Eureka Rebellion
The Eureka Stockade was a miners' revolt in 1854 in Victoria, Australia against the officials supervising the gold-mining regions of Ballarat. It is to Australian history what the storming of the Bastille is to French history and the Battle of the Alamo is to American history. Although the revolt failed, it was a watershed event in Australian politics, and is often but inaccurately characterised as the nation's "Birth of Democracy".
Background
The Australian colony of Victoria was declared separate from New South Wales in 1836, and for the first fourteen years of its existence was a peaceful and sparsely populated region of farmers and graziers. This tranquility was irrevocably disrupted in 1850 with the discovery of substantial gold fields all across the territory. The result was a rapid and massive influx of fortune-hunting immigrants.
The roots of the Eureka Stockade uprising lay in the inability of a fledgling colonial government to cope with the new demographics of the colony. From being the administrative body of the "rural aristocracy", the government suddenly found itself unprepared to take charge of an unruly population of itinerants. Its response was to impose an unofficial martial law, enforced by the hurriedly assembled and quasi-military "Gold Commission". That many of the newly-arrived miners regarded the Victorian authorities as close associates of the deeply hated "English oppression," which many had left their homelands to escape, was the first portent of conflict.
Within a short time, the easy surface gold had been exhausted, and gold could be found only by digging for the deep leads—the veins of gold buried beneath metres of clay and rock. By 1854 the fields of Ballarat were occupied by 25,000 or more miners chiefly from Ireland, but also from England, other European nations, and China, many of whom had come to Australia from the California gold rush. The hills were soon denuded of trees to provide timber for the deep shafts being dug—an environmental disaster from which the area has never fully recovered.
Authority in the camps was held by the Resident Gold Commissioner, Robert Rede, and enforced by a military garrison. The main mechanism of government revenue was the "Miner's Licence", a short term lease of a "claim", a 3.6 square metre plot of land. The monthly fee for this licence was 30 shillings—a stupendous fee for the time—and was payable whether or not any gold had actually been found. This raised the ire of the miners, as did the weekly "licence hunts" where the military police searched for and arrested anyone lacking proof of a licence.
In September 1854, prompted primarily by budget shortfalls resulting chiefly from the cost of maintaining a private army, the Governor of Victoria, Sir Charles Hotham, ordered the frequency of the licence hunts increased to twice weekly. With dissent simmering, this and two further events drove the miners to violence.
The next critical incident was the arbitrary arrest of a crippled, non-English speaking Armenian, wrongfully charged with assaulting an officer. This angered the miners for two reasons. First it was seen as racial victimization (though not expressed in such 20th-century terms). This alone would probably not have been enough to motivate the miners, not renowned for their racial tolerance, but they did identify with the Armenian as a fellow "digger", a term used by the miners to describe their lack of privilege. More importantly, the man arrested was also the servant of a Roman Catholic priest, Father Smyth, and this was interpreted as a religious affront by the large Irish component of the miner population, who already held deep resentments against the British for religious oppression.
The second critical event was the acquittal of publican James Bentley, who had been charged with the murder of a miner, James Scobie. An angry mob, interpreting the acquittal as unjust, burnt the Bentley's Hotel to the ground.
Protests
Civil and non-violent protests began to grow as a result of these perceived injustices; on Sunday, 22 October 1854 a crowd estimated at more than ten thousand miners gathered at Bakery Hill, directly opposite the government encampment. Although this crowd made camp for over a week, no violence ensued. However, neither were their grievances heard by the authorities. A second mass meeting occurred on Wednesday, 1 November, at which the "Ballarat Reform League" was created, under the chairmanship of J.B. Humffray. Throughout the next month, the League sought to negotiate with Commissioner Rede and Governor Hotham, both on the specific matters relating to Bentley and the men being tried for the burning of the hotel, and on the broader issues of abolition of the licence, democratic representation of the gold fields, and disbanding of the Gold Commission.
Commissioner Rede's response to these disputes was perhaps an ill-judged one, but stemmed from his military background and has been attributed by many historians (most notably Manning Clark) to his belief in his right to exert empirical authority over the "rabble." Rather than hear the grievances, Rede increased the police presence in the gold fields and summoned reinforcements from Melbourne. A confrontation appeared unavoidable.
Escalation
On 28 November, the reinforcements marching from Melbourne were attacked by a mob. A number were injured and a drummer boy was allegedly killed. At a meeting the following day (29 November) the Reform League relayed to the miners its failure to achieve any success in negotiations with the authorities. The miners resolved to openly resist the authorities and burn the hated licences.
Most notably the Eureka Flag, a blue flag designed by a Canadian miner, "Captain" Henry Ross, and bearing nothing but the Southern Cross, was flown for the first (recorded) time. As a gesture of defiance, it deliberately excluded Great Britain's Union Jack, which appears on Australia's official flag.
Rede responded by ordering a large contingent of police to conduct a licence search on 30 November. Although eight defaulters were arrested, most of the military resources available had to be summoned to extricate the arresting officers from the angry mob that had assembled.
This raid prompted a breakdown in the leadership of the Reform League, and in the rising tide of anger and resentment amongst the miners a more militant leader, Peter Lalor took control. In swift fashion a military structure was assembled. Brigades were formed and captains were appointed. Licences were burned, the rebel "Eureka" flag was unfurled and oaths of allegiance were sworn. An encampment at the Eureka Flat was set up and by Friday, 1 December, a stockade had been hastily constructed from timber and overturned carts. The miners vowed to defend themselves from licence hunts and harassment by the authorities.
Although the scene was set for a military engagement, Rede did nothing, and as a result the passion and vehemence of many of the miners faded. By late in the evening of Saturday 2 December, a number of miners had returned to their personal camps and were getting on with the business of mining or traditional Saturday night carousing. A small contingent of two or three hundred miners remained at the stockade.
Rede's inaction thus far did not reflect his true intent, and at 3 a.m. on Sunday, 3 December 1854, a party of 276 police and military personnel, under the command of Captain J.W. Thomas, approached the Eureka Stockade and a battle ensued.
There is no agreement as to which side fired first, but what was clear was that the battle was fierce, brief and terribly one-sided. The ramshackle army of miners was hopelessly outclassed by a military regiment and was quickly routed. According to Lalor's report, fourteen miners died inside the stockade and an additional eight died later from injuries they sustained. A further dozen were wounded but recovered. Among the soldiers and military police, records indicate six were killed, including one Captain Wise. Many miners fled, and a substantial number of survivors were arrested. Martial law was imposed, and all armed resistance collapsed.
Aftermath
For a few weeks it appeared that the status quo had been restored, and Rede ruled the camps with an iron fist. However, in Melbourne, and to a lesser extent Sydney, there was tremendous public outcry over the military actions. Newspapers characterised it as a brutal overuse of force in a situation brought about by the actions of government officials in the first place, and public condemnation became insurmountable. Thirteen miners were tried for treason early in 1855, but all were rapidly acquitted to great public acclaim. Rede himself was quietly removed from the camps and reassigned to an insignificant position in rural Victoria.
A Commission of Enquiry into the affair was organised, and was scathing in its assessment of all aspects of the administration of the gold fields, and particularly the Eureka Stockade affair. The gold licences were abolished, and replaced by an inexpensive annual miner's licence and an export fee based on the value of the gold. Mining wardens replaced the gold commissioners, and police numbers were cut drastically. The pace of reform was so rapid that within a year, the rebel leader Peter Lalor was representing Ballarat in the new Legislative Council, and a few years later was elected Speaker of the Legislative Assembly of Victoria.
Over the next thirty years, the Eureka Stockade event was forgotten, so successfully that the precise location of the insurrection remains uncertain. All of the materials used to build the stockade were rapidly removed to be used for the mines, and the entire area itself was so extensively worked that the original landscape was unrecognizable. However the event itself returned to the national consciousness and became a rallying cry as the call for independence from Britain gained momentum in the 1880s.
The Eureka Stockade (or more accurately, the driving force of public opinion that followed) has been characterised as the "Birth of Democracy" within Australia. Its precise significance is uncertain; it has been variously mythologised by the political left as a revolt of free men against imperial tyranny and of labour against a privileged ruling class, and by the political right as a revolt of independent free enterprise against burdensome taxation, as an expression of multicultural republicanism, and so on.
The affair continues to echo throughout Australian politics to the present day, and the call to replace the existing Australian flag with the Eureka flag has been raised on countless occasions by various groups within the country. While there is no doubt that the Eureka Stockade was one of the most significant events in Australian history, what the precise nature of that significance actually is will probably be argued for some time.