# Quote — Niall Ferguson, Empire

> With its weird red earth and its alien flora and fauna – the eucalyptus trees and kangaroos – Australia was the eighteenth-century equivalent of Mars. This helps explain why the first official response to the discovery of New South Wales by Captain Cook in 1770 was to identify it as the ideal dumping ground for criminals.

- Author: [Niall Ferguson](https://www.leafyquotes.com/niall-ferguson.md)
- Book: [Empire](https://www.leafyquotes.com/niall-ferguson/empire.md)
- Page: 103
- Source: [Wikiquote](https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Niall_Ferguson#Empire:_How_Britain_Made_the_Modern_World_(2003)) ([CC BY-SA 4.0](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/))
- Quote page: https://www.leafyquotes.com/niall-ferguson/empire/with-its-weird

## More from this book

> Finally, although Anglophone economic and political liberalism remains the most alluring of the world’s cultures, it continues to face, as it has since the Iranian revolution, a serious threat from Islamic fundamentalism.

p. 364 — [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/niall-ferguson/empire/finally-although-anglophone.md)

> The familiar rationale of white rule in Africa was that it conferred the benefits of civilization. The war made a mockery of that claim.

p. 301 — [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/niall-ferguson/empire/the-familiar-rationale.md)

> In 1940, under Churchill’s inspired, indomitable, incomparable leadership, the Empire had stood alone against the truly evil imperialism of Hitler. Even if it did not last for the thousand years that Churchill hopefully suggested it might, this was indeed the British Empire’s 'finest hour'.
>
> Yet what made it so fine, so authentically noble, was that the Empire’s victory could only ever have been Pyrrhic. In the end, the British sacrificed her Empire to stop the Germans, Japanese and Italians from keeping theirs. Did not that sacrifice alone expunge all the Empire’s other sins?

p. 355 — [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/niall-ferguson/empire/in-1940-under.md)