blog #6

According to Andrew Wells, starting in 1788, Australia began undergoing “economic and political transformations in response to internal and external influences.”  At first, Australia’s main purpose was to protect British interests in the Eastern part of the world.  This was focused on the spice trade and other trading with countries.  Then, in the 1820’s wool became a hot commodity that Australia could export.  They discovered that the Merino sheep was highly suited to the Australian climate and that was important because it produced extremely high quality wool.  This started the gradual takeoff of Australia’s export economy according to Evan Jones from the department of political economy of the University of Sydney.  The next important discovery for Australia came in the form of gold deposits.  This was after the gold rush in California, and like the one in California, it caused huge population growth, urbanization, mining expansion and immigration.  During this time and extremely surprisingly to this day, Australia is still very much a commodity-based export economy.  It focuses on mineral material to export.  Most of this mineral comes in the form of iron ore, coal, and in the past wool, gold, and silver. 

After 1850, Australia starts gaining capitalistic production.  This means that the country is starting to focus of becoming more efficient and savvy with its materials to export.  This includes “an expansion and diversification in commodity production and circulation” says Wells.  The periods that come after this are more commercial agriculture and further increased mining expansion.  All of the developments in Australia’s primary production have been lucky discoveries of minerals.  In the 1990/2000’s, there was a overall boom of resources to Japan.

To this day, Australia two main exports are coal and iron ore, which account for around $53.5 million (Austalia) exports in 2009-2010.  The majority of these exports are going to Japan, South Korea, China, and India, because of the their huge growing economies and because of their geographic location to Australia.  This information was gathered through Evan Jones’ statistics. 

When a country goes and picks up other entities and territories to increase their trade power, it is imperialism.  Britain, in the late eighteenth century used the imperialistic mentality to gain the territories of South Africa, and Australia to protect their interests and trade in other parts of the world.