«SubjectsofourmostgraciousMajesty». Constitutionalism and constitutionalisation in South Australia Colony: An Agenda for Future Research

Abstract

Early Australian history is customarily broken into two distinct periods, whereby the colonial era (1788-1900) is differentiated from the federative era (1901-present). The former indicates the period in which the Australian colonies were founded as autonomous bodies separate from one another; the latter refers to the period after the unification of Australia and the creation of a federal system of government. However, the circumstances facing the country were far more diverse than this simple rubric suggests. In 1836, South Australia was founded as a free colony. This status meant that, from the outset, its settlers were unique in the Australian context. They did not arrive «at His Majesty’s pleasure» but instead of their own volition; moreover, throughout the next decade, the colony also played host to a large migrant population, most notably Germans. These circumstances raised fundamental questions concerning constitutionalisation, the setting of power, the origin of and influences on legal rule in South Australia, and to whom executive and judicial powers were answerable. This paper examines the foundation of the South Australian political-legal system in the context of these questions. It demonstrates the case study as both an outgrowth of and a unique solution to the perpetual problems of accountability and responsibility faced by contemporaneous European theorists, placing South Australia’s development not as an outlier but within the context of «Europe abroad» in the nineteenth century.