I dunno Flash, don't you think that if M'sieu La Perouse had not waited for the wind to abate back in 1788 and had landed in Botany Bay before Phillip landed in Port Jackson we'd all be French, and the war which would have immediately broken out because Cook had earlier claimed the east coast of Oz - and therefore La P would have most certainly have been an invader (and the poor old aborigines would really have suffered by being caught in the middle) - it's anybody's guess whether us white pieces of **** would be of English or French heritage.
In the 200 years since the French Revolution their former colonies in Algeria, Libya. Morocco, and Tunisia have hardly covered themselves in glory as freedom-loving peoples nor does French-Guinea, Mali, Ivory Coast, Dahomey or Gambia spring to mind as exemplary countries. Madagascar and Mauritania have better reputations and that part of Louisiana sold to the US in 1804 seems to have been successful. Going by the numbers, however, L'Australie would probably not be as great a success as it is today, despite all the naysayers.
Of course, if La P had landed before Phillip and a war broke out - meaning hostilities across the English Channel as well (with a bankrupt France having to manage it's own internal Revolution as well as a war with England) perhaps the Dutch or the Portugese might have stepped in and settled Oz. Or the Japanese in 1945 had it not been for those dreadful interfering Yanks and their dastardly bomb.
All in all it might have been better if nobody had settled here and the aborigines were able to continue to live as they had in the past and do without white man's medicines, the wheel, agriculture, sanitation, permanent structures etc (excluding all those wonderful improvements Bruce Pascoe goes on about). Who knows.
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