Description
We often imagine continents being colonized by people but in Australia it was arguably sheep and their wool that made British settlement economically and, thus, politically sustainable. This paper takes a long historical view on the role that sheep pasturing had on the colonisation of Australia and the role of the colony in the making of the British empire and in the world economy of the 19th and 20th century. Using a feminist and decolonial lens, the paper argues that pastoral agriculture was successful in creating a new 'world' in the antipodes because it represents more than a simple economic enterprise. Animal husbandry creates social structures that root families and communities on the land they are settling and becomes thus foundational to the imperial fabric of the new colonies.
