Australia
In my (very much) younger days, Australians (generally) took notions that this country was founded as a dumping ground for convicts and nothing significant happened before that for granted.
It was a manifestation of what I have called The Minimalist View of Australian History. It suggests we don't have very much history, and what we have is not worth investigating. If you do explore it, don't expect to find anything interesting.
That's not true.
Australian history incorporates much that intrigues and fascinates, and it isn't all uncomfortable reading. My Themes and Variations include some of those strands. I examine some of them in A Radical, Republican, Multicultural North? Really? Others show up when I explore themes that The Minimalist View of Australian History omits. Still others, including the early part of the convict era and the beginnings of the wool industry, appear here in my short history of Australia.
Mapping The North: Tracing an Outline's history of world exploration includes Columbus and Magellan because they were more or less headed this way. Canada, Cabot and Cartier also appear, but only until the quest for a northabout passage into the Pacific cuts out at the end of the 16th century. James Cook revives it, but that's part of the Cook story. Similarly, Bass Strait/Van Diemen's Land/Tasmania appears in the narrative as Englishmen and Frenchmen investigate the area and whalers and sealers exploit what they find. From there, as my interest in the mainland moves Northward, events on what is becoming the Apple Isle become increasingly irrelevant.
