English Test Correction: Geopolitical Relations in Great Britain and Australia

Extract

[...] Indeed, a penal institution is based on violence (be it direct or mediated): people are locked in and constantly monitored as a punishment for something they did in the past. The penal system is certainly not based on the same principle as society. The great challenge taken up by the first governors of Australia was to invent a viable social organization in extraordinary conditions. This is what governor Philip accomplished (you may explain his choices and the way the penal colony was run . [...]

[...] Most of you failed to READ the question properly: You should have noticed four things: - "to what extent": this implies that your answer should not be a definite yes or no - "be considered" = is: you should reflect on who might have such an opinion: everyone, historians, ordinary citizens, certain ethnic/racial groups, politicians, etc. - "to have been": the tense that is used clearly implies that you must look at the past, and not dwell too much on the present state of affairs. - "monstrous colony": what does this mean, is there only one meaning to the word monstrous? Why not "monstrous country"? * If you had properly studied the question, you could have come up with a very relevant answer. [...]

[...] - The status of foreign policy is a bit more ambiguous: formally the dominions were autonomous but in fact the members of the Commonwealth followed the British foreign policy, or at least were expected to until the end of World War II. - Changes in the dominions' constitutions must be voted by the British Parliament. The change in the status of the governor epitomizes the transformation of the relationship between Great Britain and the dominions: the governor embraced a constitutional function and no longer represented the British government. [...]

[...] Defining a country as a former monstrous colony makes it difficult to build a strong national identity: so, the "monstrous" past of Australia has been revisited and reassessed: - Actually, the convicts were ordinary working-class British citizens, not terrifying criminals and they participated fully in the life of the colony when they finished serving their sentence. - The legal principle of terra nullius was overturned in the 1992 Mabo case. - Today, Australia is still in the process of coming to terms with the assimilation policies conducted in the 19th and 20th centuries by the States with the racist ideology and beliefs which justified the discrimination endured by the Aboriginal people. This is exemplified in the "history wars" waged by historians and politicians over the interpretation of the past and its consequences in the present. [...]

[...] This provided the legal basis for the dispossession of Aboriginal people. In a way, it is possible to argue that the creation of the Australian colony was based on a monstrous legal argument: both unfair and abnormal since it was clearly denying the reality: there were inhabitants in Australia before the arrival of Captain Cook &Co. Thirdly, the way the Aboriginal people were treated by the colonists and their local governments and later by the States of the Commonwealth of Australia (after 1901) can be described as monstrous. [...]