White citizenship: nationhood and race at Federation

This paper explores the centrality of racial concerns at the time of Federation. Whereas citizenship was arguably Federation's greatest gift in a general sea of public apathy and moral and philosophical banality, the gift was very selectively bestowed. Although white men predictably benefitted above white women, the latter too received pronounced political rights which advantaged them largely over their sisters in other Western societies. Overall, Australian citizenship bestowed civil, social and political rights upon its white inhabitants well in advance of comparable societies elsewhere. Yet at the same time, it disadvantaged its remaining Aboriginal inhabitants more emphatically than in other white settler societies; as well as introducing, as Federation's first task, the most thoroughly exclusionary migration legislation in the world in relation to race. The gap engendered between the outstandingly advantaged whites and the heavily deprived and penalised non-whites is a dramatic demonstration of the intensity of institutional racism in Australia at this time.