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Books > History > Australasian & Pacific history
A Liberal State: How Australians Chose Liberalism over Socialism
1926-1966 explores the revival of Australian political liberalism
after the Great Depression of the 1930s, and its sweeping domestic
political triumph after World War II over utopian socialism and
Labor's statism. The fourth title in a landmark five-volume
Australian Liberalism series, A Liberal State examines how
Australians reasserted their claim to control their own lives,
following decades of expanded government control over economic and
social life, and intrusive wartime and post-war restrictions. From
the 1920s Robert Menzies became the major voice for liberal thought
in the nation's political life and David Kemp looks at his role in
reconstructing liberal and conservative politics. The book
highlights the importance of the factional struggles within the
Labor Party arising from its adoption of a Socialist Objective, and
the domestic and international advance of utopian socialist
ideology during World War II and the Cold War. A Liberal State
tells of Jack Lang's advocacy of the socialisation of industry in
New South Wales in the 1930s, and of Menzies as war-time prime
minster and his key relationship with John Curtin. It assesses
Menzies's historic Forgotten People statement of liberal ideas, the
formation of the Liberal Party of Australia, and how, after his
election victory in 1949, Menzies rebuilt a liberal basis for
national policy during sixteen and a half years as prime minister.
In 1997 Nancy de Vries accepted the Apology from the Parliament of
New South Wales on behalf of all the Indigenous children who had
been taken from their families and communities throughout the
state's history. It was an honour that recognised she had the
courage to speak about a life of pain and loneliness. Nancy tells
her story in an unusual and challenging collaboration with Dr
Gaynor Macdonald (Anthropology) of the University of Sydney,
Associate Professor Jane Mears (Social Policy) of the University of
Western Sydney and Dr Anna Nettheim (Anthropology) of the
University of Sydney.
In April 1941, as Churchill strove to counter the German threat to
the Balkans, New Zealand troops were hastily committed to combat in
the wake of the German invasion of Greece where they would face off
against the German Kradschutzen - motorcycle troops. Examining
three major encounters in detail with the help of maps and
contemporary photographs, this lively study shows how the New
Zealanders used all their courage and ingenuity to counter the
mobile and well-trained motorcycle forces opposing them in the
mountains and plains of Greece and Crete. Featuring specially
commissioned artwork and drawing upon first-hand accounts, this
exciting account pits New Zealand's infantrymen against Germany's
motorcycle troops at the height of World War II in the
Mediterranean theatre, assessing the origins, doctrine and combat
performance of both sides.
This book questions the common understanding of party political
behaviour, explaining some of the sharp differences in political
behaviour through a focused case study-drawing systematically on
primary and archival research-of the Australian Labor Party's
political and policy directions during select periods in which it
was out of office at the federal level: from 1967-72, 1975-83, and
1996-2001. Why is it that some Oppositions contest elections with
an extensive array of detailed policies, many of which contrast
with the approach of the government at the time, while others can
be widely criticised as 'policy lazy' and opportunistic, seemingly
capitulating to the government of the day? Why do some Oppositions
lurch to the right, while others veer leftward? Each of these
periods was, in its own way, crucial in the party's history, and
each raises important questions about Opposition behaviour. The
book examines the factors that shaped the overall direction in
which the party moved during its time in Opposition, including
whether it was oriented towards emphasising programmes
traditionally associated with social democrats, such as pensions,
unemployment support, and investment in public health, education,
infrastructure, and publicly owned enterprises, as well as policies
aimed at reducing the exploitation of workers. In each period of
Opposition examined, an argument is made as to why Labor moved in a
particular direction, and how this period compared to the other
periods surveyed. The book rounds off with analysis of the
generalisability of the conclusions drawn: how relevant are they
for understanding the behaviour of other parties elsewhere in the
world? Where are social democratic parties such as the ALP heading?
Is Opposition an institution in decline in the Western world?
A good historian, it has been said, is a prophet in reverse. The
perceptive historian has the ability to look back at the past,
identify issues overlooked by others, all the while stimulating the
reader to search for the implications in the present of what has
been discovered. Jan Snijders is such a prophet in reverse. He
brings his shrewd intuitions and scholarly reflections to the
material of this book as no previous writer on Colins leadership in
18351841 has so far been able to achieve. This is a landmark book
for historians, but more than that as well. It is the first
in-depth scholarly publication on Father Jean-Claude Colin as the
French founder of the Marist Missions in the South Pacific. It is
an enthralling read for anyone who wonders how French countrymen
coped when trying to open a Catholic mission in the New Zealand and
in the Polynesian Islands of the 1830s and 1840s. And anyone
interested in cross-cultural processes will get a very close look
at the culture contacts between French Catholics, Polynesian people
and British settlers, all pursuing their own objectives.
Emotions are not universal, but are experienced and expressed in
diverse ways within different cultures and times. This overview of
the history of emotions within nineteenth-century British
imperialism focuses on the role of the compassionate emotions, or
what today we refer to as empathy, and how they created relations
across empire. Jane Lydon examines how empathy was produced,
qualified and contested, including via the fear and anger aroused
by frontier violence. She reveals the overlooked emotional
dimensions of relationships constructed between Britain, her
Australasian colonies, and Indigenous people, showing that ideas
about who to care about were frequently drawn from the intimate
domestic sphere, but were also developed through colonial
experience. This history reveals the contingent and highly
politicised nature of emotions in imperial deployment. Moving
beyond arguments that emotions such as empathy are either 'good' or
'bad', this study evaluates their concrete political uses and
effects.
The natural resources of New Guinea and nearby islands have
attracted outsiders for at least 5000 years: spices, aromatic woods
and barks, resins, plumes, sea slugs, shells and pearls all brought
traders from distant markets. Among the most sought-after was the
bird of paradise. Their magnificent plumes bedecked the hats of
fashion-conscious women in Europe and America, provided regalia for
the Kings of Nepal, and decorated the headdresses of Janissaries of
the Ottoman Empire. Plumes from Paradise tells the story of this
interaction, and of the economic, political, social and cultural
consequence for the island's inhabitants. It traces 400 years of
economic and political history, culminating in the plume boom of
the early part of the 20th century, when an unprecedented number of
outsiders flocked to the islands coasts and hinterlands. The story
teems with the variety of people involved: New Guineans,
Indonesians, Chinese, Europeans, hunters, traders, natural
historians and their collectors, officials, missionaries, planters,
miners, adventurers of every kind. In the wings were the
conservationists, whose efforts brought the slaughter of the plume
boom to an end and ushered in an era of comparative isolation for
the island that lasted until World War II.
This book is an ethnohistorical reconstruction of the establishment
in New Zealand of a rare case of Maori home-rule over their
traditional domain, backed by a special statute and investigated by
a Crown commission the majority of whom were Tuhoe leaders.
However, by 1913 Tuhoe home-rule over this vast domain was being
subverted by the Crown, which by 1926 had obtained three-quarters
of their reserve. By the 1950s this vast area had become the rugged
Urewera National Park, isolating over 200 small blocks retained by
stubborn Tuhoe "non-sellers". After a century of resistance, in
2014 the Tuhoe finally regained statutory control over their
ancestral domain and a detailed apology from the Crown.
When journalists, developers, surf tourists, and conservation NGOs
cast Papua New Guineans as living in a prior nature and prior
culture, they devalue their knowledge and practice, facilitating
their dispossession. Paige West's searing study reveals how a range
of actors produce and reinforce inequalities in today's globalized
world. She shows how racist rhetorics of representation underlie
all uneven patterns of development and seeks a more robust
understanding of the ideological work that capital requires for
constant regeneration.
Suburban Empire takes readers to the US missile base at Kwajalein
Atoll in the Marshall Islands, at the matrix of postwar US imperial
expansion, the Cold War nuclear arms race, and the tide of
anti-colonial struggles rippling across the world. Hirshberg shows
that the displacement of indigenous Marshallese within Kwajalein
Atoll mirrors the segregation and spatial politics of the mainland
US as local and global iterations of US empire took hold. Tracing
how Marshall Islanders navigated US military control over their
lands, Suburban Empire reveals that Cold War-era suburbanization
was perfectly congruent with US colonization, military testing, and
nuclear fallout. The structures of suburban segregation cloaked the
destructive history of control and militarism under a veil of
small-town innocence.
"Asia, the Pacific Islands and the coasts of the Americas have long
been studied separately. This essential single-volume history of
the Pacific traces the global interactions and remarkable peoples
that have connected these regions with each other and with Europe
and the Indian Ocean, for millennia. From ancient canoe navigators,
monumental civilisations, pirates and seaborne empires, to the rise
of nuclear testing and global warming, Matt Matsuda ranges across
the frontiers of colonial history, anthropology and Pacific Rim
economics and politics, piecing together a history of the region.
The book identifies and draws together the defining threads and
extraordinary personal narratives which have contributed to this
history, showing how localised contacts and contests have often
blossomed into global struggles over colonialism, tourism and the
rise of Asian economies. Drawing on Asian, Oceanian, European,
American, ancient and modern narratives, the author assembles a
fascinating Pacific region from a truly global perspective"--
James Fenton (1820-1901) was born in Ireland and emigrated to
Tasmania (then known as Van Diemen's Land) with his family in 1833.
He became a pioneer settler in an area on the Forth River and
published this history of the island in 1884. The book begins with
the discovery of the island in 1642 and concludes with the deaths
of some significant public figures in the colony in 1884. The
establishment of the colony on the island, and the involvement of
convicts in its building, is documented. A chapter on the native
aborigines gives a fascinating insight into the attitudes of the
colonising people, and a detailed account of the removal of the
native Tasmanians to Flinders Island, in an effort to separate them
from the colonists. The book also contains portraits of some
aboriginal people, as well as a glossary of their language.
This captivating work charts the history of Tasmania from the
arrival of European maritime expeditions in the late eighteenth
century, through to the modern day. By presenting the perspectives
of both Indigenous Tasmanians and British settlers, author Henry
Reynolds provides an original and engaging exploration of these
first fraught encounters. Utilising key themes to bind his
narrative, Reynolds explores how geography created a unique
economic and migratory history for Tasmania, quite separate from
the mainland experience. He offers an astute analysis of the
island's economic and demographic reality, by noting that this
facilitated the survival of a rich heritage of colonial
architecture unique in Australia, and allowed the resident
population to foster a powerful web of kinship. Reynolds'
remarkable capacity to empathise with the characters of his
chronicle makes this a powerful, engaging and moving account of
Tasmania's unique position within Australian history.
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