I wanted to bump this thread because I've been thinking about this idea tangentially. I wanted to ask: with a POD any time after Federation, just how balkanised could the Commonwealth of Australia get? Is it just Western Australia that has a chance at secession, or could other states and regions secede too?
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AHC: Balkanised Commonwealth of Australia
- Thread starter Venocara
- Start date
- Pronouns
- he/him
Only Western Australia, and that's extremely unlikely.
Sorry.
You could delay Federation a few years- maybe even a decade or two, if that helps? The unifying forces were just too strong to put off much longer, I'm afraid. There was a decently active anti-Federal force in the Labour movement, but that was increasingly losing steam because Federation was seen as just that important to secure a common security and especially immigration policy.
The Anglo-Japanese Alliance is about to give one hell of a fillip to both, and if that doesn't the Great War will- you might think that that would help local colonial identities, but nothing of the kind happened with the South African War so it's not reasonable to expect anything different, especially since a larger war would require much more intercolonial coordination.
Once you have Federation, no one wants to secede. Western Australia has an extremely limited window when separatism was a truly serious force, and that required extremely favourable conditions that weren't enough to overcome the fact that neither London nor Canberra had any reason at all not to just ignore it.
Sorry.
You could delay Federation a few years- maybe even a decade or two, if that helps? The unifying forces were just too strong to put off much longer, I'm afraid. There was a decently active anti-Federal force in the Labour movement, but that was increasingly losing steam because Federation was seen as just that important to secure a common security and especially immigration policy.
The Anglo-Japanese Alliance is about to give one hell of a fillip to both, and if that doesn't the Great War will- you might think that that would help local colonial identities, but nothing of the kind happened with the South African War so it's not reasonable to expect anything different, especially since a larger war would require much more intercolonial coordination.
Once you have Federation, no one wants to secede. Western Australia has an extremely limited window when separatism was a truly serious force, and that required extremely favourable conditions that weren't enough to overcome the fact that neither London nor Canberra had any reason at all not to just ignore it.
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- Pronouns
- he/him
To clarify, since it might be confusing after I mentioned the importance of avoiding the war if you want a larger Federation: the South African War helped to keep NZ separate from Federation, but it acted as a centralising force within Australia. The demands of a big overseas commitment are such that they are much easier to meet with a unified response from the continent proper. That will be true with any Great War equivalent too.
Once you have Federation, no one wants to secede. Western Australia has an extremely limited window when separatism was a truly serious force, and that required extremely favourable conditions that weren't enough to overcome the fact that neither London nor Canberra had any reason at all not to just ignore it.
Thank you for this comprehensive explanation and sorry it's taken me so long to respond to it. Can I ask: how bad can the 1932 NSW constitutional crisis get? If it's something that happens closer to the time that Western Australia is pushing for secession, what is the worst-case scenario for the Commonwealth?
- Pronouns
- he/him
Thank you for this. It’s a good article but to my eyes the map does seem implausible: “Guelphia” would be far more powerful than the rest of the colonies combined, colonies like “Nuytsland” would be utterly unviable and the names aren’t particularly plausible either.
the South African War helped to keep NZ separate from Federation,
This comment passed over my head at the time but I wanted to ask: why is this the case?