From British subjects to Australian values: a citizenship-building approach to Australia–Asia relations

Building Citizens: Empire, Asia and the Australian Settlement

“…Particularly around the latter half of the 19th century, ideas of 'Britishness' began to take on importance in the colonies, but was significantly intertwined with notions of race, culture and capacity for self-determination (Bell 2007;Jayasuriya 2008). Consequently, external sovereignty was not simply to be found in the external trapping of an independent foreign policy, but was also 8 This Indigenous history and its relationship to both the settler colonialism and imperial authority has been well documented in the work of Reynolds (see Reynolds 1981; see also Chesterman and Galligan 1997).…”

“…Within the imperial association nations shared a common moral, racial and civic order, out of which cooperation sprang up out of mutual respect, and 'it would make for a greater harmony and unity than any attempt to impose an imperial sovereign, whether the British government itself or some form of imperial federation' (Meany 2008, 380). Just as Australian federalism carried with it a notion of dual citizenship, a similar idea was at play within the context of a larger imperial political association (Jayasuriya 2008).…”

“…This was really the first sovereign act of the Australian state. Conditional understanding of sovereignty within the imperial order lies at the root of the notion of middle power (Jayasuriya 2008).…”

“…However, this is necessarily a political project directed at building citizens, which in turn helps to provide what Abrams (1988), rather provocatively, called the mask of the state; that is, the ideological construction of the state. The manifold political practices embedded in the Australian Settlement -the mask of the state -served to demarcate the external and internal territorial and civic boundaries of the sovereignty (Jayasuriya 2008). On this view, the idea of the Settlement itself gave rise to forms of organisations and consciousness -rather than a specific cluster of policies -that created political identities which fused racial and civic elements.…”

“…On this view, the idea of the Settlement itself gave rise to forms of organisations and consciousness -rather than a specific cluster of policies -that created political identities which fused racial and civic elements. This lies at the core of the process of creating political subjects aligned with a specific representation of the state (Jayasuriya 2008). A key proposition of this essay is that the Australian Settlement is central to a strategy of citizenship building located in a process of state boundary making within the political framework of an imperial association.…”