Question:

What is Australia´s Defense force?

Defense

The system of national defense employed by Australia dates from the integration of the separate colonial forces following the country´s federation in 1901. A small amount of compulsory military service (strictly within Australia) was introduced in 1911. The Royal Australian Navy received its first ships in 1913. Australians were on active service with the Royal Flying Corps in World War I (1914-1918); the Royal Australian Air Force was not established until 1921. Australians twice rejected compulsory military service during World War I, yet volunteered in huge numbers out of proportion to the small population. The first enemy attack on Australian territory was the aerial bombing of Darwin by the Japanese early in World War II (1939-1945). Australian forces have taken part with distinction in the Crimean War (1853-1856), the Sudan campaign (1897-1899), the Boer War (1899-1902), World Wars I and II, the Korean War (1950-1953), the Malayan Emergency (1948-1960), the Vietnam War (1959-1975), and the Persian Gulf War (1991). Conscription was reintroduced for home defense during World War II, then in the postwar years until 1960, and again in 1965 to support the Vietnam effort. Public outrage over the Vietnam War caused conscription to be abolished once more in 1972. In 1998 the Australian armed forces totalled 55,200. The army numbered 25,200; the navy, 14,200; and the air force, 15,800. Although small, the armed forces are equipped with modern weapons. With the United States and New Zealand, Australia was a signatory of the ANZUS Treaty (1952) for mutual defense and support in case of attack. When New Zealand refused in the mid-1980s to allow ships capable of nuclear attacks to use its ports, the United States suspended defense obligations with the country. The Australia-United States alliance under ANZUS remains in full force, and Australia also maintains its own defense agreements with New Zealand.

The New South Wales Corps

The New South Wales Corps
In 1792 the Royal Marines were replaced with the New South Wales Corps, which had been specifically recruited in Great Britain. Given grants of land, members of the corps became the colony's best and largest farmers, but they also posed a serious threat to the governors by their power over the economy. With a sharp eye for enhancing their income, they specialized in controlling the price of rum, which served largely as the colony's internal means of exchange.

Captain John Hunter, Phillip's successor as governor, who arrived in 1795, tried in vain to gain control of the rum traffic. The next governor, Captain Philip G. King, who served from 1800 to 1806, was no more successful. Both governors also had to house additional arrivals, and in 1804 King had to use the corps to put down a rebellion by Irish convicts.

In 1806 Captain William Bligh replaced King. The captain had gained notoriety earlier, when the crew of his ship, the Bounty, had mutinied in the Pacific. Bligh threatened the corps with the loss of their monopoly. He was met with the so-called Rum Rebellion, and on January 26, 1808, officers of the corps arrested him. Bligh was later sent to London, where he successfully defended his policies, but he was not restored to his governorship. The Rum Rebellion thus gave the leaders of the corps the immediate victory. Meanwhile, one of its ringleaders, John Macarthur, had found the solution to the colony's lack of valuable exports: in 1802 he had shown British manufacturers samples of Australian wool. It was only after 1810, however, with the breeding of the merino sheep, with its long staple wool, that sheep grazing gradually developed into a major economic activity