History has portrayed Australia’s First Peoples, the Aboriginals, as hunter-gatherers who lived on an empty, uncultivated land. History is wrong.

In this seminal book, Bruce Pascoe uncovers evidence that long before the arrival of white men, Aboriginal people across the continent were building dams and wells; planting, irrigating, and harvesting seeds, and then preserving the surplus and storing it in houses, sheds, or secure vessels; and creating elaborate cemeteries and manipulating the landscape. All of these behaviours were inconsistent with the hunter-gatherer tag, which turns out to have been a convenient lie that worked to justify dispossession.

Using compelling evidence from the records and diaries of early Australian explorers and colonists, he reveals that Aboriginal systems of food production and land management have been blatantly understated in modern retellings of early Aboriginal history, and that a new look at Australia’s past is required ― for the benefit of us all.

Dark Emu, a bestseller in Australia, won both the Book of the Year Award and the Indigenous Writer’s Prize in the New South Wales Premier’s Literary Awards.

Eminent biologist Sir Baldwin Spencer (1860 1929) was born in Lancashire but moved to Australia to take up the chair in biology at the University of Melbourne in 1887. As a member of the 1894 Horn Scientific Expedition to Central Australia, Spencer made the acquaintance of F. J. Gillen, an advocate of Aboriginal rights, with whom he later formed a working partnership. Spencer and Gillen returned to Alice Springs in Central Australia in 1896 1897, to carry out observations on the local Aboriginal tribe, the Arunta. These observations were published in 1899, in The Native Tribes of Central Australia (also reissued in this series), which represented the most comprehensive study of Aboriginal customs and habits. Gillen and Spencer continued to undertake fieldwork until 1903. Volume 1 of Across Australia (published in two volumes in 1912) describes the region's topography, and the customs and beliefs of the Arunta.

Eminent biologist Sir Baldwin Spencer (1860 1929) was born in Lancashire but moved to Australia to take up the chair in biology at the University of Melbourne in 1887. As a member of the 1894 Horn Scientific Expedition to Central Australia, Spencer made the acquaintance of F. J. Gillen, an advocate of Aboriginal rights, with whom he later formed a working partnership. Spencer and Gillen returned to Alice Springs in Central Australia in 1896 1897, to carry out observations on the local Aboriginal tribe, the Arunta. These observations were published in 1899, in The Native Tribes of Central Australia (also reissued in this series), which represented the most comprehensive study of Aboriginal customs. Gillen and Spencer continued to undertake fieldwork until 1903. Volume 2 of Across Australia (published in two volumes in 1912) describes Aboriginal tribes of the present-day Northern Territory, between Alice Springs and the Gulf of Carpentaria.

Reverend Richard Taylor (1805 1873) was an English missionary, who wrote extensively on Maori culture and the plant and animal life of New Zealand. Taylor graduated from Queens' College, Cambridge in 1828 and was ordained as an Anglican priest the same year. After serving as a curate in the Isle of Ely, Taylor was appointed as a missionary to New Zealand for the Church Missionary Society. He arrived in Australia in 1836 and landed in New Zealand in 1839. Taylor quickly became a peacekeeper between the different Maori tribes in his district. This volume, first published in 1855, provides a detailed account of Maori mythology and culture with a description of the plant life, animal life and geology of the North Island. Taylor strongly condemns contemporary (nineteenth-century) attitudes to Maori culture and demonstrates the complexity of their society in this sympathetic book.

In the early nineteenth century, Australia remained largely uncharted, and doubt prevailed as to its unity as a continent. The 1801 expedition led by English mariner and cartographer Matthew Flinders (1774-1814), on board the Investigator, was groundbreaking in this respect. Flinders' charting of the Australian coastline provided the first complete map outlining the continent, and his influence was decisive in changing its name from Terra Australis to Australia - a term 'more agreeable to the ear'. Structured around daily geographical and astronomical observations, Flinders' journals are remarkable for their humanity and their sense of humour. Started in 1801, they continue to include Flinders' imprisonment by the French in the island of Mauritius between 1803 and 1810. They were first published in 1814, the day before Flinders' death. Volume 1 spans the first two years of the expedition and focuses on the discoveries made along the south coast of the continent.

In the early nineteenth century, Australia remained largely uncharted, and doubt prevailed as to its unity as a continent. The 1801 expedition led by English mariner and cartographer Matthew Flinders (1774-1814), was groundbreaking in this respect. Flinders' charting of the Australian coastline provided the first complete map outlining the continent, and his influence was decisive in changing its name from Terra Australis to Australia - a term 'more agreeable to the ear'. Structured around daily geographical and astronomical observations, Flinders' journals - published in 1814, the day before his death - are remarkable for their humanity and sense of humour. Started in 1801, they continue to include Flinders' imprisonment by the French in the island of Mauritius between 1803 and 1810. The second volume tells of the discoveries made along the east and north coasts of the continent, and includes an account of Flinders' captivity. An appendix details botanical discoveries.

George Augustus Selwyn (1809 1878) was the first Anglican Bishop of New Zealand, with Selwyn College, Cambridge later named in his honour. New Zealand was declared an independent British colony in 1841 and the Diocese of New Zealand was established in the same year. After graduating from St. John's College, Cambridge in 1831, Selwyn had been ordained priest in 1834 and consecrated as the first Bishop of New Zealand in 1841. This volume, first published in 1844, contains a series of journals and letters written by Selwyn during his first two years in New Zealand. He provides an intimate and detailed description of the organisation and society of the new colony and the growth of new settlements including Auckland and Wellington. He also describes the landscape and lives of the Maori in remote areas mostly untouched by colonisation, providing a fascinating account of the early history of colonial New Zealand.

Suburban Empire takes readers to the US missile base at Kwajalein Atoll in the Marshall Islands, at the matrix of postwar US imperial expansion, the Cold War nuclear arms race, and the tide of anti-colonial struggles rippling across the world. Hirshberg shows that the displacement of indigenous Marshallese within Kwajalein Atoll mirrors the segregation and spatial politics of the mainland US as local and global iterations of US empire took hold. Tracing how Marshall Islanders navigated US military control over their lands, Suburban Empire reveals that Cold War-era suburbanization was perfectly congruent with US colonization, military testing, and nuclear fallout. The structures of suburban segregation cloaked the destructive history of control and militarism under a veil of small-town innocence.

This book was first published in 1992. Aboriginal people in Australia's Gulf Country had been dealing with Whites for more than one hundred years. Whitefella Comin' depicts life at Doomadgee, an Aboriginal settlement administered by Brethren missionaries from the early 1930s until 1983. Dr Trigger's portrayal of life at Doomadgee was the first to be published by an anthropologist about such a settlement in Queensland. Through detailed historical and ethnographic study, the author seeks understanding of Aboriginal responses to the intrusions of Australian society. He examines coercion and violence on the frontier, the incorporation of Aboriginal people into the pastoral industry and their reactions to both the authoritarianism and benevolent paternalism of Christian missionaries. The influence of government policies and administrative practices is examined throughout the book. In addressing the structures and processes of power relations between Aborigines and Whites, the author develops an analysis of resistance and accommodation on the part of Aboriginal people.

This richly illustrated book is a detailed history of a uniquely Australasian institution, the stock and station agency. The stock and station agent was a respected and influential figure, coordinating farmers and connecting them to the outside world of banks, wool buyers and government agencies in Australasia and overseas, whose impact on export-led growth cannot be underestimated. Simon Ville examines the ways in which stock and station agents grew from their beginnings in the 1840s as pastoral finance companies to offer a wide range of support services to remote and inexperienced farming communities. In the twentieth century, the leading agents expanded their range of activities and became some of Australasia's earliest nationwide firms and biggest businesses. The Rural Entrepreneurs provides essential insights into understanding Australasia's rural history and economic development up until the end of the twentieth century.

Published to mark the centenary of Federation, this important book explores Australia's national origins in a comprehensive and accessible way. A high-calibre team of writers has been gathered to write the first ever comprehensive, general history of Federation. Starting from the perspective of the individual colonies as they made their way towards membership of the Australian Commonwealth in 1901, the book also provides cross-referenced short alphabetical entries covering key events, people and concepts. It approaches Federation not simply as a formal political story, but as a social and cultural process, maintaining the relevance of nation-making by highlighting ongoing debates about democracy, sovereignty and progressive citizenry. A major contribution to the Centenary of Federation, this book should become a standard reference for scholars, students and general readers in the continuing discussions of Australia's future as a nation.

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.

Fighting The Enemy, first published in 2000, is about men with the job of killing each other. Based on the wartime writings of hundreds of Australian front-line soldiers during World War II, this powerful and resonant book contains many moving descriptions of high emotion and drama. Soldiers' interactions with their enemies are central to war and their attitudes to their adversaries are crucial to the way wars are fought. Yet few books look in detail at how enemies interpret each other. This book is an unprecedented and thorough examination of the way Australian combat soldiers interacted with troops from the four powers engaged in World War II: Germany, Italy, Vichy France and Japan. Each opponent has themes peculiar to it: the Italians were much ridiculed; the Germans were the most respected of enemies; the Vichy French were regarded with ambivalence; while the Japanese were the subject of much hostility, intensified by the real threat of occupation.

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.

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.

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.

This book provides a social, cultural, and political history of migration, ethnicity, and madness in New Zealand between 1860 and 1910. Its key aim is to analyse the ways that patients, families, asylum officials, and immigration authorities engaged with the ethnic backgrounds and migration histories and pathways of asylum patients and why. Exploring such issues enables us to appreciate the difficulties that some migrants experienced in their relocation abroad, hardships that are often elided in studies of migration that focus on successful migrant settlement. Drawing upon lunatic asylum records (including patient casebooks and committal forms), immigration files, surgeon superintendents reports, asylum inspector reports, medical journals, and legislation, the book highlights the importance of examining antecedent experiences, the migration process itself, and settlement in the new land as factors that contributed to admission to an asylum. The study also raises broader themes beyond the asylum of discrimination, exclusion, segregation, and marginalisation, issues that are as evident in society today as in the past.

Essays study the development of the Australian workers' movement in the age of Empire. Why did the Australian Labour Party win a role in government so quickly? How widespread was Australian racism? Did women's winning the vote give them more influence in society? Attempting to settle these contentious issues was crucial to establishing a meaningful national identity.

In this innovative book, Kirch and Green develop the theory and method of an anthropological approach to long-term history. Combining archaeology, comparative ethnography, and historical linguistics, they advance a phylogenetic model for cultural diversification, and apply a triangulation method for historical reconstruction. Through an analysis of the history of Polynesian cultures they present a first-time detailed reconstruction of Hawaiki, the Ancestral Polynesian culture that flourished some 2,500 years ago. This book will be essential reading for any anthropologist, prehistorian, linguist, or cultural historian concerned with the study of long-term history.

A Primer for Teaching Pacific Histories is a guide for college and high school teachers who are teaching Pacific histories for the first time or for experienced teachers who want to reinvigorate their courses. It can also serve those who are training future teachers to prepare their own syllabi, as well as teachers who want to incorporate Pacific histories into their world history courses. Matt K. Matsuda offers design principles for creating syllabi that will help students navigate a wide range of topics, from settler colonialism, national liberation, and warfare to tourism, popular culture, and identity. He also discusses practical pedagogical techniques and tips, project-based assignments, digital resources, and how Pacific approaches to teaching history differ from customary Western practices. Placing the Pacific Islands at the center of analysis, Matsuda draws readers into the process of strategically designing courses that will challenge students to think critically about the interconnected histories of East Asia, Southeast Asia, Australia, the Pacific Islands, and the Americas within a global framework.

This book challenges traditional perceptions of Australian Aboriginal prehistory: that environment is the major determinant of hunter-gatherers; that Aborigines were egalitarian and culturally homogeneous; that they experienced few economic and demographic changes. Lourandos argues that their social and economic processes were complex and that the prehistory period was dynamic. Lourandos considers colonization, Tasmanian Aborigines, the role of fire, the intensification debate, plant exploitation and other prehistoric hunter-gatherer societies.

Convict Maids looks at female convicts transported from Britain and Ireland to New South Wales between 1826 and 1840. Deborah Oxley refutes the notion that these women were prostitutes and criminals, arguing that in fact they helped put the colony on its feet. Analyzing their backgrounds, Oxley finds that they were skilled, literate, young and healthy--qualities exploited by the new colony. Convict Maids draws on historical, economic and feminist theory, and is impressive for its extensive and original research.

Knowing Women is a comprehensive study of female education in nineteenth-century Australia, placed in international perspective. It covers a wide range of topics, including the evolution of the teaching profession; the private ladies' academies and their proprietors; the entry of women to the universities and the professions; the establishment of academic secondary schools, both Church and state; girls' experience of compulsory state elementary schooling; and the schooling of outcast girls. The study is rich in narrative and biographical interest, based, where possible, on the experiences of individual girls and women. Knowing Women explores the ambiguities of its material, showing how education could both open and restrict opportunities for women. The author's perspective allows her to contribute to current historical debates on women, culture, education, sexuality and the state.

First published in 1996, Australia's China explores the multifaceted and dynamic Australian encounter with China from the beginning of the Sino-Japanese War in 1937 through the Cold War to the Australian recognition of the PRC in 1972. Going beyond conventional policy studies, it traces the patterns in Australian reactions to China from the grass-roots to official circles, highlighting the centrality of images concerning the exotic, disease, sexuality, the frontier, and China as a paradise/anti-paradise. In responding to China, Australians revealed something of themselves, and this book maps the formation of Australian conceptions of identity in the context of a cross-cultural encounter which was variously cooperative, enriching, baffling, and antagonistic. But there was no single Australian conception of China. Rather, competing perceptions jostled in a shifting dialogue.