Introduction

Australia was discovered by the West thanks to the fall of the Roman Empire, and its colonisation was to help support the last Inca Emperor's attempt to overthrow the Conquistadors. This tale actually begins with George Washington committing a war crime and triggering histories first ever world war, a conflict that sent Europe's most powerful nations skittering across the globe ... so, did I get your attention?

I have been talking about this book for over a decade, and honestly I have got to the point that I just want people to see it, so over the next few months I will start publishing this book, a few chapters at a time. 

What you are about to read is a journey of research. While looking for information on one subject I would uncover a fact or an intriguing morsel that led to a different historical figure, location or event. Each of these items became a standing domino, leading to this line of dominoes that became a book. 

Welcome to the real history of the discover and colonisation of Australia by Europe. Of course the Australian Aborigines had been on the continent for roughly 50,000 years before this event, and that story I am telling in another book. 

This is purely a retelling of how Europe entered and began populating the south seas, and how the story we are often told, the myth of Captain Cook and his brave crew sailing into the Pacific for the first time and discovering the continent of Australia is total rubbish - or at the very least a very tiny piece of a much larger, far more complex and exciting jigsaw.  

(Books original Introduction)

Prologue - And here be monsters

‘The only thing new in the world is the history you don't know.’

Harry S. Truman

The world seems to have been at war since we were capable of jotting down the results like some grizzly sports statistic. In fact sports statistics and military historians have a lot in common. Both deal with ground conditions, who was fielded on the day, who was benched, strategies for attack and defence, who achieved what, who won and lost… both can be reduced to simple names and data, and this can even lead to a little fantasy war leaguing. Napoleon verses Alexander the Great, who do you think would triumph? Which had the superior win/loss ratio and who adapted to weather conditions better?

If you take away all the statistics and gameplay and start looking at the bigger picture, two facts become obvious. First, with all the battles and wars humanity has fought, very rarely do these things effect the status-quo, indeed more often than not they further entrenched the participants in whatever ideology they believed in the first place. For example, after all the bloodshed of the Napoleonic wars, what had honestly changed in Europe? Most of the participating countries returned to the same territories they were living within before the wars – and admittedly these territories were now lighter by a few hundred thousand peasants (the men who’d made up these armies), but in the world of kings and emperors, that cost did not seem to really count for much…

…leading me to the second point. Despite all the bloodshed and death, rarely was this coin paid by the people causing the problems in the first place. It was the poor and vulnerable who ended up as pawns in these games of empirical chess and were massacred in the millions.

Occasionally, however, there were conflicts that had serious global effects. Now I’m talking about lasting change – geopolitical alterations that still affect us today. Borders shift and change during conflicts, yet they almost always return to the status quo afterwards.

For example, after the First World War nothing really changed that much except Germany, Austria and the Ottoman Empire lost their colonies or there was a change in control over certain nations. In Russia it was out with the Tsar and in with the communists, while in Germany right-wing socialism replaced the Kaiser. These changes did lead to the Second World War, but again what really changed? Millions of people died, and we certainly gained some technology - much of which we could have done without (I’m looking at you Manhattan Project) - yet name a border that moved so much as a foot in Europe? Almost all of the changes occurred in the east, where the once global spanning British Empire withdrew, creating numerous modern nation’s such as Iran, Iraq, India, Pakistan…and of course there was the creation of Israel and the Sudan. Can anyone argue there is still not immense suffering from the rushed decisions made at the end of the war in creating these nations?

Well there was once a war that created the modern map of the globe, a seemingly secret ‘World War’ that most of us have forgotten about. OK, historians know about it, but they’ve somehow managed to keep it to themselves for years.

Some could argue I’m in danger of over simplifying an extremely complex affair as this ‘World War’ contained several smaller engagements known by the titles of the location they were fought in. For instance, depending where you live you may know the conflict as the ‘War of Conquest’ (La Guerre de la Conquête in France and Quebec), the ‘French Indian War’ (in the US), the ‘Third Silesian War’ (Germany and Russia), the ‘Third Carnatic War’ (India) or the ‘Spanish–Portuguese War’ (Spain and Portugal) – but have no doubt, these were all part of a larger conflict called the ‘Seven Years War’.

All this confusion can be linked to the sheer amount of civil, political and military unrest going on in the world at the time. Those in America were starting to recognise the possibility they didn’t really need to be part of a colony, neither of France, England or Spain. The first steps towards this independence would be by ridding northern America of the French. This conflict, though small at the beginning, would quickly suck in most major European powers and their numerous colonies and allies.

The fighting would eventually spread as far as the Philippines and India, making the Seven Years War a truly global conflict. With the handicap of communication over great distances of the day, is it any wonder the Spanish fighting the British in the Pacific weren’t aware they were involved in the same war as the Prussians fighting the Russians in Berlin? This explains why the Seven Years War is known by so many names.

So, what has all this to do with the colonisation of Australia you ask? Well in Part One it certainly will seem like nothing, but by understanding the Seven Years War it becomes clear this conflict was the crucible for almost every border of our modern world map. Once the battles had been fought and the treaties signed, the world was far more recognisable to us than it was before the conflict had begun. The map would be almost a modern version, though a modern version missing a huge piece of the puzzle in the Southern Hemisphere.

And that’s the point of this book.  The Seven Years War set in motion all the processes that led to the colonization of Botany Bay, New Zealand and so many other Pacific nations, such as Hawaii. It also produced some of the bravest, most adventurous people in history and it was many of these men…and women...and a goat now that I think about it…who undertook epic journeys of distance and time. They left the safety of their home shores for years, and in some instances forever, just to fill in the last corners of their maps which were often marked by the simple, yet loaded phrase, ‘And here be monsters’.

Maps were once a patchwork of explored and unexplored regions, and it was those who ventured, who braved, who ‘tally forthed’, they were the ones who reaped the rewards from traveling to these areas. Yet often those seekers never returned from their voyages and, overtime, have been lost to history. Some of these journeys were just as epic, their stories just as grandiose as the most famous of explorers, and it’s some of these lost voyages that we will be looking at.

 

Map of those locations involved in the Seven Years War, As you can see, it truly was a World War! 

Map by Gabagool - Own work, CC BY 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=6958174

Though our story will start in the wilds of America, the war itself didn’t really start there as it was caused by an unusual country most of us have never heard of. Smack in the middle of the European continent, rich with minerals and other natural resources (such as timber, water and agricultural land), Silesia was to become the cause of so much ‘historical aggravation’ that it really should be as famous as another ‘lost’ country, Atlantis.

Silesia of course doesn’t exist today; instead its old borders are contained partly within Germany, Poland and the Czech Republic - three countries that should immediately tell you why this region has been the cause of so much heartbreak.

With the boundaries between these states ebbing and flowing over the centuries a lot of bad blood and confused national loyalties have been created, adding to the volatile mix of the region. This situation wasn’t helped either by the numerous ‘noble houses’ that also once laid claim to the area as well. Slavic and Germanic tribes, Polish kings, the Holy Roman Empire, Austria and the U.S.S.R have all controlled Silesia at some point, yet for us its importance begins with Frederick the Great literally stealing the country from a distracted Austria in 1740.

Prussia was a minor European power at the time, one that would be consistently underestimated by those stupid enough to cross its path. During a time of relative regional peace King Frederick II (he wouldn’t be ‘Great’ for some years yet) had trained and drilled his comparatively small army into an astonishingly effective fighting force.

With his new Prussian Army Frederick II gobbled up rich Silesia and the resources his own country was sorely lacking. This aggressive move by the Prussian king made most other European superpowers extremely nervous. In almost no time at all, and with seemingly little effort, Frederick II and his tough little army had forever changed the balance of power in Europe - and in doing so went to war against the combined might of France, Russia, Sweden, Austria and the Holy Roman Empire…and won.

Frederick the Great was never one to sit around and wait for things to happen. In 1756, having re-organized his army again into an even greater fighting force after the War of Austrian Succession, Frederick was aware Austria wanted Silesia back and was busy building a coalition of countries against him to do just that. Instead of waiting for the hammer to fall, Frederick invaded the nearest coalition member to Prussia, Saxony. This bypassed the need of fighting a war he literally couldn’t win by isolating the countries ranged against him and so giving Prussia the opportunity to fight its enemies one at a time rather than all at once. The Saxony invasion effectively triggered the Seven Years War and quickly set Europe alight with the fires of conflict. By its end an estimated one million people would be dead - a truly staggering number when you consider the inefficiency of the weapons used at the time and that the world’s population was around seven-hundred million people.

Though the numbers were heavily weighed against Prussia, the greatest army in Europe had one thing on its side - the greatest navy in the world. England was firmly on Frederick’s side and helped divert a lot of attention away from the Prussian king by attacking the coalition ranged against him wherever it could, such as the Raid on Rochefort.

Tensions between France and Great Britain had been building for years, so it would be unfair to blame the growing conflict entirely on the Prussians. Never all that friendly to begin with, both expansionist empires were increasingly grinding against each other as their numerous colonies grew.

In a series of expeditions both the French and British territories in America were cutting deep into the unexplored regions of the continent. This desire to expand grew out of the tremendous natural resources (such as furs, fish and timber) these wild provinces had to offer. To help with their expansion both colonies utilised the native tribes in their regions, thus when war finally broke out between the two countries their local allies were also dragged into the fight. When these forces finally met, it ignited the French and Indian War, a conflict that began with the gruesome murder of a French officer by the father of the United States.