AUSTRALIA AND OCEANIA

Sumary
In this topic we saw some issues about the history of Oceania, after this we learn about the characteristics of the population.

After this we analyze some Oceanias countries as the Marshall islands, Micronesia, Tonga, New Zealand, Australia, looking in each one the general aspects as the culture, religion, and language.

Question
¿Has Europe too much influence over Australia according to the history?
Some research shows that modern Australia was founded with the influx of European settlers just over two hundred years ago, but the Aborigines inhabited the island continent for tens of thousands of years before that. They numbered a few hundred thousand before the European influx. But two centuries of discrimination and expropriation followed, and at one point the indigenous population fell as low as 60,000.
Australia's politicians at first looked to Europe and the US in foreign policy, but in the past 20 years or so they have made their near neighbours a priority.

Australia has mediated between warring groups in Papua New Guinea and the Solomon Islands and deployed thousands of peacekeepers in newly-independent East Timor.

In Australia the strong, services-based economy has seen sustained growth; mining and agriculture provide the lion's share of exports, also Australia is a regional policeman; further afield, its troops are in Iraq and Afghanistan

Is important to know that today, 99% of the population are of European or Asian descent. The government formally apologised in 2008 for the past wrongs committed against the indigenous Aboriginal population. Indigenous Australians suffer high rates of unemployment, imprisonment and drug abuse.

The gradual dismantling of the "White Australia" immigration policy in the decades after World War II heralded an increase in the number of non-European arrivals. Migration continues to shape Australia and is a politically-sensitive issue. The country has taken a tough stance on unauthorised arrivals, but has scrapped a controversial policy of holding asylum seekers in detention centres until their cases are heard.

Bibliography
G HUGO. International migration between the European Union and Australia: patterns and implications. dspace-dev.anu.edu.au

THOMAS RISSE-KAPPEN. Cooperation Among Democracies: The European Influence on U.S. Foreign Policy. Publicado por Princeton University Press, 1997