|
Books > History > Australasian & Pacific history
First published in 2006. A traveller's tale set in the islands of
Samoa with the legendary traveller Robert Louis Stevenson as guide,
this book is valuable not only for its enjoyment as a tale of
adventure, but also for its record of Stevenson himself - a
literacy figure more commonly seen as author and not subject.
This book explores the fin de siecle, an era of powerful global
movements and turbulent transition, in Australia and beyond through
a series of biographical microhistories. From the first wave
feminist Rose Summerfield and the working class radical John Dwyer,
to the indigenous rights advocate David Unaipon and the poet
Christopher Brennan, Hearn traces the transnational identities,
philosophies, ideas and cultures that characterised this era.
Examining the struggles and aspirations of fin de siecle lives;
respect for the rights of women and indigenous peoples, the
injustices and hardship inflicted on working men and women, and the
ways in which they imagined a better world, this book examines the
transformation and renewal brought about by fin de siecle ideas. It
examines the distinctive characteristics of this 'great
acceleration' of economic, technological and cultural forces that
swept the globe at the turn of the 19th century both within an
Australian context and on the world stage. Asserting that the fin
de siecle was significant for the making of modern Australia, and
demonstrating the impact Australian fin de siecle lives had on the
transnational and global movements of the era, Mark Hearn traces
the turbulent nature of the fin de siecle imagination in Australia,
and its response to these dynamic forces.
A new interpretation of imperialism and environmental change, and
the anxieties imperialism generated through environmental
transformation and interaction with unknown landscapes. Tying
together South Asia and Australasia, this book demonstrates how
environmental anxieties led to increasing state resource
management, conservation, and urban reform.
The Institute of Pacific Relations was a pioneering intellectual-political organization that shaped public knowledge and both elite and popular discourse throughout the Asia-Pacific region and beyond during the inter-war years. Inspired by Wilsonian internationalism after the 1919 formation of the League of Nations, it grew to become an international and national non-governmental think-tank providing expertise on Asia and the Pacific. This book investigates post-League Wilsonian internationalism with respect to two critical issues: the nation state and the conception of the Asia-Pacific region; both issues broach a range of contentious subjects including colonialism, orientalism, racism and war. Akami's study of the Institute of Pacific Relations offers insight into the formation of the dominant ideologies and institutions of regional and international politics in the Pacific during the inter-war years, and provides an interesting perspective on Japan's relations with countries including the USA and Australia. eBook available with sample pages: 0203165535
Sex, Soldiers and the South Pacific, 1939-45 explores the queer
dynamics of war across Australia and forward bases in the south
seas. It examines relationships involving Allied servicemen,
civilians and between the legal and medical fraternities that
sought to regulate and contain expressions of homosex in and out of
the forces.
What happened when people went mad in the fledgling colony of New
South Wales? In this important new history of the late eighteenth
and early nineteenth centuries, we find out through the
correspondence of tireless colonial secretaries, the brazen
language of lawyers and judges and firebrand politicians, and
heartbreaking letters from siblings, parents and friends. We also
hear from the mad themselves. Class, gender and race became
irrelevant as illness, chaos and delusion afflicted convicts exiled
from their homes and living under the weight of imperial justice;
ex-convicts and small settlers as they grappled with the country
they had taken from its Indigenous inhabitants, as well as
officers, officials and wealthy colonists who sought to guide the
course of European history in Australia. This not a history of the
miserable institutions built for the mentally ill, or those living
within them, or the people in charge of the asylums. These stories
of madness are woven together into a narrative about freedom and
possibilities, and collapse and unravelling. The book looks at
people at the edge of the world finding themselves at the edge of
sanity, and is about their strategies for survival. This is a new
story of colonial Australia, cast as neither a grim and fatal shore
nor an antipodean paradise, but a place where the full range of
humanity wrestled with the challenges of colonisation. The first
book-length history of madness at the beginning ofEuropean
Australia Original and evocative, it grapples seriously with the
place ofmadness in Australia's convict history The book's intimate
descriptions of madness and the response to itgive a unique picture
of life in the early colony through the lens ofmental illness
Awareness of mental health continues to rise globally. This
bookexplores efforts to understand and to treat madness before
asylums,hospitals and doctors made madness a medical problem.
Meticulously researched by James Dunk, a young emerginghistorian of
medicine and colonialism
Nearly 50 years after Japan's attack, this text takes a fresh look
at the air raid that plunged America into World War II. Michael
Slackman scrutinizes the decisions and attitudes that prompted the
attack and left the US unprepared to mount a successful defence.
The popularization of radio, television, and the Internet radically
transformed musical practice in the Asia Pacific. These
technologies bequeathed media broadcasters with a profound
authority over the ways we engage with musical culture.
Broadcasters use this power to promote distinct cultural
traditions, popularize new music, and engage diverse audiences.
They also deploy mediated musics as a vehicle for disseminating
ideologies, educating the masses, shaping national borders, and
promoting political alliances. With original contributions by
leading scholars in anthropology, ethnomusicology, sound studies,
and media and cultural studies, the 12 essays this book investigate
the processes of broadcasting musical culture in the Asia Pacific.
We shift our gaze to the mechanisms of cultural industries in
eastern Asia and the Pacific islands to understand how
oft-invisible producers, musicians, and technologies facilitate,
frame, reproduce, and magnify the reach of local culture.
This book (hardcover) is part of the TREDITION CLASSICS. It
contains classical literature works from over two thousand years.
Most of these titles have been out of print and off the bookstore
shelves for decades. The book series is intended to preserve the
cultural legacy and to promote the timeless works of classical
literature. Readers of a TREDITION CLASSICS book support the
mission to save many of the amazing works of world literature from
oblivion. With this series, tredition intends to make thousands of
international literature classics available in printed format again
- worldwide.
1992 will mark the fiftieth anniversary of the great Pacific naval
battles in the Coral Sea and off Midway Island. Occuring within a
month of each other, these turning Point engagements brought an end
to Japan's military expansion and six months of Allied defeat and
retreat in the Pacific. Fought mostly over the ocean by airmen
flying primarily from aircraft carriers, the battles were marked on
both sides by courage and luck, forewarning and foreboding, skill
and ineptitude. In this first book-length, partially-annotated
bibliography, Smith provides more than 1,300 citations to the
growing literature on these major battles. Materials in seven
languages are cited as well as information provided on many of the
repositories located in the United States or abroad that have
holdings necessary for the continuing reinterpretation of the
battles. Following an overview and introduction, the volume
contains sections devoted to reference works and sites, general
histories, hardware, biography, combatants, and special studies,
and separate section for both battles. Access is augmented by
author and name indexes. This volume will be a required reference
guide for all those concerned with the War in the Pacific and
modern military studies.
The centre of Melbourne is filled with stories about the city's
pasts. Like all of Australia's cities, it is a place that is
dominated by markers of the settler-colonial past. Yet when it
comes to its Indigenous pasts, the city is mostly a place of
silence. Since the 1990s, however, Indigenous histories have been
brought into central Melbourne's commemorative landscapes.
Monuments, memorials, namings and artworks have all been used to
mark the city's Indigenous pasts. These historical markers can be
found in the everyday places of parks, roads, bridges and
thoroughfares. Taken together, they are an incursion into the
city's commemorative landscapes. Places of Reconciliation tells the
story of the introduction of official commemorations of Indigenous
peoples and histories into the heart of Melbourne since 2000. It
explains how they came to be part of the city, and the ways in
which they have challenged the erasure of its Indigenous histories.
In telling this story, the book also examines the kind of places
that have been made and unmade by these commemorations, and how we
might understand them as public historical projects in the early
decades of the twenty-first century.
Bondi Beach is a history of an iconic place. It is a big history of
geological origins, management by Aboriginal people, environmental
despoliation by white Australians, and the formation of beach
cultures. It is also a local history of the name Bondi, the origins
of the Big Rock at Ben Buckler, the motives of early land holders,
the tragedy known as Black Sunday, the hostilities between
lifesavers and surfers, and the hullabaloos around the Pavilion.
Pointing to a myriad of representations, author Douglas Booth shows
that there is little agreement about the meaning of Bondi. Booth
resolves these representations with a fresh narrative that presents
the beach's perspective of a place under siege. Booth's creative
narrative conveys important lessons about our engagement with the
physical world.
50 years ago, Japan attacked Pearl Harbour and brought a reluctant
America into World War II. Armed with fresh materials, which have
become available only in the last decade, Renzi and Roehrs take a
critical look at the decisive Japanese-American episodes in "The
Great Pacific War". Unlike standard histories of World War II,
"Never Look Back" includes the Japanese perspective, bringing to
light challenging facts: in "Operation Flying Elephant" the
Japanese attempted to cause forest fires in the American West by
releasing hydrogen-filled balloons. When Americans of Japanese
ancestry were interned during the conflict, word reached Japan of
their plight and resulted in even greater mistreatment of American
POWs in Japan. It is argued that Japan did not surrender because of
the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki or because of the
conventional firebombing or because of the US submarine campaign,
but because the USSR entered the war.
The Battle for the Falklands is a thoughtful and informed analysis
of an astonishing chapter in modern British history from journalist
and military historian Sir Max Hastings and political editor Simon
Jenkins. Ten weeks. 28,000 soldiers. 8,000 miles from home. The
Falklands War in 1982 was one of the strangest in British history.
At the time, many Britons saw it as a tragic absurdity - thousands
of men sent overseas for a tiny relic of empire - but the British
victory over the Argentinians not only confirmed the quality of
British arms but also boosted the political fortunes of Thatcher's
Conservative government. However, it left a chequered aftermath and
was later overshadowed by the two Gulf wars. Max Hastings' and
Simon Jenkins' account of the conflict is a modern classic of war
reportage and the definitive book on the conflict.
The double canoe constituted the backbone of Polynesian culture,
since it enabled the Polynesians to enter and conquer the Pacific.
In Tonga, a center of Polynesian navigation, two types were known:
the tongiaki and the kalia. Contrary to most contributions, the
author argues that the Tongans were not only the Western Pacific
masters of navigation, but also of canoe designing. Typical of
Polynesian canoes was the sewing technique which can be traced back
to ancient India but was also practiced in Pharanoic Egypt and
southern Europe. The legend of the magnetic mountain is to be
viewed in this context. Oceanic navigation, which declined during
the 19th century, had developed its own means of orientation at
sea, including astronomy and meteorology.
We leave base camp and start our trek across this vast country. We
invite you to walk with us in a movement of the Australian people
for a better future. On 26 May 2017, after a historic process of
consultation, the Uluru Statement from the Heart was read out. This
clear and urgent call for reform to the community from Aboriginal
and Torres Strait Islander peoples asked for the establishment of a
First Nations Voice to Parliament protected in the constitution and
a process of agreement-making and truth-telling. Voice. Treaty.
Truth. What was the journey to this point? What do Australians need
to know about the Uluru Statement from the Heart? And how can these
reforms be achieved? Everything You Need to Know about the Uluru
Statement from the Heart, written by Megan Davis and George
Williams, two of Australia's best-known constitutional experts, is
essential reading on how our Constitution was drafted, what the
1967 referendum achieved, and the lead-up and response to the Uluru
Statement. Importantly, it explains how the Uluru Statement offers
change that will benefit the whole nation.
Becoming a mother charts the diverse and complex history of
Australian mothering for the first time, exposing the ways it has
been both connected to and distinct from parallel developments in
other industrialised societies. In many respects, the historical
context in which Australian women come to motherhood has changed
dramatically since 1945. And yet examination of the memories of
multiple maternal generations reveals surprising continuities in
the emotions and experiences of first-time motherhood. Drawing upon
interdisciplinary insights from anthropology, history, psychology
and sociology, Carla Pascoe Leahy unpacks this multifaceted rite of
passage through more than 60 oral history interviews, demonstrating
how maternal memories continue to influence motherhood today.
Despite radical shifts in understandings of gender, care and
subjectivity, becoming a mother remains one of the most personally
and culturally significant moments in a woman's life. -- .
From its rise in the 1830s to its pinnacle in the 1930s, the opium
trade was a guiding force in the Chinese political economy. Opium
money was inextricably bound up in local, national, and imperial
finances, and the people who piloted the trade were integral to the
fabric of Chinese society. In this book, Peter Thilly narrates the
dangerous lives and shrewd business operations of opium traffickers
in southeast China, situating them within a global history of
capitalism. By tracing the evolution of the opium trade from
clandestine offshore agreements in the 1830s, to multi-million
dollar prohibition bureau contracts in the 1930s, Thilly
demonstrates how the modernizing Chinese state was infiltrated,
manipulated, and profoundly transformed by opium profiteers. Opium
merchants carried the drug by sea, over mountains, and up rivers,
with leading traders establishing monopolies over trade routes and
territories and assembling "opium armies" to protect their
businesses. Over time, and as their ranks grew, these organizations
became more bureaucratized and militarized, mimicking-and then
eventually influencing, infiltrating, or supplanting-the state.
Through the chaos of revolution, warlordism, and foreign invasion,
opium traders diligently expanded their power through corruption,
bribery, and direct collaboration with the state. Drug traders
mattered-not only in the seedy ways in which they have been
caricatured but also crucially as shadowy architects of statecraft
and China's evolution on the world stage.
|
|