New Holland (Australia) - History

History

William Dampier used the name in his account of a voyage of exploration to the region made in 1699.

After the establishment of a settlement at New South Wales in 1788, which encompassed the eastern part of the continent, the term New Holland was more often used to refer only to that part of the continent that had not yet been annexed to New South Wales; thus it referred to the area of land that is now Western Australia.

The abandonment of the name is due to Matthew Flinders, who used the name Australia for the continent, and recommended its official adoption. This was rejected at the time, but in 1824 the name change received official sanction by the United Kingdom; though the term "New Holland" was still in use as late as 1837 in official correspondence between the Government in London and the colony of New South Wales, referring to the entire continent of present-day Australia.

The American author Edgar Allan Poe referred to New Holland as late as 1833, in his prize-winning short story "MS. Found in a Bottle": "the hulk flew at a rate defying computation (...) and we must have run down the coast of New Holland".

In 1854, Henry David Thoreau - an American author, poet, abolitionist, naturalist, tax resister, development critic, surveyor, historian, philosopher and leading transcendentalist - mentioned the term New Holland (referring to the territory of the "wild" indigenous Australians) in his book Walden; or, Life in the Woods, in which he writes: "So, we are told, the New Hollander goes naked with impunity, while the European shivers in his clothes. Is it impossible to combine the hardiness of these savages with the intellectualness of the civilized man?"

In the Netherlands Nieuw Holland would remain the usual name of the continent until the end of the 19th century; it is now no longer in use, the Dutch name now is Australië.