The political significance of the Eureka Rebellion is contested ground. It may be seen simply as a rebellion by miners against burdensome taxation or, as some authors suggest, the first expression of republican sentiment in Australia. Some would suggest the importance of the event has been exaggerated because Australian history does not include a major armed rebellion equivalent to the French Revolution or the American War of Independence. Others maintain that Eureka was a seminal event that marked a major change in the course of Australian history.
Irish and American Republicans in mid-19th century Victoria
During the 19th century Australian gold rushes, the 1861 Victorian census showed nearly 16 per cent of the colony's population comprised 87,160 Irish-born persons. During the years of convict transportation and assisted emigrants, up to 17.4 per cent of the convicts were Irish, and incentives to live in Australia offered between 1839 and 1851 were taken up by 28,900 Irish natives. Raffaello Carboni recalls that the Eureka lead was an Irish stronghold and the miners were a "rowdy mob." There were tensions between groups of English and Irish miners.
Among the other national flags on display at the public meetings held around the time of the rebellion were those of North American design, with Canada and, most importantly, the United States being countries that included a large number of the Irish diaspora. Fredrick Vern recalls that during his time in the colony: "Ballaarat was always the rallying point of the Americans."
Ian MacFarlane notes that along with some other nationalities, the Americans were treated with suspicion and regarded as Republicans at a time when Britain and the US were in an adversarial relationship. In the period 1851–1856, approximately 16,000 US nationals left for Australia. By 1854, most Americans in Victoria were occupying the goldfields. Beginning in 1853, the number of US flag carriers entering Port Phillip increased from 13 to 134 in 1854, when US imports equalled 1,668,606 pounds.
In August 1852, the British consul in Philadelphia advised the British foreign secretary that the American emigrates were likely to be hostile to the British crown, saying:
The American consul sought permission from the Victorian authorities to mark Independence Day in 1853 by firing a gun salute. LaTrobe forwarded the request to the mayor of Melbourne, who replied that:
In October 1853, a British official in Washington DC was told that "a revolution in Australia, by which its connection with Great Britain should be severed, would be an event highly acceptable to the great mass of the American people."
The Irish in America, in particular, were "hereditary enemies of Great Britain." Many of the Irish who joined the Victorian gold rush came via California, where gold deposits were found in 1849, and had memories of the 1846-1847 Great Famine - during which time Ireland was a net exporter of food.
Of the Americans on the gold fields, Clive Turnbull states:
Alleged declaration of independence
Upon the Ballarat Reform League charter becoming the first item added to the Victorian Heritage Register, Premier Steve Bracks claimed the document was a landmark in the history of Australia, making the comparison: "It is our Declaration of Independence. Our Magna Carta." The editor of the Ballarat Times, Henry Seekamp, writing in 1854, would greet the formation of the League with the bold assertion:
However, during the Eureka trials, it was put to Seekamp that he was a "radical" who was "rousing up the people," and he may have been prone to radical nationalist hyperbole. Raffaello Carboni would later say, "Indeed, it would ill become the Times to mince in a matter of such weighty importance. This League is not more or less than the germ of Australian independence."
H. R. Nicholls stated, "some of the Irish took to rebellion as ducks to water, as did sundry foreigners who were fresh from European revolutions [of 1848]."
The reform league charter contains a hint that the movement contained those who favoured independence, stating that:
Although the charter was framed in these terms, no discoveries have been made, nor is there any clear and convincing evidence as to the existence of such a formal declaration of independence made at a later stage of the Eureka Rebellion.