National boundaries
When the colonies came together in 1901, the states had already established strategic and economic claims throughout the Pacific and Indian Ocean regions. Australia’s maritime and land boundaries had to be negotiated before and after Federation through interaction with independent states as well as French, Dutch and German colonies. The immigration acts that made up the White Australia policy were part of an internal attempt to define those national boundaries. These attempts to legislate ‘racial’ boundaries for Australia began in 1855, and continued into the middle of the twentieth century, when the first blows were struck against exclusionary policies that included policing based on a language test. Materials in Chinese and Japanese, French, German and Dutch give inside and outside views of how Australia sought to be identified and was recognised in the region and globally.