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Abstract
The research contained in this thesis seeks to address a range of issues and questions related to an exploration of why Victoria's colonial government established a defence department in 1883 when no other Australasian colony did so. The study draws primarily on Australian and British archival records, contemporary historical accounts and a large body of relevant secondary material to consider how political leaders, colonial administrators and the armed services in Britain and Victoria confronted the problems associated with planning, designing, implementing, funding and maintaining an effective indigenous defence capability in Victoria during a period of rapid social, economic and political change.
The research identifies a series of chronologically related themes over the fifty-year period following European settlement in Victoria that shaped the evolution of Victoria's colonial defence management through to the creation of a dedicated defence department in 1883. The chronological themes examine how local security issues related to Victoria's gold rush combined with the pressures from wider strategic competition between Britain and various European powers and the introduction of responsible government, came to generate a set of complex contingent defence management circumstance in Victoria. It considers how such complexities came to shape the management of colonial defence in the Colony and how the vision and efforts of two men; James Service and Frederick Sargood, came to influence the ultimate decision to create Australia's first, and only, colonial defence department.