Conclusions

Abstract

In his study of Australian nationalism in the era of imperialism, Stephen Alomes argues that in late nineteenth-century Australia, ‘the shaping into an imperial mould of city populations’ came through several processes, which he lists as follows:

• The dominance of Australian cities and their derivation from the British city model due to Australia’s late period of white settlement.

• The tightening ideological bonds of Empire made possible by the steamship and the cable, mass education and propaganda expressed in the many forms of popular culture and made necessary by Britain’s relative decline as a world power.

• The development of Australian social institutions in British forms in this era of the invention of tradition.

• The coalescence of traditional invasion fears and social Darwinist views of racial conflict.

• The political uses of imperial and monarchical performance by incumbent politicians.