There has been little written about Tenison Woods who as a significant figure in Australian Catholic Church life at the time of St Mary Mackillop, Australia's first Catholic Saint. This is a story about the work of the Sisters of St Joseph, an Australian Catholic Religious Order of women, founded by St Mary Mackillop, in Tasmania. An intriguing story of a group of women who were not part of the Centralised Josephite Sisters under Mary Mackillop, who for a variety of reasons were under the diocesan Catholic Bishop in Tasmania. The books documents their 125 year history from foundation right through to Vatican approval of the being brought under the Federation of Josephite Sisters in Australia.

Shortlised for the Saltire Society Non Fiction Book of the Year Award Almost every adult and child is familiar with his Treasure Island, but few know that Robert Louis Stevenson lived out his last years on an equally remote island, which was squabbled over by colonial powers much as Captain Flint's treasure was contested by the mongrel crew of the Hispaniola. In 1890 Stevenson settled in Upolu, an island in Samoa, after two years sailing round the South Pacific. He was given a Samoan name and became a fierce critic of the interference of Germany, Britain and the U.S.A. in Samoan affairs - a stance that earned him Oscar Wilde's sneers, and brought him into conflict with the Colonial Office, who regarded him as a menace and even threatened him with expulsion from the island. Joseph Farrell's pioneering study of Stevenson's twilight years stands apart from previous biographies by giving as much weight to the Samoa and the Samoans - their culture, their manners, their history - as to the life and work of the man himself. For it is only by examining the full complexity of Samoa and the political situation it faced as the nineteenth century gave way to the twentieth, that Stevenson's lasting and generous contribution to its cause can be appreciated.

The Good Neighbour explores the Australian government's efforts to support peace in the Pacific Islands from 1980 to 2006. It tells the story of the deployment of Australian diplomatic, military and policing resources at a time when neighbouring governments were under pressure from political violence and civil unrest. The main focus of this volume is Australian peacemaking and peacekeeping in response to the Bougainville Crisis, a secessionist rebellion that began in late 1988 with the sabotage of a major mining operation. Following a signed peace agreement in 2001, the crisis finally ended in December 2005, under the auspices of the United Nations. During this time Australia's involvement shifted from behind-the-scenes peacemaking, to armed peacekeeping intervention, and finally to a longer-term unarmed regional peacekeeping operation. Granted full access to all relevant government files, Bob Breen recounts the Australian story from decisions made in Canberra to the planning and conduct of operations.

A renowned biographer compares the lives and times of American outlaw Billy the Kid and his Australian counterpart Ned Kelly The oft-told exploits of Billy the Kid and Ned Kelly survive vividly in the public imaginations of their respective countries, the United States and Australia. But the outlaws' reputations are so weighted with legend and myth, the truth of their lives has become obscure. In this adventure-filled double biography, Robert M. Utley reveals the true stories and parallel courses of the two notorious contemporaries who lived by the gun, were executed while still in their twenties, and remain compelling figures in the folklore of their homelands. Robert M. Utley draws sharp, insightful portraits of first Billy, then Ned, and compares their lives and legacies. He recounts the adventurous exploits of Billy, a fun-loving, expert sharpshooter who excelled at escape and lived on the run after indictment for his role in the Lincoln Country War. Bush-raised Ned, the son of an Irish convict father and Irish mother, was a man whose outrage against British colonial authority inspired him to steal cattle and sheep, kill three policemen, and rob banks for the benefit of impoverished Irish sympathizers. Utley recounts the exploits of the notorious young men with accuracy and appeal. He discovers their profound differences, despite their shared fates, and illuminates the worlds in which they lived on opposite sides of the globe.

A British colony of fifty souls in the Pacific Ocean, Pitcairn Island was settled by the Bounty mutineers and nineteen Polynesians in 1790. In 2004 six Pitcairn men were convicted of numerous offenses against girls and young women, committed over a thirty year period, in what appears to have been a culture of sexual abuse on the island.
This case has raised many questions: what right did the British government have to initiate these prosecutions? Was it fair to prosecute the defendants, given that no laws had been published on the island? Indeed, what, if any, law was there on this island? This collection of essays explores the many important issues raised by the case and by the situation of a small, isolated community of this kind.
It starts by looking at the background to the prosecutions, considering the dilemma that faced the British government when the abuse was uncovered, and discussing the ways in which the judges dealt with the case, as well as exploring the history of the settlement and how colonial law affects it.
This background paves the way for an exploration of the philosophical, jurisprudential and ethical issues raised by the prosecutions: was it legitimate for the UK to intervene, given the absence of any common community between the UK and the Island? Was the positivist 'law on paper' approach adopted by the British government and the courts was appropriate, especially given the lack of promulgation of the laws under which the men were prosecuted? Would alternative responses such as payment of compensation to the female victims and provision of community support have been preferable? And should universal human rights claims justify the prosecutions, overriding any allegations of cultural relativism on the part of the UK?

"Along the Archival Grain" offers a unique methodological and analytic opening to the affective registers of imperial governance and the political content of archival forms. In a series of nuanced mediations on the nature of colonial documents from the nineteenth-century Netherlands Indies, Ann Laura Stoler identifies the social epistemologies that guided perception and practice, revealing the problematic racial ontologies of that confused epistemic space.

Navigating familiar and extraordinary paths through the lettered lives of those who ruled, she seizes on moments when common sense failed and prevailing categories no longer seemed to work. She asks not what colonial agents knew, but what happened when what they thought they knew they found they did not. Rejecting the notion that archival labor be approached as an extractive enterprise, Stoler sets her sights on archival production as a consequential act of governance, as a field of force with violent effect, and not least as a vivid space to do ethnography.

The last book in a trilogy of explorations on space and time from a preeminent scholar, The Boundless Sea is Gary Y. Okihiro's most innovative yet. Whereas Okihiro's previous books, Island World and Pineapple Culture, sought to deconstruct islands and continents, tropical and temperate zones, this book interrogates the assumed divides between space and time, memoir and history, and the historian and the writing of history. Okihiro uses himself-from Okinawan roots, growing up on a sugar plantation in Hawai'i, researching in Botswana, and teaching in California-to reveal the historian's craft involving diverse methodologies and subject matters. Okihiro's imaginative narrative weaves back and forth through decades and across vast spatial and societal differences, theorized as historical formations, to critique history's conventions. Taking its title from a translation of the author's surname, The Boundless Sea is a deeply personal and reflective volume that challenges how we think about time and space, notions of history.

In January of 1788 the First Fleet arrived in New South Wales and a thousand British men and women encountered the people who will be their new neighbours; the beach nomads of Australia. "These people mixed with ours," wrote a British observer soon after the landfall, "and all hands danced together." What followed would determine relations between the peoples for the next two hundred years. Drawing skilfully on first-hand accounts and historical records, Inga Clendinnen reconstructs the complex dance of curiosity, attraction and mistrust performed by the protagonists of either side. She brings this key chapter in British colonial history brilliantly alive. Then we discover why the dancing stopped . . .

Diese Studie widmet sich der Entwicklung des modernen Sozial- und Interventionsstaates im Australien des 20. Jahrhunderts. Sie zeigt, dass der australische Sozialstaat unterschiedliche historische Einflusse amalgamiert. Die Steuerfinanzierung von Sozialleistungen, das Versicherungsprinzip und die Sozialsteuer konstituieren bis heute das interessante "Mischmodell" Australien. Sozialpolitik in ihrer australischen Definition beschrankte sich nie nur auf staatliche finanzielle Leistungen an die Burger. Die Loehne wurden bis in die jungste Vergangenheit im "Wohlfahrtsstaat des Lohnempfangers" von sogenannten "Schiedsgerichten" und "-kommissionen" festgesetzt. Dazu kam das System der Schutzzoelle, die australische Arbeitsplatze sichern und beim Aufbau einer nationalen Automobilindustrie helfen sollten, die sich am PKW-Modell "Holden" als dem (Status-)Symbol des sozialen Aufstiegs festmachen lasst.