History Of Australia: The British Invasion Of Australia

Britain's first contact with Australia came with Captain Cook's voyage in the ship Endeavour. He landed in Australia in 1770 and claimed it as a British territory. The process of colonization began in 1788.

That said, the 19th century certainly wasn't exciting for the people who already lived in Australia. The history of the indigenous inhabitants of Australia, known in contemporary anthropology as the "Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people of Australia," is a complex and continually evolving field of study, and it has been colored by politics. For generations after the arrival of whites in Australia, the Aboriginal people were disregarded and marginalized, largely because they offered little in the way of a labor resource, and they occupied land required for European settlement.