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Books > History > Australasian & Pacific history
The Napoleonic era was a period of major transition. During this
time, the explorer Nicolas Baudin made a voyage to Australia and
made an unscheduled stop in Sydney where he restructured the
expedition. Starbuck examines Baudin's captainship, life on board
the ship, the details of the stop in Port Jackson, and the 'new
voyage' that followed.
In this book, Philip Payton provides a vivid insight into the
experiences of regional Australia during the Great War of 1914-18.
Alighting upon 'old Kio', the copper-mining communities of South
Australia's northern Yorke Peninsula, he describes the relationship
between the 'homefront' and the 'battlefront' half-a-world away. He
draws an intimate portrait of Australia at war, from the lives (and
deaths) of local soldiers-all volunteers-in the trenches far from
home to the myriad reactions and activities of those in a community
struggling to grasp the enormity of the situation in which it found
itself. The book shows how community cohesion was fractured by
increasing tensions and divisions, not least over the Conscription
debate, as the war dragged on. And it shows how those volunteer
soldiers fared in each of the great battles in which the
Australians participated-from Gallipoli to the Western Front and
the heady days of 1918.
'Of all the books about the ground war in the Pacific, (With the
Old Breed) is the closest to a masterpiece.' - The New York Review
of Books 'One of the most arresting documents in war literature.' -
John Keegan, in The Second World War E.B. Sledge's memoir of his
experience fighting in the South Pacific during World War II is
powerful because of its honesty and compassion. With the Old Breed
presents a stirring, personal account of the bravery of the Marines
in the battles at Peleliu and Okinawa. Eugene Bondurant Sledge
'Sledgehammer' joined the Marines the year after the bombing of
Pearl Harbour and from 1943 to 1946 endured the events recorded in
this book. Sledge enlisted out of patriotism and youthful courage
but once he landed on the beach at Peleliu, it was purely a
struggle for survival. Based on the notes he kept on slips of paper
tucked secretly away in his New Testament, he simply and directly
recalls those long months, mincing no words and sparing no pain.
The reality of battle meant unbearable heat, deafening gunfire,
unimaginable brutality and, above all, constant fear. Sledge still
has nightmares about 'the bloody, muddy month of May on Okinawa.'
He also tellingly reveals the bonds of friendship formed that will
never be severed. Sledge's account of other marines, even complete
strangers, sets him apart as a memoirist of war. Read as sobering
history or as high adventure, this is a moving chronicle of action
and courage. About the Author E. B. Sledge was born and grew up in
Mobile, Alabama. His father, a physician, taught him to hunt and to
describe his surroundings. Sledge enlisted in the US Marine Corps
and was sent to the Pacific Theatre. He fought at Peleliu and
Okinawa where some of the fiercest battles of WWII took place.
Although he survived it took him years to recover from the
psychological wounds from that experience. He has since pursued his
studies in all manner of subjects, earning a PhD in Zoology at the
University of Florida.
This book considers how Samoans embraced and reshaped the English
game of cricket, recasting it as a distinctively Samoan pastime,
kirikiti. Starting with cricket's introduction to the islands in
1879, it uses both cricket and kirikiti to trace six decades of
contest between and within the categories of 'colonisers' and
'colonised.' How and why did Samoans adapt and appropriate the
imperial game? How did officials, missionaries, colonists, soldiers
and those with mixed foreign and Samoan heritage understand and
respond to the real and symbolic challenges kirikiti presented? And
how did Samoans use both games to navigate foreign colonialism(s)?
By investigating these questions, Benjamin Sacks suggests
alternative frameworks for conceptualising sporting transfer and
adoption, and advances understandings of how power, politics and
identity were manifested through sport, in Samoa and across the
globe.
Michael Davitt (1846-1906) was a prominent and influential figure
in Irish politics in the nineteenth century. A fervent supporter of
Irish independence, he was imprisoned more than once in England,
but later became a Member of Parliament for Irish constituencies.
In this book, first published in 1898, Davitt records a journey of
seven months through the Australasian colonies, noting his
impressions of the areas he passed through and discussing the
political and social norms across the different regions. He
examines land laws in many of the areas and describes the different
industries then emerging. He also reports on the treatment of
aborigines, ranging from 'exterminating the aborigines' in Tasmania
to the 'efforts to protect them' in Western Australia, and finally
focuses on prisons and prisoner welfare across the colonies he
visited. This book offers a wealth of information on many aspects
of nineteenth-century Australasia.
This project documents the rich source material in European and
North American repositories relating to the history of countries
formerly under colonial rule. The manuscript and document holdings
of public and private archives, libraries, museums and other
institutions referred to in the guide cover all aspects of history.
The primary emphasis is on political, diplomatic, commercial and
military history, but there is good coverage of cultural history -
especially in the reports and correspondence of explorers and
travellers in missionary archives. Each series, of which this is
the third, is arranged by country; sources within national volumes
are described by repositories and archival groups.
This book traces the history of working people who helped
established the foundation of the American empire in the Pacific
from its origins after the American Revolution to its coming of age
in the 1840s and 1850s. Beginning with the expeditions of the
Columbia and the Lady Washington, Lampe argues that the early
American Pacific can best be considered through the interaction of
four major locations, connected through the networks of trade: the
merchant ship, the Northwest Coast, Honolulu, and Canton
(Guangzhou). In each of these locations, the labors of a diverse
population of working people was harnessed in the critical labors
of empire building, including the transportation of goods. The
central question that the consideration of working people in the
Pacific economy during this period is, Lampe argues, the role of
power applied on these laborers by an international capitalist
class, emerging alongside the Pacific commercial empires. Lampe
also finds that this power was not uncontested and emerged in
response to the activities of labor. Working people, on the ship
and in the port cities, found ways to secure their piece of the
profitable trade, often through illicit means.
A Decent Provision is a narrative history of how and why Australia
built a distinctive welfare regime in the period from the 1870s to
1949. At the beginning of this period, the Australian colonies were
belligerently insisting they must not have a Poor Law, yet had
reproduced many of the systems of charitable provision in Britain.
By the start of the twentieth century, a combination of extended
suffrage, basic wage regulation and the aged pension had led to a
reputation as a 'social laboratory'. And yet half a century later,
Australia was a 'welfare laggard' and the Labor Party's welfare
state of the mid-1940s was a relatively modest and parsimonious
construction. Models of welfare based on social insurance had been
vigorously rejected, and the Australian system continued on a path
of highly residual, targeted welfare payments. The book explains
this curious and halting trajectory, showing how choices made in
earlier decades constrained what could be done, and what could be
imagined. Based on extensive new research from a variety of primary
sources it makes a significant contribution to general historical
debates, as well as to the field of comparative social policy.
Using Australian history as a case study, this collection explores
the ways national identities still resonate in historical
scholarship and reexamines key moments in Australian history
through a transnational lens, raising important questions about the
unique context of Australia's national narrative. The book examines
the tension between national and transnational perspectives,
attempting to internationalize the often parochial nation-based
narratives that characterize national history. Moving from the
local and personal to the global, encompassing comparative and
international research and drawing on the experiences of
researchers working across nations and communities, this collection
brings together diverging national and transnational approaches and
asks several critical research questions: What is transnational
history? How do new transnational readings of the past challenge
conventional national narratives and approaches? What are
implications of transnational and international approaches on
Australian history? What possibilities do they bring to the
discipline? What are their limitations? And finally, how do we
understand the nation in this transnational moment?
On the 25th August 1895, Ernest Alfred Hall was born into a
pioneering Australian family that lived on a 313-acre property
called 'Cloverdale' near the hamlet of Beech Forest, south of the
Otway Ranges, some 200 kilometres south west of Melbourne,
Victoria. As a child, it seemed he would be destined for the life
of a farmer in a country that was just realising its independence
through Federation, yet his path was to be diverted by the
cataclysmic events that befell Europe and the British Empire. So it
was, that one month short of his 20th birthday, Ernest caught the
train to Melbourne and enlisted in the Australian Imperial Force.
At only 5' 3" he was never going to be the biggest soldier in the
army, but as his father said to him, "It's not the size of the dog
in the fight, son, but the size of the fight in the dog." Like so
many, Ernest Hall embarked for the war to end all wars. Unlike so
many, his letters and records survived. This is his story.
Stuart Macintyre, one of Australia's most highly regarded
historians, revisits A Concise History of Australia to provoke
readers to reconsider Australia's past and its relationship to the
present. Integrating new scholarship with the historical record,
the fifth edition of A Concise History of Australia brings together
the long narrative of Australia's First Nations' peoples; the
arrival of Europeans and the era of colonies, convicts, gold and
free settlers; the foundation of a nation state; and the social,
cultural, political and economic developments that created a modern
Australia. As we enter the third decade of the twenty-first
century, Macintyre's Australia remains one of achievements and
failures. So too the future possibilities are deeply rooted in the
country's past endeavours. A Concise History of Australia is an
invitation to examine this past.
Papua New Guinea has experienced a remarkably rapid transition from
scattered primitive societies to a modern unified nation. The
dictionary covers major economic, social, political, and cultural
developments, basic geographic information and biographies. With
maps.
On the 11th of November 1934 over 300,000 people gathered on the
slopes of Melbourne's Domain to witness the dedication of the
Shrine. It was the largest state war memorial Australia would build
and it commemorated the sacrifice of no fewer than 114,000
Victorians who served in the Great War. A Place to Remember charts
the Shrine's history from the first fatalities of the Gallipoli
landing to the present day. With deft hand and luminous style,
Bruce Scates masterfully situates the Shrine in its larger
physical, cultural and historical landscape. Archival image and
first person vignette mesh with vivid prose to reveal The Shrine
then and now; its changing patterns of meaning through the many
conflicts in which Australians have fought and died, and the
enduring significance of this grand memorial in the heart of
Melbourne, for generations to come.
War on Corruption: An Indonesian Experience is a courageous,
informed, and sober insider's account of the challenge for
democracy and the rule of law within the fourth most populous
nation.Corruption is a huge problem in Indonesia. Some reasons are
easy to identify and flow on from the authoritarianism of the
Soeharto New Order. Other factors are less apparent. As Todung
Mulya Lubis, one of Indonesia's leading human rights lawyers and
most influential legal thinkers, explains, 'Now corruptors come
from the legislature, government, judiciary, and business
communities, and they are not simply thieves but rent-seekers,
benefiting from rapid economic development and weak law
enforcement'. In his telling, the best efforts of the most
unswerving and talented corruption fighters in Indonesia have been
frustrated since the Soeharto regime was overthrown a generation
ago. But as Todung also shows, there have recently been many
successful prosecutions of corrupt officials, from the lowest
levels to the very upper echelons of government and society. The
creation of the Indonesian Corruption Eradication Commission, the
KPK, in 2003, was an inspired move. For all its problems, arising
from both internal dynamics and the often hostile social and
institutional environments in which it has operated, the legal
independence and dogged idealism of the KPK have made it a genuine
force for renewal.
Today only a select few know firsthand what it is like to feel
their ship shudder from the blast of their own guns, watch enemy
guns flash back, and see friendly ships erupt in flames. Russell
Crenshaw is one of those few. His riveting account of the savage
night battle for the Solomon Islands in early 1943 offers readers a
unique insider's perspective from the decks of one of the
destroyers that bore the brunt of the struggle Drawing on his
experience as a gunnery officer on the USS Maury, his vivid,
balanced, and detailed narrative includes the Battle of
Tassafarounga in November 1942 and Vella Gulf in August 1943,
actions that earned his warship a Presidential Unit Citation and
sixteen battle stars. Crenshaw also discusses the impact of radar
and voice radio, the shortcomings of U.S. torpedoes and gunfire,
and the devastating effectiveness of Japan's super torpedo. About
the Author Capt. Russell Syndor Crenshaw Jr., USN (Ret), is the
author of Naval Shiphandling and lives in Drayden, MD, US.
Aloha Compadre: Latinxs in Hawaiʻi is the first book to examine
the collective history and contemporary experiences of the Latinx
population of Hawaiʻi. This study reveals that contrary to popular
discourse, Latinx migration to Hawaiʻi is not a recent event. In
the national memory of the United States, for example, the Latinx
population of Hawaiʻi is often portrayed as recent arrivals and
not as long-term historical communities with a presence that
precedes the formation of statehood itself. Historically speaking,
Latinxs have been voyaging to the Hawaiian Islands for over one
hundred and ninety years. From the early 1830s to the present, they
continue to help shape Hawaiʻi’s history, yet their
contributions are often overlooked. Latinxs have been a part of the
cultural landscape of Hawaiʻi prior to annexation, territorial
status, and statehood in 1959. Aloha Compadre also explores the
expanding boundaries of Latinx migration beyond the western
hemisphere and into Oceania.
Charles Joseph La Trobe was Superintendent of Port Philip District
and Victoria's first Lieutenant-Governor (1851-54), and his
administration, which coincided with the turbulent challenges of
the Victorian gold rushes, was highly controversial. He departed
from office a wearied and disappointed man whose contribution to
the development of the colony was not immediately recognised. As
Dianne Reilly shows in this fascinating investigation of the man,
La Trobe's actions, ideas, assumptions and behaviours during his
fifteen years in office in Melbourne may, however, be best
understood by an examination of the way his character was shaped,
especially by the influences on him of the Moravian faith and
education, by his passion for travel, and by the devotion and
support of his family and friends in England and in Switzerland.
Celebrating the Nation offers the first major critical
retrospective on Australia's Bicentenary. The editors have
collected a series of essays focusing on the different ways in
which 1988 was celebrated. From the soccer Gold Cup to literary
commissions, from Expo 88 to the Travelling Exhibition and the
Stockman's Hall of Fame, it examines the cultural and ideological
frameworks which shaped the discourses and rhetoric of those
celebrations. The contributors also put the Australian Bicentenary
of 1988 in historical and international perspective, comparing the
celebrations of 1988 with earlier Australian anniversary
celebrations, and with recent national celebrations in France,
Canada and the United States. Drawing on the findings of a major
research project organised by the Institute for Cultural Policy
Studies at Griffith University, Celebrating the Nation provides a
provocative and insightful analysis of the cultural and political
processes through which modern nations organise and symbolise their
histories and identities.
High Lean Country captures the rich history and haunting character
of the New England region of northern New South Wales. The authors
explore how memory - of land, of family, of patterns of life on the
other side of the world - has influenced the identity of New
England. They also consider how the high country itself has shaped
its people and their sense of regional uniqueness. In doing so,
this book sets a new direction for understanding Australia as a
whole. Weaving together the histories of human settlement,
economic, social and cultural development, as well as interactions
with the environment, High Lean Country shows how colonial settlers
strived for decades to literally create a new England. It traces
the story of the graduates of Oxford and Cambridge who turned their
hands to sheep husbandry and developed a squattocracy, the
establishment of schools and other institutions, and the
cultivation of traditional arts. It also examines the early
colonial bushranging period, and a history of not always friendly
relations between white settlers and the local Aboriginal
population. A project of the Heritage Futures Research Centre at
the University of New England, High Lean Country is a fascinating
study of this distinctive Australian high country.
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Ivory Z Ward
Hardcover
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Discovery Miles 8 570
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