Oxford history of Australia: volume 4: the succeeding age 1901-1942. Stuart Macintyre. 1999.

In 1901 the seperate Australian colonies came together in a Commonwealth . Institutions were fashioned to meet the needs and aspirations of a nation. Markets were extended, industries enlarged. Over the next forty years Australians pursued themes of material and social progress through war and economic crisis.

Oxford History of Australia. Volume 4 locates these events within their international and imperial context. Like other regions of white settlement, Australia prospered as a pastoral and agricultural producer, yet it aspired to industrial self-sufficiency. It drew its financial and human capital from Britain and was bound to the parent country by bonds of trade, culture, and sentiment, but it yearned for autonomous nationhood. Four decades of endeavour merely demonstrated the extent of its dependence.