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This doctoral thesis considers the significance of Australian engagement with China within British imperial history between the late-eighteenth and early-twentieth centuries. It sets out to explore the notion that colonial and early-federation Australia constituted an important point of contact between the British and Chinese Empires. Drawing on a long tradition of imperial historiography and recent advances in British World and Anglo-Chinese history, it utilises extensive new archival research to add a colonial dimension to the growing body of scholarship on the British Empire’s relations with Qing China. In doing so, it also seeks to contribute to a better understanding of the internal dynamics and external relations of Britain’s late-Victorian and Edwardian Empire. The following chapters centre around two overarching historical themes. The first is the interconnection between Chinese migration to Australia and the protection of British mercantile and strategic interests in the Far East as imperial issues. The second is the relationship between Australian engagement with China and the development of the idea of a Greater Britain. Each of these themes throws up a range of fascinating historical questions about the evolving character of Britain’s late-Victorian and Edwardian Empire, the inter-relation of its various parts and its ability to navigate the shifting winds of political and economic change. Taken together, they shed new light not only on Anglo-Australian, Anglo-Chinese and Sino-Australian history, but also serve to illuminate a series of triangular relationships, connecting the metropolitan, Far Eastern and Australian branches of the British Empire.

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) / This thesis explores the experiences of white women who partnered Chinese men and their children in southern Australia during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. It has been based on a wide range of sources, including newspapers, government reports, birth and marriage records, personal reminiscences and family lore, and highlights the contradictory images and representations of Chinese-European couples and their families which exist in those sources. It reveals that in spite of the hostility towards intimate interracial relationships so strongly expressed in discourse, hundreds of white women and Chinese men in colonial Australia came together for reasons of love, companionship, security, sexual fulfilment and the formation of family. They lived, worked and loved in and between two very different communities and cultures, each of which could be disapproving and critical of their crossing of racial boundaries. As part of this exploration of lives across and between cultures, the thesis further considers those families who spent time in Hong Kong and China. The lives of these couples and their Anglo-Chinese families are largely missing from the history of the Chinese in Australia and of migration and colonial race relations more generally. They are historical subjects whose experiences have remained in the shadows and on the margins. This thesis aims to throw light on those shadows, contributing to our knowledge not only of interactions between individual Chinese men and white women, but also of the way mixed race couples and their children interacted with their extended families and communities in Australia and China. This thesis demonstrates that their lives were complex negotiations across race, culture and geography which challenged strict racial and social categorisation.

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) / This thesis explores the experiences of white women who partnered Chinese men and their children in southern Australia during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. It has been based on a wide range of sources, including newspapers, government reports, birth and marriage records, personal reminiscences and family lore, and highlights the contradictory images and representations of Chinese-European couples and their families which exist in those sources. It reveals that in spite of the hostility towards intimate interracial relationships so strongly expressed in discourse, hundreds of white women and Chinese men in colonial Australia came together for reasons of love, companionship, security, sexual fulfilment and the formation of family. They lived, worked and loved in and between two very different communities and cultures, each of which could be disapproving and critical of their crossing of racial boundaries. As part of this exploration of lives across and between cultures, the thesis further considers those families who spent time in Hong Kong and China. The lives of these couples and their Anglo-Chinese families are largely missing from the history of the Chinese in Australia and of migration and colonial race relations more generally. They are historical subjects whose experiences have remained in the shadows and on the margins. This thesis aims to throw light on those shadows, contributing to our knowledge not only of interactions between individual Chinese men and white women, but also of the way mixed race couples and their children interacted with their extended families and communities in Australia and China. This thesis demonstrates that their lives were complex negotiations across race, culture and geography which challenged strict racial and social categorisation.

Between 1842 and 1857, British interactions with the Qing Empire shaped and informed the development of British liberal attitudes. However, amid the widespread historiography devoted to uncovering international influences on British liberalism during this period, the impact of the Anglo-Chinese relationship remains a footnote. Instead, focus is given to how Europe, America and the British Empire assisted in the advancement of British politics and liberal thought. This thesis redresses this oversight – showing how Anglo-Chinese frictions in the mid-nineteenth century brought into question British notions of free trade, international law, diplomatic standards and non-intervention. Britain’s determination to improve its trading network in China matched by the Qing’s refusal to allow further Western expansion, informed British liberal debate and shaped political attitudes. Most notably, it resulted in Sir John Bowring, the former Foreign Secretary of the London Peace Society, ordering the military bombardment of the port of Canton in late 1856. The bombardment – which resulted in the second Anglo-Chinese conflict (1856-1860) – is well-documented by historians. However, the development of Bowring’s political convictions, which provided an ideological justification for war, has been overlooked. This thesis uncovers how interactions with China forced Bowring and the British expatriate community more generally to reconsider the meaning of free trade, the boundaries of international law and their commitment to non-intervention. In addition, it shows how Bowring’s actions resulted in a heated debate that captured the attention of Britain’s political elite and, through the General Election of 1857, the British public more generally. As a result, it facilitated an open and vibrant debate that queried whether, to secure British trade, military intervention could be deemed an acceptable diplomatic method – a discussion that forced the development of the nation’s liberal attitudes. This thesis tackles two relatively distinct areas of historical research that rarely interact. First, it sheds new light on the scholarship that has examined foreign influences on the development of British liberal ideas in the mid-nineteenth century. It shows that through an investigation of relations with peripheral nations such as China, historians can gain a fresh and more detailed perspective on how and why nineteenth century liberal attitudes developed. In addition, it challenges the existing framework adopted by Sinologists in their assessment of Anglo-Chinese relations. Recent studies remain focused on uncovering how nineteenth century Western expansion into the Qing Empire affected its political, legal and cultural development. This thesis reverses this approach – arguing that this relationship not only affected events within China but in addition, shaped British liberal debate and consolidated British political ideas. This thesis calls, therefore, for historians to reconsider the importance of relatively peripheral nations on the development of British ideals and liberal thinking in the mid-nineteenth century. By examining these new frontiers, it sheds new light on the making of British liberalism.