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.

The Battle for Wau brings together for the first time the full story of the early World War II conflicts in New Guinea, from the landing of the Japanese at Salamaua in March 1942 to their defeat at Wau in February 1943. Phillip Bradley draws on the recollections of over 70 veterans from the campaign and on his own first-hand knowledge of the region. Beginning with the early commando operations in Salamaua, the story unfolds with the burning of Wau, the clashes around Mubo, the Japanese convoy to Lae and the United States air operation to Wau. The book climaxes with the fortitude of Captain Sherlock's outnumbered company. Desperately fighting an enemy regiment debouching from the rugged unguarded ranges to the east, Sherlock's men fought to hold Wau airfield open for the arrival of vital reinforcements.

In 1787, the twenty-eighth year of the reign of King George III, the British Government sent a fleet to colonize Australia…

An epic description of the brutal transportation of men, women and children out of Georgian Britain into a horrific penal system which was to be the precursor to the Gulag and was the origin of Australia. The Fatal Shore is the prize-winning, scholarly, brilliantly entertaining narrative that has given its true history to Australia.

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.

No matter how practised we are at history, it always humbles us. No matter how often we visit the past, it always surprises us. The art of time travel is to maintain critical poise and grace in this dizzy space.' In this landmark book, eminent historian and award-winning author Tom Griffiths explores the craft of discipline and imagination that is history. Through portraits of fourteen historians, including Inga Clendinnen, Judith Wright, Geoffrey Blainey and Henry Reynolds, Griffiths traces how a body of work is formed out of a lifelong dialogue between past evidence and present experience. With meticulous research and glowing prose, he shows how our understanding of the past has evolved, and what this changing history reveals about us. Passionate and elegant, The Art of Time Travel conjures fresh insights into the history of Australia and renews our sense of the historian's craft.

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.

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.

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.