{"product_id":"2026200013324-secondhand-colonial-australia-before-1850","title":"Colonial Australia Before 1850","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eCondition remarks:\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBook: Good\u003cbr\u003eJacket: No dust jacket\u003cbr\u003ePages: Good\u003cbr\u003eCondition remarks: Condition as shown in image\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eLong before the gold rushes transformed a continent, Australia was a patchwork of struggling colonial settlements clinging to the edges of an ancient and unforgiving land — and Colonial Australia Before 1850 chronicles this formative era with scholarly precision and vivid narrative authority. Brian Fletcher traces the arc of European settlement from the first convict transports to the cusp of a new economic and social order, detailing the political conflicts, penal experiments, pastoral expansion, and the often turbulent relationships between settlers, convicts, free immigrants, and the Indigenous peoples whose world was being irrevocably altered.\n\nFletcher's work stands as a cornerstone of Australian colonial historiography, presenting a meticulously researched account that situates the Australian experience within the broader currents of British imperial ambition and nineteenth-century social thought. His measured, authoritative prose strips away romanticism to reveal the raw machinery of colonial governance, land policy, and class struggle that shaped a nascent nation. For anyone seeking to understand the deep foundations upon which modern Australia was built, this landmark study poses a question that still resonates: what kind of society did the colonists truly intend to create?\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Secondhand Stock","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":49203320389851,"sku":"2026200013324-SECONDHAND","price":12.0,"currency_code":"AUD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0523\/7646\/9701\/files\/86682a2b-2ebe-4e55-85fb-34d7e4b948c3.png?v=1788147817","url":"https:\/\/bookgrocer.com\/products\/2026200013324-secondhand-colonial-australia-before-1850","provider":"Book Grocer","version":"1.0","type":"link"}