AUS-Tasmania-L Archives

From: Douglas Burbury <>
Subject: What country was VDL in?
Date: Fri, 05 May 2000 08:36:29 +1000

Hi List,

This question came up on a different list, but it's Tasmania-related.

What country was Van Diemen's Land part of? And following on from this,
what country was Tasmania part of before Federation in 1901?

The question arose on a genealogy software mailing list. This particular
software has a number of fields for entering data for events such as
births, deaths, marriages, etc. The relevant default fields are, in
ascending order:

1. Date
2. Place Detail
3. Lat./Long.
4. City/Town
5. County
6. State/Prov.
7. Country

One user of this software had entered "Tasmania" in the State/Prov. field,
but hadn't entered a country. He wanted to use the software's blanket
search and replace features to insert "Australia" in the Country field for
every item that had "Tasmania" in the State/Prov. field.

But I pointed out that this was not necessarily correct. As I understand it:

1. God's Own Island was called Van Diemen's Land from 1803 (or possibly
before) until 1854. For the purposes of recording information, "Van
Diemen's Land" is entered into the State/Prov. field.

2. It was then called Tasmania from 1854 to 1900. Again, "Tasmania" is
entered into the State/Prov. field.

3. It then became Tasmania, Australia from Federation in 1901. "Tasmania"
remains in the State/Prov. field and "Australia" goes into the Country field.

I realise that unofficially some of the above names were in popular use
before their official dates of adoption. But the question is, what can
correctly be put into the Country field for dates prior to 1901? Is there
anything? While being a colony, was the island part of the United Kingdom
during this time, with varying levels of self-government?

Douglas

--
E-mail: ------------------ Launceston, Tasmania
http://www.vision.net.au/~dburbury/burbury.htm (Burbury family page)
http://www.vision.net.au/~dburbury/yowies/ (My Yowie Swaps page)
Listowner: BURBURY Mailing List

This thread:

• What country was VDL in? by Douglas Burbury <>