invaders. There can be no agriculture without the help of new customs and
institutions that safeguarded crops and herds, and new granaries and other
places for storing food. The revolution was marked by the centralizing of
power, the rise of strong despots ruling a far bigger area than was normally
controlled by a typical nomadic tribe or‘nation’, and the rise of professional
soldiers, larger armies, and permanent forts. The new way of life encouraged
the division of labour. It was marked by the growth of knowledge specialists,
including metallurgists, potters, bureaucrats, and priests. It led to specialist
occupations such as gardeners, shepherds, millers, builders, and metal
workers—for the invention of iron and bronze is a later part of what is called
the Neolithic Revolution. In 1788, there were no signs of these new rulers,
specialists, and institutions in Australia, though they could be seen every-
where in Asia and Europe.
Thus Australia was‘exceptional’in standing, for such a long span of time,
outside the economic and political revolution created by the domesticating of
plants and animals. No other large part of the world stayed outside. No other
large territory, with considerable areas of favourable climate and soil, escaped
this revolution for solong. In contrast, New Guinea andthe TorresStrait Islands,
and, of course, New Zealand (Belich 2001, ch. 2), became, at different stages and
in varying degrees, some of the beneficiaries of the Neolithic Revolution.
When thefirst British settlers landed in Sydney in 1788 they unknowingly
faced one of the sharpest contrasts in the recorded history of the world. Two
distinct cultures, ways of life, and political and economic systems came face to
face, and could not comprehend each other. A country embarking on the
Industrial Revolution and the age of steam suddenly confronted several hun-
dred mini-republics that practised many impressive skills but could not boil
water. Aborigines possessed no agriculture and metallurgy as we know them,
and could not read and write. The British and the Aboriginal attitudes to land
tenure, to personal possessions, and to family, marriage and child-rearing, and
death were far apart. One simple contrast: a nomadic people usually do not
accumulate possessions, for they were usually a burden; and likewise nomadic
people do not occupy the land in the same way as agriculturists. Moreover, the
new British and the old Aborigines had no common language, and thefirst
meetings were often marred by simple misunderstandings. Their mutual
puzzlement, in some facets of daily life, would persist, even as the twenty-
first century dawned (Blainey 2015, pp. x, 215).
2.2 Making Peace: Australia and New Zealand
There was no prospect of signing a treaty between Britain and, say,five,
let alone several hundred, Aboriginal tribes or nations. Even if, in 1788, a
Australian Exceptionalism: A Personal View