Asian immigration to Australia refers to immigration to Australia from part of the continent of Asia, which includes East Asia, Southeast Asia, and South Asia.The first major wave of Asian immigration to Australia occurred in the late 19th century, but the exclusionary White Australia policy, which was implemented to restrict non-European immigration, made it difficult for many Asian immigrants to migrate to the country. However, with the passage of the Migration Act 1958, the White Australia policy began to be phased out and Asian immigration to Australia increased significantly. Today, Asian immigrants from a wide range of countries play an important role in the cultural and economic landscape of Australia.
History
Early immigration, 2300–2000 BCE A study of Indigenous Australian DNA has found that Indigenous Australians may have mixed with people of Indian origin about 4,200 years ago, around 2000 BCE. This is supported by evidence of flint tools and Indian dogs being introduced from India at this time, as well as changes in tool technology and food processing in the Australian archaeological record., pp. 1803–1808.
There are two theories for this migration of genes from India to Australia. One theory is that some Indians had contact with people in Indonesia, who eventually transferred those genes from India to Aboriginal Australians. The other theory is that a group of Indians migrated directly from India to Australia and intermingled with the locals. This mixed ancestry may also explain the facial similarities between the Vedda people of Sri Lanka and Australo-Melanesians, as both groups share ancestry with Andamanese aborigines and Indo-Aryan migrants. It is now clear that this mixed ancestry also includes Dravidians, as the Andamanese people also intermixed with the now extinct Elamites.
Pre-colonial era, 1627–1787 CE It is also known that northern Aboriginal Australians had interactions with ethnic Chinese traders, though the extent of these interactions is debated. The first recorded link between China and Australia occurred during the establishment of the Colony of New South Wales. Three ships of the First Fleet, Scarborough, Charlotte and Lady Penrhyn, sailed to Canton after depositing their convicts in the colony to purchase tea and other Chinese goods to sell on their return to Britain.Shirley Fitzgerald, Red Tape, Gold Scissors, State Library of NSW Press, Sydney, 1997, pp. 13–18.'Bigge Report, Remarks on Distillation, 28 January 1821. Seamen from eastern Indonesian ports such as Kupang and Makassar also visited Australia's northern coast, collecting trepang or sea cucumber to trade with China. Although they did not settle in Australia, some of these seamen took Indigenous wives and their descendants can be found in many north coast populations today.
Colonial era, 1788-1900 CE
Indian immigration to Australia The first Indians arrived in Australia with the British settlers who established a new colony in 1788. These people included seamen, marines, their families, government officials, and convicts, including women and children. Many of these convicts were from other parts of Great Britain, including Ireland, and about 1% were from the British outposts in India and Canada, Maoris from New Zealand, Chinese from Hong Kong, and slaves from the Caribbean. Between 1788 and 1868, approximately 164,000 convicts were transported to the Australian colonies on 806 ships, some of which stopped in India on their journey.Phipps (1840), John Phipps (of the Master Attendant's Office, Calcutta) (1840) A Collection of Papers Relative to Ship Building in India ...: Also a Register Comprehending All the Ships ... Built in India to the Present Time .... (Scott). (Google eBook), p. 117 and 180.British Library: Almorah.
Malay immigration to Australia Malay labourers were brought to Australia to work in the copra, sugarcane, pearl diving, and trepang industries. The Cocos Islands saw the arrival of Malays as slaves under Alexander Hare in 1826, but they were later employed as coconut harvesters for copra. Ajoup, a 22-year-old Malay convict, may have been the first Malay immigrant to Australia, arriving in Sydney on 11 January 1837. Ajoup was sentenced in Cape Town, South Africa, to 14 years transportation to New South Wales, and received his ticket of leave (i.e. his freedom) in the colony in 1843.
Indentured Labour, 1848–1853
Chinese Immigrants Between 1848 and 1853, over 3,000 Chinese workers on labour contracts arrived in Sydney for employment in the New South Wales countryside. There was resistance to this cheap labour due to racist opposition towards the ethnicity of the Chinese immigrants.Darnell, Maxine, Life and labour for indentured Chinese shepherds in New South Wales, 1847–55: [Paper in special issue: Active Voices, Hidden Histories: The Chinese in Colonial Australia.] Journal of Australian Colonial History, Vol. 6, 2004, pp.137–158. Some Chinese immigrants stayed for the duration of their contracts and then returned home, but there is evidence that others spent the rest of their lives in New South Wales, marrying and starting families.Michael Williams, Chinese Settlement in NSW, p.4, https://www.environment.nsw.gov.au/resources/heritagebranch/heritage/chinesehistory.pdf The British government often overruled attempts by the Australian colonies to exclude Chinese immigration to avoid upsetting the Qing dynasty.Michael Williams, Chinese Settlement in NSW, p.5, https://www.environment.nsw.gov.au/resources/heritagebranch/heritage/chinesehistory.pdf
Indian Immigrants In the late 1830s, more Indians began to arrive in Australia as indentured labourers when the transportation of convicts to New South Wales slowed down and eventually stopped altogether in 1840. The demand for foreign labour increased, and this was partially filled by the arrival of Indians who had an agrarian background in India and were able to fulfill tasks as farm labourers on cane fields and shepherds on sheep stations. In 1844, P. Friell brought 25 domestic workers from India to Sydney, including a few women and children. A census from 1861 shows that there were around 200 Indians in Victoria, 20 of which were in Ballarat. Many more Indians came to Australia and worked as hawkers, traveling from town to town and selling a variety of products.Early Sikhs in Australia, SikhChic.com.
Gold rush, 1850s–1860s
Singaporean Immigrants Singaporean migration to Australia began during the gold rush period, which took place in the 1850s and 1860s. At the time, both Singapore and Australia were British colonies, so movement between the two territories was relatively common.
Pre-federation Chinese migration The gold rush period of the 1850s and 1860s saw the largest pre-federation Chinese migration to Australia, with numbers peaking around 40,000. In 1857 alone, around 15,000 Chinese immigrants arrived in the first half of the year. That same year restrictions were put on Chinese migration into Australia due to lobbying and anti-Chinese sentiment. These numbers were only reached again after the abolition of the White Australia policy in 1973. Gold was found at several places in Australia in 1851, but significant Chinese migration to join the diggers only began late in 1853.
Origins of Chinese immigrants Most of the people who came to Australia for the gold rush were from Guangdong. The Californian Gold Rush had been known as "old gold mountain" to the Chinese of Guangdong. The Australian rush was known as "new gold mountain". Chinese immigrants to Australia left such conditions as overpopulation, the declining power of the Qing dynasty, the devastation caused by the Taiping Rebellion, and the local Canton Hakka-Punti Clan Wars. These issues impacted many parts of China, but immigrants to California and the Australian Colonies came mainly from the counties most proximate to the port of Hong Kong.
Method of travel and demographics of Chinese immigrants The average voyage from Canton via Hong Kong to Sydney and Melbourne took about 3 months. It was a profitable exercise for the ship masters, and the more Chinese passengers they could fit on board, the more money they could make from the passage fares. These fares were often paid through a system of debt to clan leaders and/or to agents who accompanied them on the ship. Such methods of travel were known as credit-tickets. However, some Chinese were able to pay their own way. These were often the wealthier city-born men who were coming to Australia to be merchants or work in an industry other than gold mining. From 1853 to 1855, thousands of Chinese disembarked in Melbourne and headed for the goldfields.
Very few Chinese women came to Australia during this period. In 1861, at least 38,000 Chinese people lived in the Australian colonies with the vast majority being men.Australian Bureau of Statistics, Table 8.3 Population(a), sex and country of birth, Qld, Census years, 1861 – 1891, https://www.abs.gov.au/AUSSTATS/[email protected]/mf/3105.0.65.001 On the goldfields in Bendigo in 1861 there were 5,367 Chinese men and only one Chinese woman. By 1861, there were around 40,000 Chinese people living in Australia, constituting 3.3% of the total population.Au-Yeung, W., et al(2012), "Australia-China: Not just 40 years ", Economic Roundup, 2012(4)
Late 19th century, 1860s–1901
Indians in Outback Australia, 1860s–1901 In the late 19th century, Indians, many of whom were Sikh, worked as merchants, industrialists, and businessmen throughout outback Australia, establishing themselves as "pioneers of the inland". According to the 1881 census, there were 998 people born in India living in Australia, a number that had grown to over 1,700 by 1891.
Cameleers, 1860s–1900 During the period from the 1860s to 1900, small groups of cameleers, mostly from British India but also from Afghanistan, Egypt, and Turkey, were shipped in and out of Australia on three-year contracts to service the inland pastoral industry.australia.gov.au > About Australia > Australian Stories > Afghan cameleers in Australia . Accessed 8 May 2014. These workers, who were commonly referred to as "Afghans" or "Ghans", were responsible for carting goods and transporting wool bales by camel train. Most of the cameleers were Muslims, with a sizeable minority being Sikhs from the Punjab region. They established camel-breeding stations and rest house outposts, known as caravanserai, throughout inland Australia, creating a permanent link between the coastal cities and remote cattle and sheep grazing stations. This practice continued until around the 1930s, when the cameleers were largely replaced by automobiles.
Indonesians in Australia, 1870s–1901 Beginning in the 1870s, Indonesian workers were recruited to work in colonial Australia, with almost 1,000 (primarily in Western Australia and Queensland) residing in the country by the time of federation in 1901. The pearl hunting industry in northern and western Australia predominantly recruited workers from Kupang, while sugar plantations in Queensland recruited migrant labourers from Java. According to the 1871 colonial census, 149 Malays were working in Australia as pearl divers, labourers in South Australian mines, and on Queensland's sugar plantations. By 1921, the number of Malay pearl divers in Australia had grown to 1,860. However, the Immigration Restriction Act 1901 significantly curtailed the growth of this community.
Japanese in Australia, Late 19th century – early 20th century The first recorded Japanese migrant to Australia settled in the country in 1871. But it was not until the 1880s, following the lifting of restrictions, that Japanese immigration to Australia began in earnest.
Immigration Restriction Act 1901 and White Australia Policy, 1901–1973