Initially settled as a penal colony in the late 1700s, Australia quickly grew as a major British settlement throughout the next century, until the late 1890s, when a fundamental split occurred with talks of federation as a British commonwealth and the Colony of West Australia voted against joining the new federation, remaining separate until granted independence by Edward VII in 1903. For the first twenty-nine years of its existence, West Australia and Australia remained on generally good terms and traded quite often, but the start of the Great Depression in 1929 marked the beginning of a long downturn for the entire Australian continent.