Hi, I’m the History Guy. I love history. And if you love history too, this is the channel for you.
On December 3rd 1854, units of the British Army and the Colonial Constabulary attacked a group
of rebellious miners in the Crown Colony of Victoria in southeastern Australia. It was
a short battle, part of a rebellion that was relatively small in scope,
and yet had had an outsized impact on public opinion on the future of the
governance of the colony, and is still the subject of significant debate among
historians. The siege of the Eureka Stockade is history that deserves to be remembered.
In 1850, the British Parliament passed an act for the better government of Her Majesty's Australian
colonie Among other things, the act enabled the creation of a new colony of Victoria,
to be separated from the larger colony of New South Wales, although the colony
did not officially separate from New South Wales until July of 1851. The new colony
contained a land area of some 227,000 square kilometers, and in 1850, had a non Aboriginal
population of some 76,000. With much of the population in the area of Port Phillips Bay,
which included the city of Melbourne, which itself represented approximately 1/3 of the population of
the new colony. The colony was primarily a center of the wool trade. But the population and economic
dynamics of the new crown colony changed rapidly. On October 8th 1851, a man named Thomas Hiscock
discovered gold near this town of Buninyong. This is not the first discovery of gold in Victoria,
but it was the first to be widely publicized, with a report published four days after the discovery
in the newspaper of the Geelong Advertiser. The great Victorian Gold Rush had begun.
The effects of the gold rush on the colony of Victoria were massive. In the decade between
1851 and 1861, the population of the colony grew from around seventy six thousand to nearly five
hundred and forty thousand. Immigrants came from Britain, throughout Europe and the United States,
but also included some forty thousand immigrants from China. The demographics of Australia shifted
as the population of Victoria jumped from 18% of the population of Australia to 47%.
The small town of Rutherglen in northeastern Victoria went from a population of about two
thousand, to a population of about sixty thousand. And it was enormously rich,
one of the most productive gold fields in history. In the decade between 1851 and 1860,
Victoria accounted for one third of the world's gold output. The colony grew,
and Melbourne transformed one of the wealthiest, and most dynamic cities in the world. So much
gold was exported to Britain that the empire was able to pay off all its foreign debts,
and the United Kingdom underwent a period of great financial expansion.
But the growth was not without cost. Small towns transformed into massive mining camps,
which were squalid and filthy. Politics did not keep up with the change, and the mining towns
became far underrepresented in the Parliament as representation did not keep up with the growing
populations of the boom towns. The cost of trying to manage law and order in the camps
was enormous. To help to cover the growing cost of administration, Lieutenant Governor of the colony,
Charles La Trobe, instituted a license fee on all miners of 30 shillings per month. The fee was
immediately controversial. The growing population of miners had few rights, could not purchase land,
and had little representation in Parliament. By August of 1851, rallies were already being held
in opposition to the fee. The protest became more widespread as the fee increased to three
pounds a month in 1852. Despite the wealth of the gold fields many miners were just getting by,
living in ramshackle shacks. And perhaps more controversial than the fee itself was
the measures to enforce it. A miner caught mining without a license would be fined six
pounds on the first offense, an impossible some for many, and would be jailed on the
second offense. Men could be jailed even if they had a license, but didn't have it on them
when asked. The law provided for half of the fee to go to the informer, or the prosecutor,
which was an incentive for abuse. The license hunts became oppressive. Police had every
motivation to militaristically enforce the fine, but little motivation to police crime.
The challenges in police in the gold fields contributed to the problem. When gold was
discovered, all but two of Melbourne's 40 police officers resigned to go dig for gold. The
government could not pay wages for policing that were competitive with the opportunity for mining,
and so qualified candidates could not be found. Many of the men hired for policing
ended up being ex-convicts who were easily corrupted, and harsh in their collection of the
license fees. Many of these only understood law enforcement from the harsh process of
disciplining prisoners. Miners were treated as criminals. As one newspaper opined “honest men
are hunted down by the police like kangaroos. And if they do not possess a license they're paraded
through the diggings by the commissioners, and police. And if unable to pay the fine,
are rudely locked up, in comfort of any thief or thieves who may be in the camp
cells at the time. In short, treated in every way as if they were felons.”
A change in the gold fields Act in 1853 further loosened restrictions,
and when police could demand licenses. And people who aren't even working were subject
to the fine. Resistance in the mine fields became more organized. An anti gold license association
in Bendigo presented Governor La Trobe with a petition in 1853 signed by twenty-three
thousand miners. La Trobe promised reforms, but could not get them passed by the Legislative
Council. The more organized reform movement then shifted the government policing focus to try to
check movements for reform, which were seen as a sort of rebellion. Policing was now a matter of
building a force that could outgun rebellious miners. The accord between law enforcement,
and law abiding citizens required for orderly governance, was missing.
The distrust was underscored in October of 1854, when a miner by the name of James Scobie was
murdered. And the man who was accused of the crime, a hotel proprietor named James Bentley,
was acquitted by what the miners perceived to be a corrupt magistrate. Miners furious at
having to pay the license fee, but perceiving themselves to receive no justice in return,
rioted and burned Bentley's hotel. And it only inflamed the situation more when some miners
were arrested for the arson. In November of 1854, more than 10 thousand miners met and
formed the Ballarat reform League. Interestingly, the league made grievances beyond the license tax
and Scobie murder, but represented the main grievances of the British Chartist movement,
a working class movement dedicated to political and land reform. They presented a set of demands
to Charles Hotham, who had replaced La Trobe as lieutenant governor of the colony. In response,
Hotham created a Royal Commission on gold field problems and grievances.
But events were already spinning out of control, and Hotham, and his commission
were caught between the desire for a political solution, and the imperative that they assert
Authority and not give in to a rabble. In fact, the Commissioner, a man named Robert Reeve,
was already increasing the police presence, and reinforcements had been brought up from
Melbourne. On November 28th a group of those reinforcements, moving towards Ballarat,
was attacked by a group of angry diggers, and several were injured. Attempts to collect
licenses on November 30th resulted in a riot, and the officers required military
support in order to extricate themselves from the mob. The Reform League then sent a demand
to Hotham that they release all the miners who had been arrested, but Hotham felt that
he could not give in to “demands” from a mob. The diggers became more and more convinced that they
could not negotiate with Hotham and Reid, and more militant voices started taking over the movement.
The miners built a stockade, a ramshackle collection of overturned wagons,
and timbers surrounding about an acre of gold field in an area Ballarat called Eureka. The
Eureka Stockade flew a blue flag showing the constellation of the Southern Cross,
a consolation still represented on the flag of Australia. But Reid had been collecting troops,
including not just police, but troops at the British Army, from the 12th and 40th regiments
of Foot. That Saturday night many men left the stockade, assuming the British forces would not
attack on a Sunday. Less than 200 men were in the stockade when at 3:00 a.m. on Sunday December 3rd,
Reid's troops attacked. The battle was short as the miners were no match
for army troops. While resistance collapsed almost immediately, the troops continued to
attack. Women from the town, and even some of the officers tried to stop the killing,
but in the end, between 20 and 60 of the defenders of Eureka Stockade were killed,
and another 120 arrested. Reid declared martial law, and armed resistance in the colony collapsed.
But while Reid won the battle, he and Hoffman were almost instantly losing the public's support.
The initial newspaper reports were sympathetic to the digger's cause. While almost any government
would have responded to the building of the stockade, it was portrayed as heavy-handed
repression of people with legitimate grievances. Thousands protested in Melbourne. The opinion of
the public had shifted. While one newspaper editor served three months for the charge of sedition,
all of the 13 diggers who were eventually tried for charges related to the Eureka rebellion were
acquitted in court. As one historian noted, “No jury could be found willing to convict those
arrested.” The acquittals were celebrated in the streets of Melbourne. Fearing public backlash,
Hotham sought cover from his commission, whose report was sympathetic to the miners,
and heavily criticized government actions in the gold fields. While
the Commission had been moving slowly, the public response to the Battle of the
Eureka Stockade hastened both the commission's report, and the political will to act upon it.
A lesser discussed dynamic of the digger rebellion, was the opposition to Chinese
immigration which was seen as a threat by the diggers. Restricting Chinese immigration was
one of the recommendations of the Commission, and it would be a driver in the creation of
a series of laws regarding immigration that at the start of the 20th century,
would come to be known as the White Australian Policy. As a result of the commission's report
the miners licenses were repealed, and a much more affordable Miners Right, which only cost
5 shillings a year was created. In addition, miners were given the right to purchase land, and
greater representation in Parliament, where eight more elected positions were created. Moreover,
the results of the Commission eventually resulted in universal male suffrage in Victoria Colony,
and thus some people see the Eureka Rebellion as the birthplace of democracy in Australia. And if
that's true it's really a surprise, because many people writing at the time, including many of
the rebels, said that most of the diggers didn't really care much about democracy,
they were just opposed to the license fees. In fact, some people see the Eureka Rebellion as
nothing more than outsiders who wanted to steal Australian resources, and not pay any taxes. And
so, it could be said that the impacts of the Eureka Rebellion were greater than its cause.
I'm the History Guy. I hope you enjoyed this edition of my series, five minutes of history,
short snippets of forgotten history five to ten minutes long. And if you did enjoy it, please go
ahead and click that thumbs up button which is there on your left. If you have any questions,
or comments, feel free to write those in the comments section, I'll be happy to respond. And
if you'd like five minutes more forgotten history, all you need to do is subscribe.