Showing papers in "Australian Historical Studies in 2019"
TL;DR: In the last decade or so settler colonial studies has become a key prism through which to interpret the colonial cultures and histories of former British colonies where Indigenous people have sinned as mentioned in this paper.
Abstract: Over the last decade or so settler colonial studies has become a key prism through which to interpret the colonial cultures and histories of former British colonies where Indigenous people have sin...
32 citations
TL;DR: The Slave Lodge as discussed by the authors was built in 1679 and over the next 130 years around 9,000 of the Cape Colony's slaves, convicts and those deemed "mentally ill" were held there.
Abstract: Recently, I visited the ‘Slave Lodge’ in Cape Town, South Africa. Built in 1679, over the next 130 years around 9,000 of the Cape Colony's slaves, convicts and those deemed ‘mentally ill’ were held...
14 citations
TL;DR: A Cook Islander who grew up in South Auckland told me that her primary school teacher once asked the class: ‘What percentage of the New Zealand population do you think is Pakehā, Māori and Pacific...
Abstract: A Cook Islander who grew up in South Auckland told me that her primary school teacher once asked the class: ‘What percentage of the New Zealand population do you think is Pākehā, Māori and Pacific ...
13 citations
TL;DR: In the decade since the Great Recession of 2007-08, "capitalism" has re-emerged as a pervasive framework for understanding a world in momentous flux as discussed by the authors.
Abstract: In the decade since the Great Recession of 2007–08, ‘capitalism’ has re-emerged as a pervasive framework for understanding a world in momentous flux.1 Across the globe, a torrent of public-minded s...
12 citations
TL;DR: The authors is a book about the past, and the importance of the past for understanding the future, but it is not at its heart a history, rather, it is a compelling drama of scientific discovery, in which...
Abstract: This is a book about the past, and the importance of the past for understanding the future, but it is not at its heart a history. Rather, it is a compelling drama of scientific discovery, in which ...
9 citations
TL;DR: In this article, the authors argue that "connections between firms and individuals have long provided access to new knowledge and resources, while also maintaining the wealth of a country". But they do not discuss the role of technology in economic development.
Abstract: Networks are an enduring feature of Australian economic life. Connections between firms and individuals have long provided access to new knowledge and resources, while also maintaining the wealth a...
7 citations
TL;DR: The Sweet Country as mentioned in this paper is a film constructed with the conventions of a Western, the guns, horses, spirits, and vast frontier landscapes with law and justice as central themes, but it is also a film gr...
Abstract: Sweet Country may be a film constructed with the conventions of a Western – the guns, horses, spirits, and vast frontier landscapes with law and justice as central themes – but it is also a film gr...
6 citations
TL;DR: The Southern Ocean is often made to stand for something more or other than itself: a blank space where Ptolemy's Great Southern Land was meant to be; the liquid remainder of Gondwana, that ‘ancient southern supercontinent’; a key ‘barometer of planetary climate change’ as mentioned in this paper.
Abstract: tion and imperialismmake clear, these are stories that need telling. But they also signal a vital problematic: is it possible to refresh our awareness of the Southern Ocean while working through histories and understandings that have tended to ignore it, or to value it for all the wrong reasons? If the Western view, as it issues from Wild Sea’s case studies, can be said to express a unifying tendency, it has been a tenacious refusal to dignify these regions as comprising a realm unto themselves. The Southern Ocean is always being made to stand for something more or other than itself: a blank space where Ptolemy’s Great Southern Land was meant to be; the liquid remainder of Gondwana, that ‘ancient southern supercontinent’ (141); a key ‘barometer of planetary climate change’ (xiv). All this abstraction may be said to issue, to a certain extent, from practical inconvenience: even the many landmasses that speckle the main, like Macquarie Island, Tierra del Fuego, and the South Shetland Islands, to name a very few, are famously antipathetic toward human habitation. But treating the Southern Ocean as a curiosity has also proven convenient for those desirous of and outfitted for exploiting it. McCann writes indelibly about the ghastly slaughter – an overstatement does not seem possible – of southern right whales, penguins, seals, and countless more residents of the far south. When he discovered lots of large whales at further than 70 degrees south, the Scottish explorer James Clark Ross mused darkly that the animals would ‘now, no doubt, be made to contribute to the wealth of our country, in exact proportion to the energy and perseverance of our merchants’ (159). Ross’s speculation is an awfully apt emblem of the extent to which the North’s relation to the Southern Ocean, as narrated by Wild Sea, has been essentially extractive and imperial. Science has regularly been allied to dubious, and evenmilitaristic, forays on behalf of ‘national glory’ (94). When it has not, it has been tainted nonetheless by an uncanny sense of working on scorched earth: after a visit to the Australian scientific station at Macquarie Island, the marine biologist Isobel Bennett recalled a place marred by the ‘wanton and unrestricted destruction of native species’ (80). Wild Sea renders wonders as well as horrors. At South Georgia Island, a congregation of king penguins puts paid to any misguided notion that these latitudes are the domain of nothing: the beaches McCann finds there ‘are a study in sensory overload’ (56). The Southern Ocean’s aesthetic novelties are manifold, and some of the greatest must derive from the sea ice – ‘neither land nor sea but something else entirely’ (86) – that covers more than half its surface in wintertime. Indeed, this book’s northern interlopers are at their least loathsome when they stick to admiring their environs: Edward Adrian Wilson, naturalist and surgeon aboard the Discovery expedition (1901–04), wrote with feeling about the ‘colour’ and ‘toning’ of icebergs, as well as the unusual behaviour of pack ice, which was somehow simultaneously in ‘constant motion’, possessed of ‘irresistible force’, and yet remarkable for its ‘gentleness’ (96). ‘Is it possible to develop an ocean consciousness?’ (198). That is another of McCann’s driving queries, and it is one this book works assiduously to answer. It is true that a twentyfirst-century response issues, in part, from recognising the Southern Ocean as a ‘massive global engine’, responsible for removing more carbon dioxide from the atmosphere than any of earth’s other water-bodies (195–6). But it bears re-emphasising, too, that, as Alice Te Punga Somerville and others have recently observed, there exist persons, communities and cultures who don’t need educating in oceanic awareness, because they already live it. That said, Wild Sea will bring the Southern Ocean to mind, and into care’s ambit, for many who haven’t much heeded it – and that is a mighty development in consciousness indeed.
6 citations
TL;DR: Casey et al. as mentioned in this paper described the history of Nyungar performance in Australian Historical Studies, 50:2, 272-273, DOI: 10.1080/1031461X.2019.1598319
Abstract: ISSN: 1031-461X (Print) 1940-5049 (Online) Journal homepage: https://www.tandfonline.com/loi/rahs20 Dancing in Shadows: Histories of Nyungar Performance Maryrose Casey To cite this article: Maryrose Casey (2019) Dancing in Shadows: Histories of Nyungar Performance, Australian Historical Studies, 50:2, 272-273, DOI: 10.1080/1031461X.2019.1598319 To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/1031461X.2019.1598319
4 citations
TL;DR: Themes of violence and intimacy have attracted considerable attention in colonial and imperial historiography over recent years, but it is remarkable how little work has explicitly at least, frame them as discussed by the authors.
Abstract: Themes of violence and intimacy have attracted considerable attention in colonial and imperial historiography over recent years, but it is remarkable how little work has, explicitly at least, frame...
4 citations
TL;DR: A series of government inquiries in Australia over the past two decades have brought to public notice the emotional and psychological devastation wrought upon the lives of those who experienced out-of-service events.
Abstract: A series of government inquiries in Australia over the past two decades have brought to public notice the emotional and psychological devastation wrought upon the lives of those who experienced out...
TL;DR: The connection between Aboriginal people and the British Crown is well established as mentioned in this paper, but less understood is their appreciation of, and reliance on, British democratic traditions in their politics. Drawi...
Abstract: The connection between Aboriginal people and the British Crown is well established. Less understood is their appreciation of, and reliance on, British democratic traditions in their politics. Drawi...
TL;DR: In the context of Australian history, capitalists and labourers have long been regarded as the great antagonists of Australian historiography as mentioned in this paper, where the latter has been subjected to constant analysis by successive generations of historians.
Abstract: Capitalists and labourers have long been regarded among the great antagonists of Australian historiography. Yet where the latter has been subjected to constant analysis by successive generations of...
TL;DR: The Dunstan era with its wide range of progressive initiatives not only effected a profound cultural transformation in South Australia but helped set the agenda for themodernisation of politics at a federal and state level.
Abstract: social issues and the period of war. Following Macintyre’s notion of a ‘pivotal state’, one could argue, as Sendziuk and Foster suggest, that the Dunstan era with its wide range of progressive initiatives not only effected a profound cultural transformation in SouthAustralia but helped set the agenda for themodernisation of politics at a federal and state level. This was after all the era of Askin and Bolte, premiers not known for their progressivism. The Dunstan ‘decade’ was notable for the achievement of equality of opportunity, advancement of civil liberties, promotion of the arts and increased spending on education and social welfare. In bringing their history up to the present, always a risky endeavour for historians, Sendziuk and Foster head their final chapter ‘Age of Anxiety’. Here they explore the paradox that South Australians now experience considerable anxiety and discomfort while in fact most are prosperous and secure, living longer and healthier lives. Adelaide even attracts accolades as one of the world’s most liveable cities. The authors are sanguine about the postponement of BHP Billiton’s much anticipated Olympic Dammining project, arguing that manufacturing has taken up much of the slack. Sendziuk and Foster have made an important contribution to Australian history with their much needed volume, the first narrative history of South Australia of the twenty-first century. It is a compelling story, which draws on the wide range of research and new writing in the area, althoughmore awaits to be said on social and cultural issues. South Australia’s sense of distinctiveness survives but is attenuated over time. Some issues seem intractable: it is salutary to read that at federation a key priority included the better management of the River Murray. The Foundational Fictions collection is a good companion volume, raising challenging questions about a set of cherished beliefs, or as Mark Twain put it, ‘beautiful lies’. It is to be hoped that these two important books are read widely, possibly together, making up for the longstanding neglect of South Australian history in the national story.
TL;DR: The authors examines the revitalisation of Sydney's left-wing left wing in the 1970s and 1980s by Russian-speaking displaced persons (DPs) settled in Australia were anti-Communist.
Abstract: Whilst most Russian-speaking displaced persons (DPs) settled in Australia were anti-Communist, a small number were actively left-wing. This article examines the revitalisation of Sydney’s left-wing...
TL;DR: In 1945, tens of thousands of Russian and Russian-speaking Jewish refugees were in China. Many had come decades earlier, following the Bolshevik revolution, the rout of anti-Bolshevik armies in 191...
Abstract: In 1945, tens of thousands of Russian and Russian-speaking Jewish refugees were in China. Many had come decades earlier, following the Bolshevik revolution, the rout of anti-Bolshevik armies in 191...
TL;DR: The authors assesses the role of anti-Communism in Australia's postwar immigration policy in the years before the Petrov affair, with particular reference to the entry of Russians and Russian-spea...
Abstract: This article assesses the role of anti-Communism in Australia’s postwar immigration policy in the years before the Petrov affair, with particular reference to the entry of Russians and Russian-spea...
TL;DR: This paper examined the emergence of the cultural category of barrackers in 1880s colonial Melbourne to examine the way a spectator sport became a site of intersecting discourses around emotions, hea...
Abstract: This article uses the emergence of the cultural category of barrackers in 1880s colonial Melbourne to examine the way a spectator sport became a site of intersecting discourses around emotions, hea...
TL;DR: In the case of the Vietnam War, the contrast between grand na... as discussed by the authors, history may be written by the winners of great military and political struggles, but the defeated also have tales and memories to tell.
Abstract: History may be written by the winners of great military and political struggles, but the defeated also have tales and memories to tell. In the case of the Vietnam War, the contrast between grand na...
TL;DR: For many years, when teaching both international and domestic students about Australian history, politics and culture, I began by showing the class a copy of Richard Broome's book Aboriginal Austra...
Abstract: For many years, when teaching both international and domestic students about Australian history, politics and culture, I began by showing the class a copy of Richard Broome’s book Aboriginal Austra...
TL;DR: Sunburnt country as discussed by the authors combines explanations of the major natural systems shaping (southeastern) Australia's climate, and evidence from the primary sources of past weather events and settler responses to them.
Abstract: This part of the book combines explanations of the major natural systems shaping (southeastern) Australia’s climate, and evidence from the primary sources of past weather events and settler responses to them. There is relatively little conventional historical analysis among the quotes and descriptive passages, but it is sufficient to drive the story forward. Part two delves into the creation of the historical sources and assesses their utility. This part includes one of the stand-out chapters of the book, which uses Australia’s high-quality instrumental record to compare the Federation, World War II and Millennium droughts. Gergis shows how the last of these was different in ways that are clearly linked to anthropogenic climate change. Part three introduces the natural record, showing how tree rings, ice cores and coral slices provide windows onto past climates. Such records, properly deployed, provide an essential long-run southern hemisphere perspective on a field dominated by the north. They show, for example, that the Medieval Climate Anomaly was not a global event, but that both hemispheres are now subject to temperatures outside the range of natural variability. Part four is the one you will flag when you gift a copy of the book to your climate changedenying uncle for Christmas. Here Gergis systematically rebuts arguments that what we are experiencing is just more natural variability and provides incontrovertible proof of the effects of anthropogenic climate change in relation to snow, fire, flood and sea level rise. The final part of the book looks squarely at the future under different emission scenarios, pointing to the manifold areas that stand to be affected – from agriculture and biodiversity to public health. The book concludes with a discussion of Australian and global climate politics – from Gillard to Abbott, Trump to Turnbull – locating hope in the groundswell of grassroots climate leadership emerging in the face of parliamentary failure and highlighting the many benefits to be gained from transition to a carbon-neutral society. While Gergis acknowledges Indigenous Australians’ climate wisdom it would have been good to see more on Indigenous people and Australian climates – past and future. And as a Western Australian I was irked by the easy conflation between ‘Australia’ and ‘southeastern Australia’ in the first parts of the book in particular. This is a minor fault, however, in an important and powerful work. Sunburnt Country is not a book to read before bed, at least not if you want to sleep well. The global climate breakdown, presented by Gergis with such accessible and evocative certainty, is the stuff of nightmares. It is most definitely, however, a book to be read.
TL;DR: Buchanan as discussed by the authors explores the history of Crown apologies regarding the Parihaka invasion and concludes that some apologies were inappropriate and unwanted, and most were half-hearted and soon forgotten.
Abstract: and plain-cover versions, and despite its short length, it manages to pack a lot into its six short chapters. ‘Paper Mountain’, the title of the second chapter, is a metaphor for the many and varied documents that a historian engages with. From this ‘mountain’ Buchanan races through the nineteenth-century experiences of the Taranaki iwi, at times returning the reader to the present to remind us that the people there continue to live closely with their past. But it is an intense and complex history; while those with some knowledge of Māori history should be able to follow the story, others might struggle to understand and retain the full picture. The third chapter, ‘The Very Long Sorry’, details the history of Crown apologies regarding the Parihaka invasion. Such was the iniquity of Crown actions, twentieth-century Crown agents felt the necessity to show their remorse. However some apologies were inappropriate and unwanted, and most were half-hearted and soon forgotten, although at the time of writing Buchanan has more hope in the Crown’s sincerity, and its desire to address Māori grievances. ‘Beating Shame’ addresses the sorts of feelings (‘big and little shames’) that colonised peoples carry with them, and how some find it easier to forget rather than remember the past. Here Buchanan emphasises the importance of whakapapa, and how ancestors’ actions provide meaning in the present. Of course, colonisers in Aotearoa (and other countries) have more imperative to forget, and we are reminded that they were not all decent people in their dealings with indigenous peoples. Buchanan asserts that Māori carry the burden of Taranaki’s past but it is by Pākehā descendants engaging more with our history, and the processes of reconciliation, that we can all move forward. In ‘The Translator’, Buchanan plays with the idea of keeping records and telling stories, in particular the activities of her tūpuna (ancestor), Taare Warahi (Charles Wallace), who served in the Armed Constabulary, and as a courtappointed interpreter. Despite this work for the Crown, TeWhiti o Rongomai, one of the Parihaka prophet leaders, permittedWarahi to interpret for the newspaper correspondent, Samuel CroumbieBrown, in 1879, in an attempt to relay the Māori position to the Pākehā public. Buchanan subsequently finds Warahi among the names of arrested Parihaka ploughmen. The final, and shortest, chapter, ‘Ko Taranaki Te Maunga’, asks the question – what are the Treaty settlements for? It is not, she suggests, for apologies, money, or land returned, but the relationships that emerge, and the wealth of data and historical understanding that is unearthed. The chapter is also a tribute to her father, a person for whom undertaking settlement work helped reconnect him to the iwi. This book is a personal journey, and Buchanan does not, cannot, write about her topic dispassionately. But this is no fault; we get to know not just what she knows but how she feels about it. There are a few occasions where less well informed readers might not possess knowledge she assumes, but there is generally enough there to keep going, and perhaps even inspire people to delve deeper into Taranaki’s rich past. When reviewing a book, I am always thinking about how useful it may be in a teaching environment. Although Ko Taranaki Te Maunga sits together as a whole, the middle chapters could easily be used as individual readings in class. If there is one lesson the book provides, it is that, for indigenous peoples, one’s ancestors are not remote or distant entities, and although we all continue to live with the past, some feel it much more closely around them.
TL;DR: In Australia, the discipline and profession of economics in Australia underwent a dramatic transformation during the 1920s as mentioned in this paper, and economics was deemed inseparable from ideology, and its practitioners we...
Abstract: During the 1920s, the discipline and profession of economics in Australia underwent a dramatic transformation. As of 1918, ‘economics’ was deemed inseparable from ideology, and its practitioners we...
TL;DR: A Second Chance: The Making of Yiddish Melbourne provides valuable scholarship to the literature on Australian immigration, and for the community itself, it affords a sense of pride in their achievements and a voice to a generation.
Abstract: Melbourne and from its inception it was populated by a considerable Jewish community, with Yiddish-speaking migrants settling there in the early twentieth century. A Second Chance details this new community, which expanded to Northcote, Thornbury and Coburg, where synagogues and communal organisations were established. A Second Chance clearly demonstrates that although immigration to Australia after the Shoah was restricted, Eastern European immigration was transformative, creating a shift within the community, with Polish Jewish values becoming the cultural ‘norm’ of the city’s Jewish life. Unfortunately, A Second Chance makes Yiddish Melbourne synonymous with Polish Jewry. Missing from the narrative is any reference to the previous generation of Yiddishspeaking Russian immigrants, who arrived from the 1880s. Similarly, this is not a history of all postwar or interwar Jewish immigration. While charting the rise in the dominance of Yiddish-speaking immigrants in the communal organisations of Jewish Melbourne, it should not be forgotten that this was not the only way of expressing a deep attachment to Judaism or Jewish culture. An area of concern is a failure to comprehend the identity of the existing Jewish community. The established community had also created a Jewish society, representative of their values. This community were the descendants of emancipated British settlers, whose outlook was very different from those in Eastern Europe, where enlightenment ideas and Jewish emancipation took far longer to develop, and where anti-Semitic activity and pogroms were endemic. While Zionists and Bundists did turn towards secularisation and independent activity, this was within the religiously conservative world framed by Hassidism, and their Jewish values were formed differently from those in the English-speaking world. The Yiddish community had lost not only its homeland, but for the majority of its members their extended families as well. Concepts of diaspora reflect absence. These individuals created a diaspora within a diaspora; a Jewish consciousness based on loss, heightened by the losses of the Shoah and of a culture destroyed in its inferno. A Second Chance: The Making of Yiddish Melbourne provides valuable scholarship to the literature on Australian immigration, and for the community itself, it affords a sense of pride in their achievements and a voice to a generation.
TL;DR: Using the papers of the Gibb Committee on the future of Aboriginal communities on pastoral properties in the Northern Territory (1970-72), this paper contributed both theoretically and empiricall...
Abstract: Using the papers of the Gibb Committee on the future of Aboriginal communities on pastoral properties in the Northern Territory (1970–72), this article contributes both theoretically and empiricall...
TL;DR: On 20 July 1900, an Aboriginal man named Jimmy Governor murdered two white women and three white children at Breelong in northwest New South Wales as mentioned in this paper. But despite the plethora of information on Governor,...
Abstract: On 20 July 1900, an Aboriginal man named Jimmy Governor murdered two white women and three white children at Breelong in northwest New South Wales. Despite the plethora of information on Governor, ...
TL;DR: In this article, a close reading of the work of the Dunedin photographer Alfred Burton shows that visions of nature were the product of a system that managed continuing Indigenous presence by developing new conventions of representation, which divided Indigenous people from the landscapes that they inhabited, embellished settler environmental transformations and contrived new natures.
Abstract: Across the settler colonies of the late nineteenth century the placemaking projects of newcomers were imbricated with Indigenous dispossession. Settler colonialism was, above all, a spatial project, and while the social and legal innovations of settler invasion have attracted substantial scholarly attention over the past two decades, its environmental dimensions remain insufficiently explored. Settler colonial studies might make more of its spatial turn. Through a close reading of the work of the Dunedin photographer Alfred Burton this article shows that visions of nature were the product of a system that managed continuing Indigenous presence by developing new conventions of representation. These practices divided Indigenous people from the landscapes that they inhabited, embellished settler environmental transformations, and contrived new natures. This article draws environmental history and settler colonial studies together to better understand the shared spatial foundations of Indigenous dispossession...
TL;DR: In early New South Wales, Irish farmers frequently distilled their excess crops, utilising the expertise of Irish convicts who oft... as discussed by the authors, who oftentimes worked with convicts.
Abstract: Distillation was both clearly banned and the ban widely flouted in early New South Wales. Colonial farmers frequently distilled their excess crops, utilising the expertise of Irish convicts who oft...
TL;DR: In this article, the authors focus on the acoustically attuned Ludwig Leichhardt, a science-poet indebted to the Enlightenment, but also engaged with the German Romantic legacy.
Abstract: Scholars considering the acoustics of exploration have focused on how explorers heard Australian space in terms of silence, to argue this silenced Indigenous presence, or that stillness, was incongruous with how a place to be colonised should sound. I focus on the acoustically attuned Ludwig Leichhardt, a science-poet indebted to the Enlightenment, but also engaged with the German Romantic legacy. The manifold acoustic dimensions of expeditioning – including music – were important to him in different ways. The acoustic world could be assayed and harnessed in ways that were often consistent with colonialism. But there was also something fugitive about acoustics. They could mark a site for emotional engagement with place, and sometimes embryonic cross-cultural dialogue. Yet the possibilities were not always heard and, in line with Romanticism, the acoustic could drag down expeditioners’ spirits just as it could buoy them up. It could baffle or be a site for Indigenous resistance.