Miscellaneous Alice > Oz and Wonderland: Possible Connection

[Mad Hatter II]

Hey guys, I've been doing some research on Wonderland and it seems to be inspired by the United Kingdom in some way. That makes me wonder if if Oz was connected to wonderland the same way the UK is connected to Australia, the country supposedly inspiring the land of Oz.

For those who don't know Australia was colonized by British settlers, in all the Oz books it was never stated how all the people got to Oz in the first place. Could they have been from Wonderland wanting to expand the empire of the Queen of Hearts?

It's a nice bit of food for thought I think

[Beautiful Soup]

I think it's entirely legitimate to claim that, at least metaphorically, Oz is a colony of Wonderland, in as much as Baum very obviously took the basic structure and ideas of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, and then constructed The Wizard of Oz from the building blocks Carroll had created.

If you wish to imaginatively extend that metaphor by supposing that Oz is actually populated by émigrés from Wonderland, well, why not?

(Actually, there are probably lots of reasons why not, but it's fun to pretend)