New Holland (Dutch; Flemish: Nieuw-Holland) is a historical European name for mainland Australia.
The name was first applied to Australia in 1644 by the Dutch seafarer Abel Tasman. The name came for a time to be applied in most European maps to the vaunted Southern Land, or Terra Australis, even after its coastline was finally explored.[1]
The continent of Antarctica, later named in the 1890s, was still in largely speculative form; it resumed the name Terra Australis (sometimes suffixed Non Cognita, meaning unknown). Its existence had been speculated on in some maps since the 5th century, under the theory of "balancing hemispheres".
Lieutenant James Cook, captain of, claimed the eastern portion of the Australian continent for the British Crown in 1770, naming it New South Wales. The British settlement of Sydney as a colony in 1788 prompted Britain to formally claim the east coast as New South Wales, leading to a search for a new collective name. New Holland was never settled by the Dutch people, whose colonial forces and buoyant population had a settled preference for the Dutch Cape Colony, Dutch Guyana, the Dutch East Indies, Dutch Ceylon and the Dutch West Indies.
New Holland continued to be used semi-officially and in popular usage as the name for the whole land mass until at least the mid-1850s.
The name New Holland was first applied to the western and northern coast of Australia in 1644 by the Dutch seafarer Abel Tasman, best known for his discovery of Tasmania (called by him Van Diemen's Land). The English Captain William Dampier used the name in his account of his two voyages there: the first arriving on 5 January 1688 and staying until 12 March; his second voyage of exploration to the region was made in 1699.[2] Except for giving its name to the land, neither the Netherlands nor the Dutch East India Company claimed any territory in Australia as its own. Although many Dutch expeditions visited the coast during the 200 years after the first Dutch visit in 1606, there was no lasting attempt at establishment of a permanent settlement. Most of the explorers of this period concluded that the apparent lack of water and fertile soil made the region unsuitable for colonisation.
On 22 August 1770, after sailing north along Australia's east coast, James Cook claimed the entire "Eastern coast of New Holland" that he had just explored as British territory. Cook first named the land New Wales, but revised it to New South Wales.[3] With the establishment of a settlement at Sydney in 1788, the British solidified its claim to the eastern part of Australia, now officially called New South Wales. In the commission to Governor Phillip the western boundary was defined as the 135th meridian east longitude (135° east)[4] (map from 25 April 1787), taking the line from Melchisédech Thévenot's chart, Hollandia Nova—Terre Australe, published in Relations de Divers Voyages Curieux (Paris, 1663).[5]
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; namely it referred to the western half of the continent. In 1804, the British navigator Matthew Flinders proposed the names Terra Australis or Australia for the whole continent, reserving "New Holland" for the western part of the continent. He continued to use Australia in his correspondence, while attempting to gather support for the term. Flinders explained in a letter to Sir Joseph Banks:[6] [7]
His suggestion was initially rejected, but the new name was approved by the British government in 1824. The western boundary of New South Wales was changed to 129° east in 1825 (16 July 1825 – map). In 1826, to pre-empt a French settlement and claim to the territory, because of the importance of the route to New South Wales the British established a settlement, now called Albany, in south-west New Holland. Governor Ralph Darling of New South Wales put Edmund Lockyer in command of the expedition and gave him the order that if he encountered the French anywhere he was to land troops, to signify to them that "the whole of New Holland is subject to His Britannic Majesty's Government."[8] In 1828 a further settlement was made, this time on the Swan River, and the name Swan River Colony was soon the term used to refer to the whole western part of the continent. The name New Holland was still invoked as the name for the whole continent when Charles Fremantle on 9 May 1829 took formal possession in the name of King George IV of "all that part of New Holland which is not included within the territory of New South Wales." In 1832, the territory was officially renamed Western Australia.
Even as late as 1837, in official correspondence between the British government in London and New South Wales, the term "New Holland" was still being used to refer to the continent as a whole.[9] [10]
From 1800 to 1803, France conducted an expedition to map the coast of New Holland, led by Nicolas Baudin. The Baudin expedition was intended to be a voyage of discovery that would further scientific knowledge and perhaps eclipse the achievements of James Cook.
Many Western Australian places still have French names today from Baudin's expedition: for example, Peron Peninsula, Depuch Island, Boullanger Island and Faure Island.
After British colonisation, the name New Holland was retained for several decades and the south polar continent continued to be called Terra Australis, sometimes shortened to Australia.[11] However, in the 19th century, the colonial authorities gradually removed the Dutch name from the island continent and, instead of inventing a new name, they took the name Australia from the south polar continent, leaving a gap in continental nomenclature for eighty years.[12] Even so, the name New Holland survived for many decades, used in atlases, literature and in common parlance.
In the Netherlands, the continent continued to be called Nieuw Holland until about the end of the 19th century. The Dutch name today is Australië.
One place where the name persists is in taxonomy. Many Australian species named in previous centuries have the specific name novaehollandiae or novae-hollandiae, for example the emu, Dromaius novaehollandiae.
Dutch politician and cartographer Nicolaes Witsen describes the south west Australian coast in a detailed description in a letter titled "Some late observations of New Holland" written to English naturalist Martin Lister, dated from 3 October 1698:[13]
In Gulliver's Travels (1726) by Jonathan Swift, the title character, travelling from Houyhnhnms Land, spends a few days on the southeast coast of New Holland before he is chased away by the natives.
The American author Edgar Allan Poe used the name New Holland to refer to Australia in his prize-winning 1833 short story "MS. Found in a Bottle":
In 1851, Herman Melville wrote, in a chapter of his novel Moby-Dick entitled "Does the Whale's Magnitude Diminish? – Will He Perish?":
In 1854, another American writer, Henry David Thoreau, used 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: