Andrew Inglis Clark: From Colonial Patriot to Radical Nationalist

Andrew Inglis Clark was a nationalist and a republican. He wished to cut the ties linking the Australian colonies with imperial Britain. The English author and politician Charles Dilke observed in 1890 that Clark was ‘a great admirer of American institutions and literature, and an anti-imperialist in his opinions upon the future relations between the component portions of the Empire’. These ideas meant that Clark stood out among his contemporaries—those men who dominated the colonial parliaments during the last quarter of the nineteenth century and who both led the federal movement and crafted the Australian Constitution. This was true even when the comparison is made with the native-born leaders of his generation, men like Barton, Deakin, Kingston and Forrest. In his book The Sentimental Nation, John Hirst observed that among the members of the National Australasian Convention in 1891, ‘the inner group of founding fathers’, Clark was the only republican.