Reaction To How Europeans Almost Divided Australia

Reaction To How Europeans Almost Divided Australia
This is my reaction to How Europeans Almost Divided Australia
In this video I react to Australia history by reacting to the fact that Australia could have been colonised not just by Britain but also possibly Netherlands or France.
Original Video - • How Europeans Almost D...

[@user-ey7dm9fl5y]

Lots of connections in South Australia from when Nicolaus Baudin mapped our coast and Kangaroo Island. Encounter Bay here is named after the meeting of Matthew Flinders and Baudin.

[@_Dei_]

When the British first fleet arrived in Botany Bay to establish the first colony there in 1788, they found that it was a poor location as there was no freshwater stream. Just a day or so later, the French explorer La Perouse appeared at the mouth of the bay. The British had to sneak out of the bay a day or two later, past the French, to find a better spot just a few kilometres north in Port Jackson at Sydney Cove, what is now Sydney. La Perouse would leave letters to be sent back to France and eventually sail off, never to be seen again. The French expedition apparently wrecked on the South Pacific island of Vanikoro. There is now a suburb in Sydney on Botany Bay called La Perouse.

[@Rusty_Gold85]

With 2 French ships they were expecting and heard a city had developed there but all they saw were tents. Stayed for 2 weeks

[@peaceful3250]

A very important fact not mentioned in this video is that Captain Cook mapped the East coast of Australia. Before then they had no idea of its shape.

[@merlingeikie]

The Brits needed a convict repository from which there would likely be no return. The Dutch seamen wrecked on the west coast were often assimilated into local clans. The west coast is still barren and inhospitable, very dry, hot and barren with little rain.

[@MartinSchurmann-ym1ly]

Interesting thing is that in 1803. The French put a flag on French Island in Western Port bay near Melbourne. Also part of Southern Australia had been called by the French South Napoleon land.

[@colinclark7180]

Imagine if the French had colonised Australia. We'd all be speaking French with an Aussie accent. Bonjour mate.

[@personofearth5076]

lol good comment.

[@rodneygoonan1581]

Well I live on French Island witch whose a part of France till they gave us to the new federation of Australia 😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂we love ❤❤❤❤it

[@FromTheGong]

Yeh nah " bonfuckenjour mate, howzafuktabeen wee wee"

[@1legend517]

We'd be like Canada basically.

[@Rusty_Gold85]

The First battles with the Aboriginals were in 1606 with Dutchman Janszoon and his crew. He lost 6 men in the Gulf of Carpentaria

[@allon33]

A group of 200 Dutch settlers wandered inland from Dampier in the 1700s and lived in the desert for over a hundred years before dying or mixing with the natives. A sad and mostly unknown tale.

[@MichaelRogers-et8dq]

Actual evidence of this is NONE. It is at most a supposition!

[@Ausecko1]

Lots of Dutch/Aboriginal descendents farther down the coast too, where shipwreck survivors made it ashore. Many blonde aboriginals in the Carnarvon area and towards Geraldton.

[@Rusty_Gold85]

The 1805 Battle of Trafalgar had a lot to do with it too. When the Royal Navy became the champion of the Seas , no other country could mount a challenge for 200 years. Matthew Flinders had a big say in calling it Australia. Baudin could have returned to Napoleon and claimed her but he died in Mauritius. A lot of the southern Coast has to this day french names to key locations

[@utha2665]

I knew of the Dutch and the French landing on the West coast but never heard of the Swedes. If you look at the names of the land features around the south west you'll see a lot of French names. Cape Naturaliste, Geographe Bay are two that come to mind. There's more information on Wikipedia if you search "French Western Australia", apparently more than 260 places bear French names.

[@user-ue4ru5sf9x]

That is a great historical video. I’m an Aussie and I have learnt about the French, Spanish and Dutch landings on this continent. I never knew about the Swedish nor the main reasons for the other countries mentioned, to not continue with their claims on Australia. This should be shown in our schools. 😀😀😀

[@bettymarshall2702]

The aboriginals wouldn't like it.

[@_alifeallmine_]

History is pretty fascinating really. And none of us are immune from some pretty horrific deeds in our past. I was really surprised to read of some of the Dutch Trade and Colonisation History, after I got interested having Travelled there a few times from Oz. I always knew about the whole ‘New Holland’ thing, it was taught a bit in Schools over here, so was a bit fascinated with the Netherlands, though it was a Dutch Musical Artist that had me Travel those times in the end. But we’ve got plenty of our own issues with past Deeds, and whilst they’re important to acknowledge and continue to be taught (in much better detail than I got), so we learn from them, we shouldn’t let them define us in the present.

[@ariadnepyanfar1048]

I do know that the fact that the European powers had carved up Africa and the Americas into piecemeal colonies owned by different European nations meant that in the late 1700s, this process was expected to happen to such a large landmass as Australia too. So even when Britain was winning the race, so to speak, of colonising Australia, it didn’t set up a legal framework that put all its cities and colonies under one governorship, one government. Each early city started as a little settlement, ruled by its own independent governor, policed by its local garrison of British military, and claiming a fairly modest area of land around itself compared to the size of the continent.

[@FionaEm]

I don't remember learning in primary school that the Swedes were interested in colonising Oz. Ya learn something new every day 😊

[@MichaelRogers-et8dq]

They really weren't.

[@RobNMelbourne]

The Dutch mainly explored the west coast where the desert meets the sea. This turned them off exploring further as they thought it was all useless arid land.

[@TenOrbital]

It was never going to happen. The UK was at war with most of Europe for the first quarter century of NSW’s existence during the Revolutionary and Napoleonic wars, achieving complete naval dominance. Then 1815-1850 was the absolute high point of Britain’s relative economic power and diplomatic and naval dominance.

[@ianwilson760]

Well i'm Irish convict , English convict , Scottish free settler and indigenous Australia so being a little bit froggie wouldn't hurt.

[@1legend517]

And today we barely have any French people in Australia or Swedes.

[@chrisdaldy-rowe4978]

Woot...but in the end it was only between two very retarded countries.Both were able to sail but still heathens pretending to have some kind of culture, when the native aboriginals had a real culture that was thriveing for over many thousands of years or more

[@SOConnor-oc8lc]

I have a 3 x grandfather that came from Sweden. He was my only free defendant that came to Australia back then

[@montecarlo1651]

Quite a lot of Scandinavians arrived in the Gold Rush. The Australian term to 'skull' a drink is very likely of Scandanavian origin from that time, based on the word skol. I have done family history research for over 40 years and it is quite common to see Scandinavians pop up in family trees. Less so the French.

[@allon33]

I once saw a strange very old map of West Australia, with the names and places of many towns along the coast, in French! Some of these towns are real, some are not, very strange.

[@nolasyeila6261]

I seem to remember there's a bit of French influence in the place names around the lower part of the south-west of WA - around Albany region.

[@allon33]

@@nolasyeila6261 How did that happen, I wonder what was going on there, at that time?

[@MichaelRogers-et8dq]

The town Esperance in W.A. was named after a French ship, the Espérance commanded by Jean-Michel Huon de Kermadec. Espérance is French for "hope".

[@badpossum440]

Why is it strange for a french map to have names in french? Some towns have been deserted over the years. There are 3 English towns near Darwin that were abandoned

[@allon33]

@@badpossum440 but this french map has 50 french towns in west australia that were never built???

[@lillibitjohnson7293]

“The Dutch explorer Willem Janszoon landed on the western side of Cape York Peninsula and charted about 300 km of coastline”

[@bronwyn6415]

The Dutch landed on the part of Australian coastline which looked barren so decided all of Australia was the same, so didn't claim any of the land.

[@MichaelRogers-et8dq]

No spices like they had in the 'Dutch East Indies' and nobody was mining iron ore to make steel girders to build 'skyscrapers' back then.

[@martyjones1413]

Francis Barrallier

[@lillibitjohnson7293]

The Dutch came to australia first but never came back to settle here

[@MichaelRogers-et8dq]

'Almost' is the 'click-bait' in the title. "How the Europeans COULD have perhaps divided Australia" would be a more genuine title.

[@davidcarter4247]

Is there a French Commonwealth of Nations? Is there a Dutch Commonwealth of Nations? That says it all really. Plus that several former French colonies joined the British Commonwealth when free of French rule. As did a former Portuguese one.

[@allon33]

Sweden picked the best part of Australia, they would have become very wealthy.

[@adrianmclean9195]

If only the French did - we could all be driving French cars and not be soooo bogan. La Perouse got it wrong. Australia, with the Dutch exploring, called it New Holland and Tasmania was once known on maps as Van Diemens Land. And now Tasman ia - after Able Tasman and also the Tasman sea, between Australia and New Zealand was named after him. But according to a shipwreck found off the coast of QLD, the Phonecians discovered it well before everyone else.

[@neilonthemove1481]

The food would have been sooooo much better

[@danielmoss895]

Oui, non.

[@Jeni10]

The French would have wanted the entire country but the British already had the east coast. If the French had colonised WA, it would likely be a separate political entity to the rest of Australia…. Oh wait, it is anyway!

[@MichaelRogers-et8dq]

The British would have gotten it eventually.

[@terryjohinke8065]

I like French food but I find their speech arrogant, unless it's French ( and it never can be) I don't think we'd like their speech.