Wednesday, August 7, 1901. White Australia.

Australian Prime Minister Edmund Barton introduced the Immigration Restriction Act 1901 into the Australian House of Representatives as the Federation's first legislation to further the "White Australia policy", the policy that came into being to preclude people of non-European ethnic origins, Asians and Pacific Islanders, from immigrating to Australia.  The goal was to create a  "White/British" country.

The concept had obviously been around for awhile, but this was the first legislative effort at it.

The policy remained in effect until well after World War Two, although in the post war period, starting in 1949, it began to be dismantled.  By 1973 it had been completely.

On this date, Barton stated: "We are guarding the last part of the world in which the higher races can live and increase freely for the higher civilization. I place before the House a measure of definite and high policy."

World War One anti conscription poster.  It was feared by backers of the White Australia concept that conscripting Australians would necessitate the importation of foreign labor from other cultures.

This obviously racist  policy is, frankly, pretty much what National Conservatives and MAGA imagine to be ideal now, for the United States.  National Conservatives would imagine it ideal for Australia as well as the US, whereas MAGA can't spell Australia.  The racist nature of it, in contemporary National Conservative circles, would be thought of in cultural terms, which is why they tend to lecture Europeans on that continents immigration policies.  The more racist ones are why MAGA freaks out about things like Moroccans crossing into a Spanish North African city.

Often missed by NatCons on things such as this, many cultures other than European ones have claims on the Christian virtues they imagine themselves to be protecting, and in fact many of the darker cultures that Stephen Miller fears are actually, in 2026, every bit as European and Christian, if not more so, than Europeans and Americans are.  Central Africa is, for example, deeply Christian in many locations.  Central and South Americans, who MAGA fears, is uniformly Christian.

FWIW, this same sort of view was common in other regions of the British Empire.  Perhaps the ultimately expression of it was Rhodesia.

At any rate, the old racism is much like the new racism.

Higher civilization in the form of the British Army, through Field Marshal Kitchener, issued a proclamation giving all Boer soldiers until September 15 to surrender, or to be exiled permanently from South Africa if captured and to have their property confiscated at war's end.

It had no effect.

The RMS Oceanic rammed and sank the Irish vessel Kincor off of Tuskar Rock.

The U.S. Navy gunboat Machias was dispatched to Colon, Panama, Colombia to be on standby during the war between Colombia and Venezuela..

Last edition:

Tuesday, August 6, 1901. Lawton, Oklahoma.

Location: Lawton, OK, USA