reviews

"Published posthumously, this well-written "prequel" is a comprehensive and original discussion of the colonial peopling of Australia from 1788 to the 1850s. ... All libraries interested in environmental history, economic theory, and 19th-century British or Australian development should aquire this book. Upper-division undergraduates and above." Choice

"This volume is perhaps most original for its foray into the largely unexplored topics of early public finance in Australia and the effect of British fiscal policies. It adds appreciably to the corpus of Butlin's work." American Historical Review

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