Democracy, the second of three volumes in the awardwinningseries The Europeans in Australia, shows whatthe Europeans did with Australia and why during thefirst four or five generations of invasion and settlement,so as to secure great wealth and the beginnings ofdemocracy.

During the period from around 1815 to the early 1870sAustralia began to find its place. The pace of colonialexpansion accelerated while a kind of democracyemerged. More than a story of geography and politics,Democracy describes the way people thought and felt –what drove them, what troubled them. By analysing thelives of both powerful and ordinary men and women,Atkinson sets out the ideas that moved and marked them,in a history of ‘common imagination’.