New Australia

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Map drawn by John Lane, William Lane's brother

New Australia or Colonia Nueva Australia (German: Kolonie Neuaustralien ) was a colony in Paraguay that was founded by the early socialist New Australian Movement on September 28, 1893 by 238 adult Australians with their children. In 1894 a group of settlers split off and founded another Australian colony called Cosme . New Australia was southeast of the capital of Paraguay Asunción and not far from the city of Villarica . Both colonies had to be given up after a few years due to economic difficulties, human inadequacies and insufficient immigration. New Australia was renamed Nueva Londres (German: New London ) in 1957 .

Nevertheless, this early socialist experiment had an impact on Australian governments and their social behavior in the period that followed. The colony remained in the consciousness of the Australian labor movement and was echoed in various statements, such as Jack Lang , a Prime Minister of the Australian Labor Party in two electoral terms of New South Wales (1925–1927, 1930–1932), who called it the " first communist experiment in the world ”.

prehistory

William Lane, the initiator of the New Australia colony

After Australia's first economic and banking crisis of 1890 and the defeat of the unions in the maritime strike of 1890 and the shearers strike of 1891, the Australian labor movement was disaffected, the unions weakened and the social situation of the working class poor, whereupon they took up initiatives split up to found a political party, Australian Labor Party , or to found a colony in New Australia .

William Lane , a journalist and founder of the first Australian workers newspaper Queensland Worker in 1890, initiated the New Australia Co-operative Settlement Association in 1891 with other utopian socialists who sought to realize their ideals outside of Australia.

On May 2, 1891, the Worker newspaper announced that the New Australia Association had sent Alf Walker, a former businessman, to South America in search of suitable land. Lane obtained more than 600 signatures for the emigration and Walker received a commitment to 187,000 hectares of unpopulated land from the Paraguayan government free of charge and tax-exempt.

William Lane, who had been elected chairman of the New Australia Association, pursued the idea of common-hold , a brotherhood of English-speaking whites with no fraternization among the settlers and others, a lifelong marriage, a color- Line (no sex with the local population), a rudimentary communism based on common property and a ban on religion. Furthermore, alcohol prohibition should extend across the colony .

According to Lane, the idea of ​​a communist society was: “Members own in common all land, houses, machinery, tools, cattle and general property: There is no master, no wageworker, no landlord, no beggar, no manorhouse, no suopkitchen, no unemployed , no loafer, no public prison, no policeman "(German:" Members [of the colony] are joint owners of the entire land, houses, machines, tools, livestock and general property: There are no masters, no wage workers, no large landowners, no beggars, no mansion, no soup kitchen for the poor, no unemployed, no idlers, no prison, no police officers ”). The competition among each other is replaced by the brotherhood.

Colony history

Colonial population

Paraguay's population had fallen from 525,000 to 220,000 during the war with Argentina and Brazil between 1864 and 1870, including just 28,000 men. When Juan Gualberto González came to power in 1890, there was a recession and he tried to stimulate the economy through immigration . His immigration policy allowed the Australian settlers to form a colony of their own when they reached a population of 1000 people.

The population of both colonies did not develop as planned: an estimated 600 to 650 Australian people came to Paraguay; in Cosme it was 131 and in New Australia never more than about 200.

Among the settlers in the colonies were William Lane and well-known Australian early socialists such as Mary Gilmore , Rose Summerfield , and Gilbert Casey . Mary Gilmore was the only woman who immigrated there alone as a woman and later married there.

Colonial life

Insight into life in New Australia, Paraguay

There were school classes for children in Cosme and a monthly newspaper appeared in which Mary Gilmore, who herself lived in Cosme from 1895 to 1900, published in New Australia under her single name Mary Jean Cameron. In New Australia an independent monetary system developed and there were colonial postmarks.

From the beginning there were clashes over the alcohol ban, the relations between the settlers and the Paraguayan people and the authoritarian leadership style of William Lane. "I can't help feeling that the movement cannot result in success if that incompetent man Lane continues to mismanage so utterly as he has done up to the present" (German: "I will not get rid of the impression that the movement will not be successful can as long as the incompetent Lang continues the mismanagement as he currently does, ”wrote one settler. Criticism and other opinions were dismissed by Lane and he wrote: "The crooked ones will have to go" (German: "The dishonest must go"). The problem with Lane increased in 1894 when another group of settlers arrived on the Royal Tar , whereupon he founded the new colony with 58 other settlers on May 12, 1894 and left New Australia 72 kilometers south to Cosme.

The new leader of the New Australia colony was appointed Frederick Kidd, who arrived in Paraguay in the second group.

On June 9, 1894, when President Gonzalez was deposed, the colonies lost their most important supporter, who ruled there from 1890. The colony of New Australia got into financial difficulties from 1895 because the development stagnated overall and numerous settlers only lived there for a short time and the contractually agreed number of at least 1200 settlers could not be reached. In 1897 it was declared an open colony and the land was divided among the settlers.

The colony was never economically self-sustaining, the standard of living was low, there was a shortage of women, the work was hard and numerous settlers, looking for better living conditions, left the colonies.

Colonial monetary system

After Paraguay's defeat in the war against Argentina and Brazil in 1870, the paper money issued during the war became worthless and new bonds to stimulate the economy had to be secured in gold or substantial claims. In 1871 a law was passed that provided for the issuance of a new Paraguayan currency as paper money, which, however, was hardly accepted and therefore the new paper money hardly came into circulation. In January 1880 it was established that a peso fuerte was one fifth of £ sterling . Furthermore, the Anglo-Argentine banks and other companies were allowed to issue their own currency in Paraguay. In 1885, the peso oro (gold peso) became the official currency of Paraguay, which resulted in Anglo-American banks denying the convertibility of the peso Fuerte . In Paraguay, this led to debts being repaid in panic. In 1890 there was a massive liquidation of bank balances, which in the years from 1890 to 1892 led to the bankruptcy of Paraguayan banks under state supervision. From 1892 to 1905 Paraguay experienced inflation combined with an increase in non-convertible domestic currencies. During this difficult economic time the new colony was founded, where it was a matter of building a stable economic concept, a functioning goods and money economy.

There are few documents on the development of the colonial monetary system in New Australia or Cosme. A statement suggests that initially there was no general currency in circulation , but that the colonists brought their income into the colonial trade and received a loan, or "coupons", from the colony. According to one report, each settler received 100 coupons for himself and 25 for each child upon arrival in New Australia . In Cosme, these coupons were called "Credit" and entered in a credit book. In this Inside credits and outside-credits managed and had to be redeemed during the week of the output. The outside credits were earned from sales outside the colony and the inside credits within the colony. This procedure is based on a written report from the settler Molesworth.

In May 1895 the colonies suffered economic difficulties and the Paraguayan government granted a subsidy of £ 100 and a monthly installment of £ 800. The contractual agreement of May 21, 1895 was based on a loan of 4.20 and 2 Peso Fuerte (P $) for clothing per adult person and week as well as funds of varying amounts for children according to age to secure their livelihood. The Cosme newspaper reported on the introduction of a system in New Australia that would allow each adult to consume P $ 6 per week.

A colonial currency with 1.00  Peso Fuerte , 0.10  Centavos and 0.5  Centavos was created in the form of paper money in four different designs with the inscription Colonia Nueva Australia and the signature of William Kidd. This shows that the colonists intended to integrate within Paraguay, on the other hand it was not intended that this colonial currency should circulate within Paraguay, as the last documented print on the banknotes dates from November 1895.

reception

Most of the time it is written critically or about the disaffected people in the colonies. Although the early socialist experiment failed, governments in Australia used this attempt as an opportunity to make land available for cooperatives and municipalities in order to reduce Lane's popularity and the vision of a paradise outside Australia.

Jack Lang, an important politician of the Australian Labor Party and a former Prime Minister of New South Wales , commented on the as follows: "Australia had given the world its first experiment of communism" (German: "Australia gave the world its first communist experiment." ").

Review

In January 1897, the land of New Australia was auctioned and the local settlers were given a small piece of their own land. Some of the settlers stayed, others moved to cities in Paraguay and Argentina . Others returned to Australia earlier.

Lane got sick and disaffected and left Cosme for New Zealand in 1899 , where he worked as a conservative journalist and later became the editor of the New Zealand Herald . The Cosme colony existed for a few more years until August 12, 1909. The area of ​​the colonies became Paraguayan again after the end of the experiment and descendants of the colonists still live there today. Every now and then Australian tourists visit New Australia , which had 300 inhabitants in 2007.

In 1965 G. Souter, who published A Peculiar People: Australian People in Paraguay in 1968, traveled to Paraguay and estimated that about 200 people of the Australian settlers live in the New Australia , Cosme and Asunción area.

The folk punk band The Currency of Melbourne tells the story of the colonies in their song "Paraguay" and the country musician Graeme Connors wrote the lyrics to the song "Boomerang in Paradise".

The Paraguayan comic book writer Robin Wood is a descendant of Australian colonists.

literature

  • Stewart Grahame: Where Socialism Failed - An Actual Experiment . John Murray, London 1924.
  • Anne Whitehead: Paradise Mislaid - in Search of the Australian Tribe of Paraguay . University of Queensland Press, St. Lucia, Queensland 1997, ISBN 0-7022-2651-3 .
  • Michael Wilding: The Paraguayan Experiment . Penguin Books, Ringwood Victoria 1984 ISBN 0-14-007360-4 .
  • Gavin Souter: A peculiar people: The Australians in Paraguay. Angus and Robertson, Sydney 1968, ISBN 0-207-95037-7 .

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b nationaltreasures.nla.gov : Cosme and New Australia colonies , in English, accessed June 1, 2011
  2. ↑ Different numbers of the first settlers are mentioned in the literature.
  3. ^ A b James Rupp: The Australian People: An Encyclopedia of the Nation, its People and their Origins. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, New York 2001, ISBN 0-521-80789-1 . online on google books , in English, accessed on June 3, 2011
  4. ^ A b c Nat Williams, Margaret Dent: National treasures from Australia's great libraries. National Library of Australia, Canberra 2005, ISBN 0-642-27620-X , p. 56. Online on Googlebooks , in English, accessed June 5, 2011
  5. ↑ a b c d e f g pjsmes.org.au : Peter Symes: The Notes of New Australia. in English, accessed June 1, 2011
  6. ↑ a b c adbonline.anu.edu.au : Lane, William (1861-1917). in English, accessed June 2, 2011
  7. ↑ ses.library.usyd.edu.au : Cosme Co-operative Colony (Paraguay). Illustrated Handbook of General Information. P. 3, in English, accessed on June 3, 2011
  8. ↑ a b setis.library.usyd.edu.au ( Memento of the original from September 11, 2005 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. : New Australia: The Journal of the New Australia Co-operative Settlement Association. Cosme Monthly, June 1895. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / setis.library.usyd.edu.au
  9. ↑ auspostalhistory.com : colonia Nueva Australia and Colonia Cosme in Paraguay, in English, accessed on June 1, 2011
  10. ↑ a b c info.anu.edu : Trouble in Paraguay. in English, accessed June 1, 2011
  11. ↑ Other numbers and dates are also mentioned in the literature
  12. ^ R. Andrew Nickson: Historical Dictionary of Paraguay , Rowman & Littlefield, 2015, pp. 431–432 (can be found on the Internet)
  13. ^ Grahame: Socialism. P. 143, in English, quoted in n. pjsmes.org : The Notes on New Australia. Retrieved June 1, 2011
  14. ^ Grahame: Socialism. P. 142, in English, quoted. n. pjymes.org : The Notes on New Australia. Retrieved June 1, 2011
  15. ↑ Videos about New Australia on ABC TV Report ( Memento of the original from January 13, 2013 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. and Youtube @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.abc.net.au
  16. ↑ archiver.rootsweb.ancestry.com : AUS-QLD-L Archives, in English, accessed on June 3, 2011

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