Sectarianism and Separatism in Colonial Port Phillip

This paper assesses the sectarian dimension to the campaign in the 1840s for the separation of the Port Phillip district from New South Wales. It pays particular attention to the role in the campaign of the Rev. John Dunmore Lang and a Scottish Presbyterian lobby group whose commitment to Port Phillip's independence was driven by anti-Catholicism and a belief in church-state separation. The paper examines how race, class, gender and religion intersected in colonial discourse and asserts that the unity achieved during the campaign by European settlers at the expense of Indigenous Australians was temporary and fragile.