What influence did James Cook have on Australian history?

Answer 1

Despite popular opinion, Captain Cook neither discovered nor named Australia.

However, he is significant in Australian history for having been the first to map the eastern coast of the continent.

Prior to Cook's arrival in 1770, Australia was known variously as "New Holland" and the "Great Unknown Southern Land" by the Dutch and Portuguese traders who had passed by the continent on their way to Asia. The first English sea captain to visit Australia, William Dampier, was most unimpressed by the barren landscape of the northwest, and returned only negative reports to England.

It was not until James Cook's successful voyage which involved charting the eastern coast of Australia, that New South Wales was seen as a viable proposition for a convict colony. In particular, it was endorsed by Sir Joseph Banks, the influential botanist who travelled with Cook. Banks was one of three botanists aboard Cook's ship "The Endeavour", and he was a passionate advocate of British settlement and colonisation of the Australian continent. It was largely upon Cook's and Banks's recommendation that Australian ultimately was colonised by the British, and not by another power later. Because of Cook's positive report to England was enough to convince the authorities that it was worth colonising the continent - and so the history of white settlement in Australia began.

Unfortunately, Cook was also the one who declared Australia to be terra nullius - a land without ownership, and he did not recognise the indigenous people as the true "owners" of the land. Upon European settlement, and for many generations afterwards, the indigenous people were wrongly regarded as an inferior species. As a result, they suffered terrible injustices, displacement and loss of culture. To this day, the indigenous people see Cook as an invader.