The bias in settlement and exploitation of nineteenth-century Australia was essentially English. These Antipodes were classed as a wide white land, for the Anglo-Saxon. A Scot or a Welshman could have a place. They were Celts, and classed as ‘British’, close to the centre of England’s Empire, the greatest ever seen.

In Chapter Four of her book, Kathryn Cronin writes of nineteenth-century debates about ‘monogenism’ or ‘polygenism’. Performance of English power restricted translation to the category of ‘English’ or ‘British’. The Celtic Irish were allowed ready entry to our outpost of Empire. They were supposed to be British. Yet they often had it hard; they were stubbornly Irish. Their treatment had more to do with economics, politics, and religion than with race.