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Books > History > Australasian & Pacific history
A uniquely collaborative analysis of human adaptation to the Polynesian islands, told through oral histories, biophysical evidence, and historical records Humans began to settle the area we know as Polynesia between 3,000 and 800 years ago, bringing with them material culture, including plants and animals, and ideas about societal organization, and then adapting to the specific biophysical features of the islands they discovered. The authors of this book analyze the formation of their human-environment systems using oral histories, biophysical evidence, and historical records, arguing that the Polynesian islands can serve as useful models for how human societies in general interact with their environments. The islands' clearly defined (and relatively isolated) environments, comparatively recent discovery by humans, and innovative and dynamic societies allow for insights not available when studying other cultures. Kamana Beamer, Te Maire Tau, and Peter Vitousek have collaborated with a dozen other scholars, many of them Polynesian, to show how these cultures adapted to novel environments in the past and how we can draw insights for global sustainability today.
The Constitution of Independence is a contribution to the newly rejuvenated subject of comparative Commonwealth constitutional law, politics, and history. In Australia, Canada, and New Zealand, a series of fascinating developments have been under way for more than a decade, characterized by independent thinking, experimentation, and cross-Commonwealth borrowing of constitutional ideas. These include the final termination of constitutional ties with the United Kingdom Parliament (completed in each country's case in the 1980s) and the emergence of controversial issues including variably entrenched or implied rights and freedoms; wide-ranging claims by indigenous peoples; republicanism; and assertions of national, popular, and sectional sovereignty. This book explores the development of constitutional thinking in Australia, Canada, and New Zealand from early domination by Imperial ideas, through the adoption of the Statute of Westminster and the contemplation of severing Imperial connections, to irreversible acquisition of constitutional independence in the 1980s. This book focusses primarily on sovereignty and the legal system, concepts which are also central to contemporary constitutional theory in Europe and the United States. The book closes with an evaluation of recent varied and often contradictory accounts of the constitutional foundations of Australia, Canada, and New Zealand, which depict a wide range of scenarios: from constitutional continuity and respect for the rule of law, to popular sovereignty and disguised revolution. Oliver argues that explanations of constitutional independence are characterized by their reliance on independent, country-specific constitutional thinking that evolved over the last century. on
Australia's constitutional crisis of 1975 was not simply about the precise powers of the Senate or the Governor-General. It was about competing accounts of how to legitimate informal constitutional change. For Prime Minister Gough Whitlam, and the parliamentary tradition that he invoked, national elections sufficiently legitimated even the most constitutionally transformative of his goals. For his opponents, and a more complex tradition of popular sovereignty, more decisive evidence was required of the consent of the people themselves. This book traces the emergence of this fundamental constitutional debate and chronicles its subsequent iterations in sometimes surprising institutional configurations: the politics of judicial appointment in the Murphy Affair; the evolution of judicial review in the Mason Court; and the difficulties Australian republicanism faced in the Howard Referendum. Though the patterns of institutional engagement have varied, the persistent question of how to legitimate informal constitutional change continues to shape Australia's constitution after Whitlam.
A blend of Jared Diamond's Guns, Germs, and Steel and Simon Winchester's Pacific, a thrilling intellectual detective story that looks deep into the past to uncover who first settled the islands of the remote Pacific, where they came from, how they got there, and how we know. For more than a millennium, Polynesians have occupied the remotest islands in the Pacific Ocean, a vast triangle stretching from Hawaii to New Zealand to Easter Island. Until the arrival of European explorers they were the only people to have ever lived there. Both the most closely related and the most widely dispersed people in the world before the era of mass migration, Polynesians can trace their roots to a group of epic voyagers who ventured out into the unknown in one of the greatest adventures in human history. How did the earliest Polynesians find and colonize these far-flung islands? How did a people without writing or metal tools conquer the largest ocean in the world? This conundrum, which came to be known as the Problem of Polynesian Origins, emerged in the eighteenth century as one of the great geographical mysteries of mankind. For Christina Thompson, this mystery is personal: her Maori husband and their sons descend directly from these ancient navigators. In Sea People, Thompson explores the fascinating story of these ancestors, as well as those of the many sailors, linguists, archaeologists, folklorists, biologists, and geographers who have puzzled over this history for three hundred years. A masterful mix of history, geography, anthropology, and the science of navigation, Sea People combines the thrill of exploration with the drama of discovery in a vivid tour of one of the most captivating regions in the world. Sea People includes an 8-page photo insert, illustrations throughout, and 2 endpaper maps.
This book examines the relationships between ethnic and Indigenous minorities and the media in Australia. The book places the voices of minorities at its centre, moving beyond a study of only representation and engaging with minority media producers, industries and audiences. Drawing on a diverse range of studies - from the Indigenous media environment to grassroots production by young refugees - the chapters within engage with the full range of media experiences and practices of marginalized Australians. Importantly, the book expands beyond the victimization of Indigenous and ethnic minorities at the hands of mainstream media, and also analyses the empowerment of communities who use media to respond to, challenge and negotiate social inequalities.
This new study offers a timely and compelling account of why past generations of Australians have seen the north of the country as an empty land, and how those perceptions of Australia's tropical regions impact current policy and shape the self-image of the nation. It considers the origins of these concerns - from fears of invasion and moral qualms about leaving resources lying idle, from apprehensions about white nationhood coming under international censure and misgivings about the natural attributes of the north - and elucidates Australians' changing appreciations of the natural environments of the north, their shifting attitudes toward race and their unsettled conceptions of Asia.
This book contributes to the global turn in First World War studies by exploring Australians' engagements with the conflict across varied boundaries and by situating Australian voices and perspectives within broader, more complex contexts. This diverse and multifaceted collection includes chapters on the composition and contribution of the Australian Imperial Force, the experiences of prisoners of war, nurses and Red Cross workers, the resonances of overseas events for Australians at home, and the cultural legacies of the war through remembrance and representation. The local-global framework provides a fresh lens through which to view Australian connections with the Great War, demonstrating that there is still much to be said about this cataclysmic event in modern history.
Adopting a political and legal perspective, Redefining Citizenship in Australia, Canada, and Aotearoa New Zealand undertakes a transnational study that examines the demise of Britishness as a defining feature of the conceptualisation of citizenship in Australia, Canada, and Aotearoa New Zealand and the impact that this historic shift has had on Indigenous and other ethnic groups in these states. During the 1950s and 1970s an ethnically based citizenship was transformed into a civic-based one (one based on rights and responsibilities). The major context in which this took place was the demise of British race patriotism in Australia, English-speaking Canada, and Aotearoa New Zealand. Although the timing of this shift varied, Aboriginal groups and non-British ethnic groups were now incorporated, or appeared to be incorporated, into ideas of citizenship in all three nations. The development of citizenship in this period has traditionally been associated with immigration in Australia, Canada, and Aotearoa New Zealand. However, the historical origins of citizenship practices in all three countries have yet to be fully analysed. This is what Redefining Citizenship in Australia, Canada, and Aotearoa New Zealand does. The overarching question addressed by the book is: Why and how did the end of the British World lead to the redefinition of citizenship in Australia, Canada, and Aotearoa New Zealand between the 1950s and 1970s in regard to other ethnic and Indigenous groups? This book will be useful for history and politics courses, as well as specialised courses on citizenship and Indigenous studies.
A History of New Zealand Literature traces the genealogy of New Zealand literature from its first imaginings by Europeans in the eighteenth century. Beginning with a comprehensive introduction that charts the growth of, and challenges to, a nationalist literary tradition, the essays in this History illuminate the cultural and political intricacies of New Zealand literature, surveying the multilayered verse, fiction and drama of such diverse writers as Katherine Mansfield, Allen Curnow, Frank Sargeson, Janet Frame, Keri Hulme, Witi Ihimaera and Patricia Grace. Written by a host of leading scholars, this History devotes special attention to the lasting significance of colonialism, biculturalism and multiculturalism in New Zealand literature. A History of New Zealand Literature is of pivotal importance to the development of New Zealand writing and will serve as an invaluable reference for specialists and students alike.
Anzac Battlefield: A Gallipoli Landscape of War and Memory explores the transformation of Gallipoli's landscape in antiquity, during the famed battles of the First World War and in the present day. Drawing on archival, archaeological and cartographic material, this book unearths the deep history of the Gallipoli peninsula, setting the Gallipoli campaign in a broader cultural and historical context. The book presents the results of an original archaeological survey, the research for which was supported by the Australian, New Zealand and Turkish Governments. The survey examines materials from both sides of the battlefield, and sheds new light on the environment in which Anzac and Turkish soldiers endured the conflict. Richly illustrated with both Ottoman and Anzac archival images and maps, as well as original maps and photographs of the landscape and archaeological findings, Anzac Battlefield is an important contribution to our understanding of Gallipoli and its landscape of war and memory.
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.
In late January 1944 a force of New Zealand soldiers and Allied specialists undertook a daring, behind the lines reconnaissance of the Japanese-held Green Islands of Papua New Guinea. The Japanese contested the invasion with air power and inflicted heavy damage on the American cruiser USS St. Louis. After a successful landing, the New Zealanders pushed inland and encountered fanatical Japanese defenders entrenched in thick jungle. After the island was secured, Allied engineers - including the famed Seabees - built airfields, roads and shipping facilities. The seizure of the Green Islands completed the encirclement of the main Japanese base in the South Pacific at Rabaul. A memorable but overlooked action of the Pacific War, ""Operation Squarepeg"" involved a diverse force of Allied sailors, soldiers and airmen that included Charles Lindbergh and future president of the United States Richard Milhouse Nixon.
In the five months after Pearl Harbor, the Imperial Japanese Navy won a string of victories in a campaign to consolidate control of Southeast Asia and the South Pacific. In June 1942, Japan suffered a devastating defeat at the Battle of Midway and was never again able to take the offensive in the Pacific. Bringing fresh perspective to the battle and its consequences, the author identifies the Japanese operational plan as major factor in the navy's demise and describes the profound effects Midway had on the course of the war in Europe.
This important collection, published in two volumes in 1770-1 and reissued here in one, contains accounts of notable Iberian and Dutch voyages in the southern hemisphere, translated and edited by Alexander Dalrymple (1737-1808). Hydrographer to the Admiralty from 1795, Dalrymple produced this work as part of his research into the belief at the time that there existed an undiscovered continent in the South Pacific. These volumes were intended to demonstrate the knowledge of the region to date. The first volume covers sixteenth-century Spanish and Portuguese voyages, beginning with Ferdinand Magellan and including those of Juan Fernandez, Alvaro de Mendana y Neira and Pedro Fernandes de Queiros. The second volume contains the seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Dutch voyages of Jacob Le Mair and Willem Schouten, Abel Tasman and Jacob Roggeveen. This volume also contains a chronological table of discoveries in the southern hemisphere since 1501.
This work, first published in 1789, is an edited compilation of official papers, journals and illustrations relevant to the voyage of the First Fleet to Australia and the founding of Port Jackson on Sydney Cove, and of the penal colony of Norfolk Island. Arthur Phillip (1738-1814), a sailor of wide experience in both the Royal Navy and the Portuguese fleet, accepted the post of commander of the fleet and governor of the new colony in 1786, and the eleven ships arrived in Botany Bay in January 1788. This account begins with a note on Phillip's career, and discusses earlier British colonisation, before describing the preparations for, and progress of, the voyage. The fascinating documentation continues with materials on the founding of the colony, problems with the convict workmen, encounters with native Australians, and with the local wildlife, all illustrations of the birth of one of the world's great cities.
This book explores a cross-section of war crimes trials that the Allied powers held against the Japanese in the aftermath of World War II. More than 2,240 trials against some 5,700 suspected war criminals were carried out at 51 separate locations across the Asia Pacific region. This book analyzes fourteen high-profile American, Australian, British, and Philippine trials, including the two subsequent proceedings at Tokyo and the Yamashita trial. By delving into a large body of hitherto underutilized oral and documentary history of the war as contained in the trial records, Yuma Totani illuminates diverse firsthand accounts of the war that were offered by former Japanese and Allied combatants, prisoners of war, and the civilian population. Furthermore, the author makes a systematic inquiry into select trials to shed light on a highly complex - and at times contradictory - legal and jurisprudential legacy of Allied war crimes prosecutions.
This book explores a cross-section of war crimes trials that the Allied powers held against the Japanese in the aftermath of World War II. More than 2,240 trials against some 5,700 suspected war criminals were carried out at 51 separate locations across the Asia Pacific region. This book analyzes fourteen high-profile American, Australian, British, and Philippine trials, including the two subsequent proceedings at Tokyo and the Yamashita trial. By delving into a large body of hitherto underutilized oral and documentary history of the war as contained in the trial records, Yuma Totani illuminates diverse firsthand accounts of the war that were offered by former Japanese and Allied combatants, prisoners of war, and the civilian population. Furthermore, the author makes a systematic inquiry into select trials to shed light on a highly complex - and at times contradictory - legal and jurisprudential legacy of Allied war crimes prosecutions.
From July to September 1916, some 23,000 Australians were killed or wounded in the Battle of Pozieres. It was the first strategically important engagement by Australian soldiers on the Western Front and its casualties exceeded those of any other battle of the First World War, including Gallipoli. In this important book, Christopher Wray explores the influence of Pozieres on Australian society and history, and how it is remembered today. In the opening chapters he revisits the battle and considers its aftermath, including shell shock and the psychological effects experienced by surviving soldiers. The concluding chapters examine the way in which the battle has been commemorated in literature and art, and the extent to which it has been overlooked in contemporary remembrance of the war. Generously illustrated with photographs, maps and paintings, Pozieres: Echoes of a Distant Battle is essential reading for anyone interested in the First World War and Australia's post-war society.
This book explores the historical and archaeological evidence of the relationships between a coastal community and the shipwrecks that have occurred along the southern Australian shoreline over the last 160 years. It moves beyond a focus on shipwrecks as events and shows the short and long term economic, social and symbolic significance of wrecks and strandings to the people on the shoreline. This volume draws on extensive oral histories, documentary and archaeological research to examine the tensions within the community, negotiating its way between its roles as shipwreck saviours and salvors.
In 1867, Prince Alfred, Queen Victoria's second son, commissioned the Galatea for a voyage around the world which would include the first royal visit to Australia. Stopping along the way in Rio de Janeiro and Cape Town, Alfred was received with great ceremony at each port of call. These visits provided the ship's chaplain John Milner (1822 97) and the artist Oswald Brierly (1817 94) with ample material for this chronicle, published in 1869, which gives background details of each region alongside scenes from the tour, enhanced by illustrations based on Brierly's sketches. The authors drew on various recollections and writings, including a letter from Alfred to his brother describing an elephant hunt in South Africa. The tour was abruptly curtailed in Sydney when a Fenian sympathiser attempted to assassinate the prince, an act which boosted support for the British royal family."
Colonial Voices explores the role of language in the greater 'civilising' project of the British Empire through the dissemination and reception of, and challenge to, British English in Australia during the period from the 1840s to the 1940s. This was a period in which the art of oratory, eloquence and elocution was of great importance in the empire and Joy Damousi offers an innovative study of the relationship between language and empire. She shows the ways in which this relationship moved from dependency to independence and how, during that transition, definitions of the meaning and place of oratory, eloquence and elocution shifted. Her findings reveal the central role of voice and pronunciation in informing and defining both individual and collective identity, as well as wider cultural views of class, race, nation and gender. The result is a pioneering contribution to cultural history and the history of English within the British Empire.
By the time of the Armistice, Villers-Bretonneux - once a lively and flourishing French town - had been largely destroyed, and half its population had fled or died. From March to August 1918, Villers-Bretonneux formed part of an active front line, at which Australian troops were heavily involved. As a result, it holds a significant place in Australian history. Villers-Bretonneux has since become an open-air memorial to Australia's participation in the First World War. Successive Australian governments have valourised the Australian engagement, contributing to an evolving Anzac narrative that has become entrenched in Australia's national identity. Our Corner of the Somme provides an eye-opening analysis of the memorialisation of Australia's role on the Western Front and the Anzac mythology that so heavily contributes to Australians' understanding of themselves. In this rigorous and richly detailed study, Romain Fathi challenges accepted historiography by examining the assembly, projection and performance of Australia's national identity in northern France.
George Anson Byron (1789-1868), cousin of the famous poet, was a naval officer and the seventh Baron Byron. When the king and queen of Hawaii died of measles in July 1824 on a visit to England, Byron was chosen to lead the voyage that returned the bodies to their native land. Prepared by Maria Graham (1785-1842), known later as Lady Callcott, this work was published in 1826 and organised into two parts: the first gives a brief history of the islands, culminating in an account of the fatal visit; the second and larger part is compiled from the journals of those on board HMS Blonde. Engravings made from the drawings of the ship's artist, Robert Dampier, complement observations about the geography of Hawaii, its people and their customs. The remarkable journey home involved the first European sighting of Malden Island and the rescue of survivors from a shipwreck.
Originally published in 1964, this book presents a study of domestic capital formation in Australia from 1860 to 1900, a period of vigorous economic expansion. The text is divided into four main parts: the first discusses the conditions of Australian economic growth; the second is a historical analysis of private investment; the third studies investment in communications in relation to the public sector; the fourth investigates structural readjustment in the light of the end of expansion. Illustrative figures and numerous tables are also included. This book will be of value to anyone with an interest in Australian history and the development of the Australian economy. |
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