To trace the story of Australian nationalism is to trace the search for a national identity in the absence of a defining national moment or event. In 1977, Australia celebrated the bicentenary of Captain Cook's “discovery” of Australia; yet Dutch explorers had discovered Australia for the European world decades before Cook. In 1988, the bicentenary was of the first European settlement in Australia, despite the continent's 40,000-year prior habitation by Aborigines. The centenary of federation in 2001 — proposed as a celebration of national independence — will also be a highly ambiguous anniversary. Before 1901, several Australian colonies had exercised substantial democratic self-rule. Long after 1901, Australia was reluctant to exercise a sovereign voice independent of Britain: the 1931 Statute of Westminster, establishing foreign policy independence of the White colonies from Britain, was not ratified in Australia until 1943.

One reason for this absence of a defining moment was the beneficence of the outside world. Australia's initial European settlement phase occurred during the nineteenth century “long peace”, at a time when Britain was at the peak of its power — the first industrial state, with a navy that was globally dominant. Until 1942, Australia had no realistic external foe to foster nationalism out of the desperate struggle for defence. Neither was a unifying independence struggle against the colonial centre necessary. Australia's colonization had occurred in the aftermath of the American War of Independence, from which the British Colonial Office learnt a great deal about leniency and large measures of self-rule for the White colonies: “Since the Colonial Office was itself an agent of reform, there was no need for the consolidation of an Australian nationality to carry issues which Britain would not concede.”

The closeness of the relationship between Britain and the Australian colonies — defined in currents of people, manufactures and food, physical security, and pragmatic grants of self-government within the bounds of colonial deference — meant that neither could Australia initially be defined socio-geographically. The ebbs and flows of people between Britain and the colonies meant that at no time could all of those within Australia's shores be defined as nationals, nor could all of those in Britain or in transit be defined as foreigners.