The mounted soldier is one of the most evocative symbols in Australian military history. Now a celebrated part of Australia's army heritage, the role and very existence of mounted troops in modern warfare was being called into question at the time of its most crowning military moments. Light horse regiments, particularly those that served in South Africa, Palestine and the trenches of Gallipoli, played a vital role in Australia's early military campaigns. Based on extensive research from both Australia and Britain, this book is a comprehensive history of the Australian Light Horse in war and peace. Historian Jean Bou examines the place of the light horse in Australia's military history throughout its existence, from its antecedents in the middle of the nineteenth century, until the last regiment was disbanded in 1944.

That Indonesia's ongoing occupation of West Papua continues to be largely ignored by world governments is one of the great moral and political failures of our time. West Papuans have struggled for more than fifty years to find a way through the long night of Indonesian colonization. However, united in their pursuit of merdeka (freedom) in its many forms, what holds West Papuans together is greater than what divides them. Today, the Morning Star glimmers on the horizon, the supreme symbol of merdeka and a cherished sign of hope for the imminent arrival of peace and justice to West Papua. Morning Star Rising: The Politics of Decolonization in West Papua is an ethnographically framed account of the long, bitter fight for freedom that challenges the dominant international narrative that West Papuans' quest for political independence is fractured and futile. Camellia Webb-Gannon's extensive interviews with the decolonization movements' original architects and its more recent champions shed light on complex diasporic and inter-generational politics as well as social and cultural resurgence. In foregrounding West Papuans' perspectives, the author shows that it is the body politic's unflagging determination and hope, rather than military might or influential allies, that form the movement's most unifying and powerful force for independence. This book examines the many intertwining strands of decolonization in Melanesia. Differences in cultural performance and political diversity throughout the region are generating new, fruitful trajectories. Simultaneously, Black and Indigenous solidarity and a shared Melanesian identity have forged a transnational grassroots power-base from which the movement is gaining momentum. Relevant beyond its West Papua focus, this book is essential reading for those interested in Pacific studies, Native and Indigenous studies, development studies, activism, and decolonization.

Discovering Monaro, a fascinating local history of an Australian region, is at the same time a contribution to the current debate on the environment and man's manipulation of it. Sir Keith Hancock examines critically the indictment, heralded by Plato in the Critias, that man is a creature who spoils his environment and in so doing spoils himself. He discovers in Monaro, as he did on the terraced hillsides of Tuscany forty years ago, a rhythm of spoiling, restoring and improving. Monaco, a region of nearly 6,000 square miles in Australia's south-eastern corner, is the main provider of water to the earth's driest continent. Sir Keith provides a detailed history of the land use of the area from palaeolithic times to the present day, thus explaining how boo generations of 'black' Australians and six generations of 'white' Australians have supported themselves on its grassy uplands and alpine water-sheds.

Following Mark Johnston"s acclaimed illustrated histories of the 7th and 9th Australian Divisions, this is his long-awaited history of the 6th Australian Division: the first such history ever published. The 6th was a household name during World War II. It was the first division raised in the Second Australian Imperial Force, the first division to go overseas and the first to fight. Its success in that fight, in Libya in 1941, indicated that the standard established in the Great War would be continued. General Blamey and nearly every other officer who became wartime army, corps and divisional commanders were once members of the 6th Division. Through photographs and an authoritative text, this book tells their story and the story of the proud, independent and tough troops they commanded.

Not many detailed accounts have been written about the foundation of a colony, and none is more likely to be instructive than that of the foundation of Canterbury, New Zealand. This settlement is outstanding in imperial history because it came as the climax of twenty years of colonial reform, and because the settlers were carefully selected: it is thus important as the most successful example of systematic colonisation in English imperial history. The man who inspired and planned and led and established Canterbury, New Zealand, was John Robert Godley, a close friend of Gladstone, who also gave his powerful aid to the scheme. Apart from the foundation of Canterbury, Godley was an eminent Victorian who wrestled with the Irish problem and took part in the reform of the War Office after the Crimean War.

First there was Girt. Now comes ...True Girt In this side-splitting sequel to his best-selling history, David Hunt takes us to the Australian frontier. This was the Wild South, home to hardy pioneers, gun-slinging bushrangers, directionally challenged explorers, nervous indigenous people, Caroline Chisholm and sheep. Lots of sheep. True Girt introduces Thomas Davey, the hard-drinking Tasmanian governor who invented the Blow My Skull cocktail, and Captain Moonlite, Australia's most famous LGBTI bushranger. Meet William Nicholson, the Melbourne hipster who gave Australia the steam-powered coffee roaster and the world the secret ballot. And say hello to Harry, the first camel used in Australian exploration, who shot dead his owner, the explorer John Horrocks. Learn how Truganini's death inspired the Martian invasion of Earth. Discover the role of Hall and Oates in the Myall Creek Massacre. And be reminded why you should never ever smoke with the Wild Colonial Boy and Mad Dan Morgan. If Manning Clark and Bill Bryson were left on a desert island with only one pen, they would write True Girt.

This is the first major collaborative reappraisal of Australia's experience of empire since the end of the British Empire itself.
The volume examines the meaning and importance of empire in Australia across a broad spectrum of historical issues-ranging from the disinheritance of the Aborigines to the foundations of a new democratic state. The overriding theme is the distinctive Australian perspective on empire. The country's adherence to imperial ideals and aspirations involved not merely the building of a 'new Britannia' but also the forging of a distinctive new culture and society. It was Australian interests and aspirations which ultimately shaped "Australia's Empire."
While modern Australians have often played down the significance of their British imperial past, the contributors to this book argue that the legacies of empire continue to influence the temper and texture of Australian society today.

A Military History of Australia provides a detailed chronological narrative of Australia's wars across more than two hundred years, set in the contexts of defence and strategic policy, the development of society and the impact of war and military service on Australia and Australians. It discusses the development of the armed forces as institutions and examines the relationship between governments and military policy. This book is a revised and updated edition of one of the most acclaimed overviews of Australian military history available. It is the only comprehensive, single-volume treatment of the role and development of Australia's military and their involvement in war and peace across the span of Australia's modern history. It concludes with consideration of Australian involvement in its region and more widely since the terrorist attacks of September 11 and the waging of the global war on terror.

A History of Queensland is the first single volume analysis of Queensland??'s past, stretching from the time of earliest human habitation up to the present. It encompasses pre-contact Aboriginal history, the years of convictism, free settlement and subsequent urban and rural growth. It takes the reader through the tumultuous frontier and Federation years, the World Wars, the Cold War, the controversial Bjelke-Petersen era and on, beyond the beginning of the new millennium. It reveals Queensland as a sprawling, harsh, diverse and conflictual place, where the struggles of race, ethnicity, class, generation and gender have been particularly pronounced, and political and environmental encounters have remained intense. It is a colourful, surprising and at times disturbing saga, a perplexing and diverting mixture of ferocity, endurance and optimism.

A History of Queensland is the first single volume analysis of Queensland's past, stretching from the time of earliest human habitation up to the present. It encompasses pre-contact Aboriginal history, the years of convictism, free settlement and subsequent urban and rural growth. It takes the reader through the tumultuous frontier and Federation years, the World Wars, the Cold War, the controversial Bjelke-Petersen era and on, beyond the beginning of the new millennium. It reveals Queensland as a sprawling, harsh, diverse and conflictual place, where the struggles of race, ethnicity, class, generation and gender have been particularly pronounced, and political and environmental encounters have remained intense. It is a colourful, surprising and at times disturbing saga, a perplexing and diverting mixture of ferocity, endurance and optimism.

The Japanese captured 1500 Australian civilians during World War II. They spent the war interned in harsh, prison-like camps throughout the Asia-Pacific region. Civilian internees - though not members of the armed forces - endured hardship, privation and even death at the hands of the enemy. This book, first published in 2007, tells the stories of Australian civilians interned by the Japanese in World War II. By recreating the daily lives and dramas within internment camps, it explores how captivity posed different dilemmas for men, women and children. It is the first general history of Australian citizens interned by the Japanese in World War II.

It seems that not even world war could stop crime in Sydney. In fact, World War Noir confirms that war and crime - in the form of sex, drugs, alcohol, racketeering and other illicit activities - go hand in hand. A companion book to the later glory days of the Sydney underworld from Sydney Noir, here Michael Duffy and Nick Hordern tell the story of a time when many Australians were not as patriotic as we have been told. With soldiers' pockets full of cash and the freedom of being on leave, criminal possibilities opened up during World War II. Told from the ground - or the gutter - up, World War Noir is a raw and broad-ranging tale that confounds expectations and reveals a grittier truth. Sales Points Vividly describes the leading characters of the Sydney underworld during World War II including corrupt cops, prostitutes, gunmen, sly grog traders and bookmakers Provides an alternative history of Sydney during World War II, depicting a city far less patriotic, and far more hell bent on pleasure, than we have been led to believe Taps into the popular non-fiction crime genre Written in the same bold, engaging style as their successful book Sydney Noir Duffy and Hordern are experienced journalists known for their interest in Sydney's crime history A new way of thinking about war on the homefront, especially around Anzac Day Duffy and Hordern created and run the Sydney Crime Museum website and its associated Facebook page. [Duffy is about to start posting on the blog and FB again]

State and private employers in New South Wales recognised the convicts' previous occupations, and employed a large proportion of them in the same occupations they had held at home. The women convicts - often classified as prostitutes - in fact brought a range of occupational skills equally as important for the economic development of Australia as those of the male convicts. Once settled in Australia, the convicts consumed a diet, and experienced housing, superior to that received by free men and women at home. The organisation of their work was not very different from that in Britain and Ireland and, while cruel treatment did exist, the likelihood of numerous floggings during their term of sentence is shown to be a myth. Convict workers is a study in comparative history, noting the resemblances and the contrasts with indentured labour, slavery and punitive communities elsewhere. By illuminating the contribution of the convict workers to Australia's economic and social development.

In Colonizing Madness Jacqueline Leckie tells a forgotten story of silence, suffering, and transgressions in the colonial Pacific. It offers new insights into a history of Fiji by entering the Pacific Islands' most enduring psychiatric institution-St Giles Psychiatric Hospital-established as Fiji's Public Lunatic Asylum in 1884. Her nuanced study reveals a microcosm of Fiji's indigenous, migrant, and colonial communities and examines how individuals and communities lived with the label of madness in an ethnically complex island society. Tracking longitudinal change from the 1880s to the present in the construction and treatment of mental disorder in Fiji, the book emphasizes the colonization of madness across and within the divides of culture, ethnicity, religion, gender, economics, and power. Colonization of madness in Fiji was forged by the entanglement of colonial institutions and cultures that reflected tensions and prejudices within homes, villages, workplaces, and churches. Mental despair was equally an outcome of the destruction and displacement wrought by migration and colonialism. Madness was further cast within the wider world of colonial psychiatry, Western biomedicine, and asylum building. One of the chapters explores medical discourse and diagnoses within colonial worlds and practices. The "community within" the asylum is a feature in Leckie's study, with attention to patient agency to show how those labeled insane resisted diagnoses of their minds, confinement, and constraints-ranging from straitjackets to electric shock treatments to drug therapies. She argues that madness in colonial Fiji reflects dynamics between the asylum and the community, and that "reading" asylum archives sheds new light on race/ethnicity, gender, and power in colonial Fiji. Exploring the meaning of madness in Fiji, the author does not shy away from asking controversial questions about how Pacific cultures define normality and abnormality and also how communities respond. Carefully researched and clearly written, Colonizing Madness offers an engaging narrative, a superb example of an intersectional history with a broad appeal to understanding global developments in mental health. Her theses address the contradictions of current efforts to discard the asylum model and to make mental health a reality for all in postcolonial societies.

Falkland Islanders were the first British people to come under enemy occupation since the Channel Islanders during the Second World War. This book tells how islanders' warnings were ignored in London, how their slim defences gave way to a massive invasion, and how they survived occupation. While some established a cautiously pragmatic modus vivendi with the occupiers, some Islanders opted for active resistance. Others joined advancing British troops, transporting ammunition and leading men to the battlefields. Islanders' leaders and 'trouble makers' faced internal exile, and whole settlements were imprisoned, becoming virtual hostages. A new chapter about Falklands history since 1982 reveals that while the Falklands have benefited greatly from Britain's ongoing commitment to them, a cold war continues in the south Atlantic. To the annoyance of the Argentines, the islands have prospered, and may now be poised on the brink of an oil bonanza.

In this engaging tale of movement from one hemisphere to another, we see doctors at work attending to their often odious and demanding duties at sea, in quarantine, and after arrival. The book shows, in graphic detail, just why a few notorious voyages suffered tragic loss of life in the absence of competent supervision. Its emphasis, however, is on demonstrating the extent to which the professionalism of the majority of surgeon superintendents, even on ships where childhood epidemics raged, led to the extraordinary saving of life on the Australian route in the Victorian era.

The Gallipoli expedition was the bold and audacious plan of Winston Churchill, amongst others, to force the Dardanelles narrows, by sea and by land, to capture Constantinople from the Turks and to open the Black Sea to ships taking supplies and arms for the Russians on their immense German front. The campaign failed with catastrophic loss of life on all sides, but again and again, unbeknown to the Allies, they came close to achieving a goal that might have led to victory overall. This book, first published in 1956, is still regarded as the best and definitive account of the campaign. It won the Sunday Times Best Book of the Year Award as well as the inaugural Duff Cooper prize when the winner could choose who would present the award. Appropriately enough, Moorehead chose Churchill to make the presentation because the book demonstrated that the faults were not in the conception of the plan. Indeed, long after Churchill had resigned in disgrace, a new fleet was being assembled to again attempt to force the Dardanelles in 1919, which was cancelled when the war ceased and the Armistice was signed. Seen in the new light that Moorehead revealed, the Gallipoli campaign was no longer regarded as a blunder or a reckless gamble; it was the most imaginative conception of the war, and its potentialities were almost beyond reckoning. Certainly in its strictly military aspect its influence was enormous. It was the greatest amphibious operation which mankind had known up till then, and it took place in circumstances in which nearly everything was experimental: in the use of submarines and aircraft, in the trial of modern naval guns against artillery on the shore, in the manoeuvre of landing armies in small boats on a hostile coast, in the use of radio, or the aerial bomb, the landmine, and many other novel devices. These things lead on through Dunkirk and the Mediterranean landings to the invasion of Normandy in the Second World War. In 1940 there was very little the Allied commanders could learn from the long struggle against the Kaiser's armies in the trenches in France. But Gallipoli was a mine of information about the complexities of the modern war of manoeuvre, of the combined operation by land and sea and sky; and the correction of the errors made then was the basis of the victory of 1945. "the story of one of the great military tragedies of the twentieth century, which no writer has described better than Alan Moorehead." Sir Max Hastings.