Defining the Nation: The Wider Discussions on White Australia and the Japanese Racial Equality Clause

Abstract

Australia’s involvement in the rejection of the Japanese racial equality clause, at the Peace Conference of 1919, has been noted by contemporaries and historians as a significant event in Australia’s nationalism. Often portrayed as Prime Minister William Morris Hughes’ struggle to preserve White Australia and therefore the nation, sources and opinions divergent from Hughes’ have not been fully explored. A contrast of these sources to the traditional legacy of the episode using a thematic framework of nation, labour and defence, demonstrates the significance that the denial of the clause had on Australia and the complexity of discussion it inspired.