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The first volume to appear in the five-volume Oxford History of Australia, this book surveys the forty years following the establishment of the Commonwealth in 1901. It was a time of great change on the continent: institutions were fashioned to meet the needs of a nation; markets were extended; industries were enlarged; and Australians pursued plans for material and social progress through war and economic crisis. Yet as Australia yearned for autonomous nationhood and industrial self-sufficiency, it remained bound to Britain by ties of trade, culture, and sentiment. This narrative history explores the shifting patterns of class conflict and compromise that shaped the course of events and traces the links between the social, economic, and political processes of a nation in transition.