Speech, Children and the Federation Movement

Abstract

It is still of a mystery as to why voters in Australia agreed to the federation of the colonies in 1901. The prevailing argument among historians for many years made much of regional economic interests, but during the 1990s a new type of Australian nationalism led to a focus on motivation of a more altruistic kind. The inspirational language used by men such as Edmund Barton and Alfred Deakin, by patriotic writers of fiction and verse and by oratorically gifted members of the Australia Natives Association (ANA), during the 1880s and 1890s, has been dissected for what it says about genuine feelings of Australian nationhood.