The 'Native Question' in Australia: exploring the Anglo-Australian humanitarian response, 1904-1939

In the first thirty years of the twentieth century the ‘native question’ loomed large in the heart of the British Empire in the context of heightened imperialism in Africa. This reverberated in Australia in the context of the Commonwealth government gaining Dominionhood, making contributions to the League of Nations as an independent mandatory power, and becoming responsible for the administration of the tropical North. A local humanitarian network developed encouraged by what they saw as more humane ideas around ‘Native’ administration emanating from the League and promoted by the Anti-Slavery and Aborigines’ Protection Society. This alignment provides an opportunity to explore relations between empire and nation in connection to this question at a formative moment for both. In particular, it points to the tension created by the vernacularisation of British humanitarian ideals into an advanced settler colonial society and the reach and limits of a humanitarian settlement in the local context.