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Books > Humanities > History > Australasian & Pacific history
A beautiful and sweeping historical novel that takes the reader
from the west coast of New Zealand, to Scotland and Melbourne in
the 1870s 'Its portrayal of life in a gold-rush town is vivid, and
Rose's story is absorbing' The Times 'Worth reading for its
occasional streaks of brilliance and insight' Telegraph India 'A
epic read . . . a beautifully written, evocative novel that I
anticipate you reading and re-reading for years to come' Woman's
Way 'A gripping page-turner' Woman 1866. Will Stewart is one of
many who have left their old lives behind to seek their fortunes in
New Zealand's last great gold rush. The conditions are hostile and
the outlook bleak, but he must push on in his uncertain search for
the elusive buried treasure. Rose is about to arrive on the shores
of South Island when a storm hits and her ship is wrecked. Just
when all seems lost she is snatched from the jaws of death by Will,
who risks his life to save her. Drawn together by circumstance,
they stay together by choice and for a while it seems that their
stars have finally aligned. But after a terrible misunderstanding
they are cruelly separated, and their new-found happiness is
shattered. As Will chases Rose across oceans and continents, he
must come to terms with the possibility that he might never see her
again. And if he does, he will have to face the man who took her .
. . Readers love Alchemy and Rose: 'A real rollercoaster of
emotions' 5* reader review 'One of her best yet' 5* reader review
'Both gripping and romantic (quite a combination!) and keeps you
hooked right up to the end' 5* reader review 'One of those books
that you need to find out what happened, but at the same time you
don't want it to finish' 5* reader review 'Couldn't put it down, a
real page turner' 5* reader review
There has been little written about Tenison Woods who as a
significant figure in Australian Catholic Church life at the time
of St Mary Mackillop, Australia's first Catholic Saint. This is a
story about the work of the Sisters of St Joseph, an Australian
Catholic Religious Order of women, founded by St Mary Mackillop, in
Tasmania. An intriguing story of a group of women who were not part
of the Centralised Josephite Sisters under Mary Mackillop, who for
a variety of reasons were under the diocesan Catholic Bishop in
Tasmania. The books documents their 125 year history from
foundation right through to Vatican approval of the being brought
under the Federation of Josephite Sisters in Australia.
Reissued for the 40th anniversary of the Falklands conflict The
most in-depth and powerful account yet published of the first
crucial clash of the Falklands war - told from both sides.
'Thorough and exhaustive' Daily Telegraph 'An excellent and fast
paced narrative' Michael McCarthy, historical battlefield guide
Goose Green was the first land battle of the Falklands War. It was
also the longest, the hardest-fought, the most controversial and
the most important to win. What began as a raid became a vicious,
14-hour infantry struggle, in which 2 Para - outnumbered,
exhausted, forced to attack across open ground in full daylight,
and with inadequate fire support - lost their commanding officer,
and almost lost the action. This is the only full-length, detailed
account of this crucial battle. Drawing on the eye-witness accounts
of both British and Argentinian soldiers who fought at Goose Green,
and their commanders' narratives, it has become the definitive
account of most important and controversial land battle of the
Falklands War. A compelling story of men engaged in a battle that
hung in the balance for hours, in which Colonel 'H' Jones' solo
charge against an entrenched enemy won him a posthumous V.C., and
which for both sides was a gruelling and often terrifying
encounter.
Comprising thousands of islands and hundreds of cultural groups,
Polynesia and Micronesia cover a large part of the vast Pacific
Ocean, from the dramatic mountains of Hawaii to the small, flat
coral islands of Kiribati. This new volume in the acclaimed Oxford
History of Art series offers a superb introduction to the rich
artistic traditions of these two regions, traditions that have had
a considerable impact on modern western art through the influence
of artists such as Gauguin. After an introduction to Polynesian and
Micronesian art separately, the book focuses on the artistic types,
styles, and concepts shared by the two island groups, thereby
placing each in its wider cultural context. From the textiles of
Tonga to the canoes of Tahiti, Adrienne Kaeppler sheds light on
religious and sacred rituals and objects, carving, architecture,
tattooing, personal ornaments, basket-making, clothing, textiles,
fashion, the oral arts, dance, music and musical instruments--even
canoe-construction--to provide the ultimate introduction to these
rich and vibrant cultures. Each chapter begins with a quote from an
indigenous person from one of the island areas covered in the book
and features both historic and contemporary works of art. A
timeline for migration into the Pacific includes the latest
information from archaeology, as well as the influx of explorers
and missionaries and important exhibitions and other artistic
events. With more than one hundred illustrations--most in full
color--this volume offers a stimulating and insightful account of
two dynamic artistic cultures.
The 1820s to the 1860s were a foundational period in Australian
history, arguably at least as important as Federation.
Industrialization was transforming Britain, but the southern
colonies were pre-industrial, with economies driven by pastoralism,
agriculture, mining, whaling and sealing, commerce, and the
construction trades. Convict transportation provided the labour on
which the first settlements depended before it was brought to a
staggered end, first in New South Wales in 1840 and last in Western
Australia in 1868. The numbers of free settlers rose dramatically,
surging from the 1820s and again during the 1850s gold rushes. The
convict system increasingly included assignment to private masters
and mistresses, thus offering settlers the inducement of unpaid
labourers as well as the availability of land on a scale that both
defied and excited the British imagination. By the 1830s schemes
for new kinds of colonies, based on Edward Gibbon Wakefield's
systematic colonization, gained attention and support. The pivotal
development of the 1840s-1850s, and the political events which form
the backbone of this story were the Australian colonies' gradual
attainment of representative and then responsible government.
Through political struggle and negotiation, in which Australians
looked to Canada for their model of political progress, settlers
slowly became self-governing. But these political developments were
linked to the frontier violence that shaped settlers' lives and
became accepted as part of respectable manhood. With narratives of
individual lives, Settler Society shows that women's exclusion from
political citizenship was vigorously debated, and that settlers
were well aware of their place in an empire based on racial
hierarchies and threatened by revolts. Angela Woollacott
particularly focuses on settlers' dependence in these decades on
intertwined categories of unfree labour, including
poorly-compensated Aborigines and indentured Indian and Chinese
labourers, alongside convicts.
The first Protestant mission was established in New Zealand in
1814, initiating complex political, cultural, and economic
entanglements with Maori. Tony Ballantyne shows how interest in
missionary Christianity among influential Maori chiefs had
far-reaching consequences for both groups. Deftly reconstructing
cross-cultural translations and struggles over such concepts and
practices as civilization, work, time and space, and gender, he
identifies the physical body as the most contentious site of
cultural engagement, with Maori and missionaries struggling over
hygiene, tattooing, clothing, and sexual morality. "Entanglements
of Empire" is particularly concerned with how, as a result of their
encounters in the classroom, chapel, kitchen, and farmyard, Maori
and the English mutually influenced each other's worldviews.
Concluding in 1840 with New Zealand's formal colonization, this
book offers an important contribution to debates over religion and
empire.
'We have decided we must have the 747.' - Bert Ritchie, Qantas
Chief Executive, 1967 From its first Qantas flight in 1971, the
Boeing 747 flew millions of people to Australia, overseas for work,
back to their homelands, on holiday and out of danger. For most
Australians, the 747 was their first experience of international
travel. And now, history's most iconic commercial aircraft is
scheduled to be decommissioned around the world. In this jet-set
nostalgia journey, Jim Eames - bestselling author of The Flying
Kangaroo and Courage in the Skies - tells us how the 747, a
watershed in aviation technology, dramatically changed air travel,
and recounts the high points of its life at Qantas, including the
uplift out of Darwin after Cyclone Tracy, the return of the Diggers
to Gallipoli and the evacuation of Australians from Wuhan. We
discover how the 747 came in all shapes and sizes, eventually
becoming the 747-400, which set a world distance record from London
to Sydney. We also find out about the near misses and how close we
have come to disaster on several occasions. And finally, we
remember the 747's farewell to Australia, when it departed our
skies for the last time in 2020. The Mighty 747 is the jumbo's
Australian story, and is woven with the humour and nostalgia of the
people at Qantas who sold the 747 to Australia and who made it work
on the ground and in the air. 'Jim Eames is a legend in the
industry . . . It's hard to imagine anyone better placed to chart
the history and insider stories of the jumbo jet . . . there's
social history, wry anecdotes and nostalgia aplenty.' - Weekend
Australian 'Jim Eames takes us on the journey of the Boeing 747,
the plane that dominated international travel. A former leader in
the airline that bet its (and Australia's) future on the 747s, Jim
guides us through the jet's remarkable design, construction and
operations that put Australia on the world's stage. The Mighty 747
is essential reading for every person who has an interest in
aviation, and Jim's knowledge, experience and insights put him in
the captain's seat to explain how Boeing, the 747 and Qantas
changed the world.' - Captain Richard de Crespigny AM,
Pilot-in-Command and author of QF32 'A love story about this
wonderful plane and the impact it had on so many people's lives . .
. some wonderful memories in here and some great stories as well.'
- 2GB
Winding Up the British Empire in the Pacific Islands is the first
detailed account, based on recently-opened archives, of when, how,
and why the British Government changed its mind about giving
independence to the Pacific Islands. As Britain began to dissolve
the Empire in Asia in the aftermath of the Second World War, it
announced that there were some countries that were so small,
remote, and lacking in resources that they could never become
independent states. However, between 1970 and 1980 there was a
rapid about-turn. Accelerated decolonization suddenly became the
order of the day. Here was the death warrant of the Empire, and
hastily-arranged independence ceremonies were performed for six new
states - Tonga, Fiji, Solomon Islands, Tuvalu, Kiribati, and
Vanuatu. The rise of anti-imperialist pressures in the United
Nations had a major role in this change in policy, as did the
pioneering examples marked by the release of Western Samoa by New
Zealand in 1962 and Nauru by Australia in 1968. The tenacity of
Pacific Islanders in maintaining their cultures was in contrast to
more strident Afro-Asia nationalisms. The closing of the Colonial
Office, by merger with the Commonwealth Relations Office in 1966,
followed by the joining of the Commonwealth and Foreign Offices in
1968, became a major turning point in Britain's relations with the
Islands. In place of long-nurtured traditions of trusteeship for
indigenous populations that had evolved in the Colonial Office, the
new Foreign & Commonwealth Office concentrated on fostering
British interests, which came to mean reducing distant commitments
and focussing on the Atlantic world and Europe.
Soldiers and Gentlemen: Australian Battalion Commanders in the
Great War, 1914-1918 is the first book to examine the background,
role and conduct of Australian commanding officers during the First
World War. Though they held positions of power, commanding officers
inhabited a leadership no man's land - they exerted great influence
over their units, but they were also largely excluded from the
decision-making process and faced the same risks as junior officers
on the battlefield. A soldier's well-being and success in battle
was heavily dependent on a commanding officer's competence, but
little is known about the men who filled these roles. In his
groundbreaking book, William Westerman explores the stories of the
vitally important, yet often forgotten, commanding officers. Theirs
is a story of the timeless challenges of military leadership, and
this book prevents them from slipping from the public memory to
enhance our knowledge of the conflict.
When Western scholars write about non-Western societies, do they
inevitably perpetuate the myths of European imperialism? Can they
ever articulate the meanings and logics of non-Western peoples? Who
has the right to speak for whom? Questions such as these are
debated in this text. Marshall Sahlins addresses these issues head
on, while building a case for the ability of anthropologists
working in the Western tradition to understand other cultures. In
recent years, these questions have arisen in debates over the death
and deification of Captain James Cook on Hawaii Island in 1779. Did
the Hawaiians truly receive Cook as a manifestation of their own
god Lono? Or were they too pragmatic, too worldly-wise to accept
the foreigner as a god? Moreover, can a "non-native" scholar give
voice to a "native" point of view? This volume seeks to go far
beyond specialized debates about the alleged superiority of Western
traditions. The culmination of Sahlins's ethnohistorical research
on Hawaii, is a reaffirmation for understanding difference.
In the century from the death of Captain James Cook in 1779 to the
rise of the sugar plantations in the 1870s, thousands of Kanaka
Maoli (Native Hawaiian) men left Hawai'i to work on ships at sea
and in na 'aina 'e (foreign lands)-on the Arctic Ocean and
throughout the Pacific Ocean, and in the equatorial islands and
California. Beyond Hawai'i tells the stories of these forgotten
indigenous workers and how their labor shaped the Pacific World,
the global economy, and the environment. Whether harvesting
sandalwood or bird guano, hunting whales, or mining gold, these
migrant workers were essential to the expansion of transnational
capitalism and global ecological change. Bridging American,
Chinese, and Pacific historiographies, Beyond Hawai'i is the first
book to argue that indigenous labor-more than the movement of ships
and spread of diseases-unified the Pacific World.
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