History of Sydney
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History of Sydney stretches back to prehistoric times. The area surrounding Port Jackson (Sydney Harbour) was home to Aboriginal tribes for 40,000 years or more. Although urbanisation has destroyed most evidence of these settlements, there are still rock carvings in several locations.
In the late 1800s, excavations for a canal in Alexandria (south-east of the city) uncovered evidence of Aborignal settlement in that area estimated to date back at least 7000 years; more recent evidence discovered in caves near Glenbrook in the lower Blue Mountains, west of the city, indicates Aboriginal occupation of that region dating back at least 20,000 years.
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[edit] European settlement
European interest arose with the sighting of Botany Bay (now a southern suburb of Sydney) in 1770 by Captain James Cook. Under instruction from the British government, a settlement was founded by Arthur Phillip in 1788. (See First Fleet). Phillip originally landed at Botany Bay, but found it unsatisfactory. After a brief sail north, Phillip landed at Sydney Cove on Port Jackson (the proper name for Sydney Harbour).
Phillip originally named the colony "New Albion", but for some uncertain reason the colony acquired the name "Sydney", after the (then) British Home Secretary, Thomas Townshend, Lord Sydney (Baron Sydney, Viscount Sydney from 1789). This is possibly due to the fact that Lord Sydney issued the charter authorising Phillip to establish a colony.
European settlement had a disastrous impact on the local Aboriginal people. In the early days of the colony this was mainly due to the advent of introduced diseases such as measles, chicken pox and smallpox, to which the Aboriginal population had no genetic immunity. Contrary to later trends, Governor Phillip in fact enforced strict rules of behaviour for interaction between settlers and native people, and his policy was remarkably enlighted by the standards of the time.
However in 1789, shortly after the arrival in Botany Bay of the French expidition led by La Perouse, a catastrophic epidemic disease -- smallpox or possibly chicken pox -- spread through the Eora people and surrounding groups, with the result that local Aborigines died in their thousands, and bodies could often be seen bobbing in the water in Sydney Harbour.
Colonial historian and First Fleet officer Watkin Tench, whose accounts are primary sources about the early years of the colony, suggested that the epidemic may have been caused by Aborigines disturbing the grave of a French sailor who died shortly after arrival in Australia (supposedly of smallpox) and had been buried at Botany Bay. However the very strict Aboriginal customs concerning graves and dead bodies make this unlikely in the extreme. Another intruiging possibility suggested by Tench was that one of the colony's physicians had reportedly brought a vial of smallpox-infected material with him from England, that he may have been experimentally innoculating of colonists and/or local Aboriginal people against the disease and that it spread into the Aboriginal population by this vector.
Whatever the actual cause, the results were catastrophic for the Eora people and their kin and by the early 1800s the Aboriginal population of the Sydney basin had been reduced to only 10 percent of the 1788 estimate.
[edit] Early Sydney
Early Sydney was molded by the hardship suffered by early settlers. In the early years, droughts and disease caused widespread problems, but the situation soon improved. The military colonial government was reliant on the army, the New South Wales Corps (also known as the Rum Corps due to their monopoly on the importation of alcohol).
Conflicts arose between the governors and the officers of the Rum Corps, many of which were land owners such as John Macarthur. In 1808 these conflicts came to open rebellion, with the Rum Rebellion, in which the Rum Corps ousted Governor William Bligh (known from the Mutiny on the Bounty).
[edit] First newspaper
Sydney's first newspaper was the Sydney Gazette established, edited and distributed by George Howe. It appeared irregularly between 1803 and 1842, but nonetheless provides a valuable source on the early development of the colony based at Sydney.
The Sydney Morning Herald joined the Sydney Gazette as a daily publication in 1831; it continues to be published to this day.
[edit] The gold rush era
Australia experienced a number of gold rushes in the mid 19th Century, beginning with the discovery of gold in Bathurst (150km west of Sydney) in 1851. Large numbers of immigrant miners poured into Sydney and the population grew from 39,000 to 200,000 20 years later. Demand for infrastructure to support the growing population and subsequent economic activity led to massive improvements to the city's railway and port systems throughout the 1850s and 1860s. After a period of rapid growth, further discoveries of Gold in Victoria began drawing new residents away from Sydney towards Melbourne and a great rivalry began to grow between the two cities. The rivalry culminated as Australia moved to become a federation and both Melbourne and Sydney lobbied to be officially recognised as the capital city (a dispute settled with the creation of a new city, Canberra, instead).[1].
[edit] 20th century
With industrialisation Sydney expanded rapidly, and by the early 20th century it had a population well in excess of one million. The Great Depression hit Sydney badly. One of the highlights of the Depression Era however, was the completion of the Sydney Harbour Bridge in 1932.
Throughout the 20th century Sydney continued to expand with various new waves of European and (later) Asian immigration, resulting in its highly cosmopolitan atmosphere of the present day.
[edit] Historic population
The majority of Sydneysiders are of British and Irish background. More recent arrivals have included Italians, Greeks, Jews, Lebanese, South Africans, South Asians (including Indians, Sri Lankans and Pakistanis), Sudanese, Turks, Macedonians, Croatians, Serbs, South Americans (Brazilians, Chileans and Argentinians), Eastern Europeans (Czech, Poles, Russians, Ukrainians and Hungarians) and East Asians (including Chinese, Koreans and Vietnamese).
- 1800: 3 000 inhabitants
- 1820: 12 000
- 1851: 39 000
- 1871: 200 000
- 1901: 500 000
- 1925: 1 million
- 2003: 4.3 million
- 2050: 5.1 million (projected)
[edit] References
- ^ Postcardz, Sydney Article. 2006. History of Sydney
- John Birmingham (1999). Leviathan: The Unauthorised Biography of Sydney. Random House. ISBN 0-09-184203-4.
- Ruth Park (1999). Ruth Park's Sydney. Duffy & Snellgrove. ISBN 1-875989-45-5.
