The Australian Journal of Politics and History articles from September 2007

The Australian Journal of Politics and History archives from September 2007

Introduction.(Editorial)
September 1, 2007... "So much Australian history is written by intellectuals, so little is written about them." (1) Geoffrey Bolton's judgment, delivered in 1991, remains valid today although there have also been some significant achievements in the field of...

A possession for ever: Charles Bean, the ancient Greeks, and military commemoration in Australia.(Report)
September 1, 2007... Although this article started life as a paper at a conference on Australian intellectuals and war, I would hesitate to claim Charles Bean as an "intellectual", in the strict sense. (1) He would not have seen himself that way. He grew up in the...

"Unbounded Enthusiasm": (1) Australian Historians and the outbreak of the great war.(war enthusiasm)(World War I)(Report)
September 1, 2007... Introduction: the European Historiography Hew Strachan has recently suggested that "[t]he outbreak of the war has become one of the most unassailable divisions in the compartmentalisations of the past". (2) Indeed, delving into the origins...

Shaped on the anvil of Mars: Vance and Nettie Palmer and the Great War.(World War I)(Viewpoint essay)
September 1, 2007... Introduction The Great War was "a rigorous test for intellectuals" (1) that was especially severe for two young white Australian intellectuals--only twenty-nine years of age and just married; beginning to establish themselves as writers,...

Demonstrating the Melbourne University respirator.(lessons Australia learned from World War I)
September 1, 2007... At a Melbourne University physics exhibition on 26 October 1920, (1) Captain Arthur Lyle Rossiter gave a lecture on the topic of gas warfare, which included a demonstration of the Melbourne University Respirator, a gas mask developed at...

An Australian Empire patriot and the great war: professor sir Archibald T. Strong (1876-1930).(Report)
September 1, 2007... "[...] what makes the fundamental difference is that today [1915] for the first time in our history, we are fighting, not for our ideals alone, but for our very life." (1) There has been an undeniable trend among some Australian historians...

The devil and Kaiser Bill: Victor Kroemer and the world crisis of 1914-15.(William II, Emperor of Germany)(World War I)(Brief biography)(Viewpoint essay)
September 1, 2007... Almost a century after it began, historians still puzzle over the causes of the Great War; but by 1915 Victor Kroemer, the South Australian printer, journalist, socialist, clairvoyant and healer, thought he had the answer. For Kroemer, the war...

Australian medical intellectuals and the Great War.(World War I)(Brief biography)(Viewpoint essay)
September 1, 2007... The medical profession [...] knows no nations and no races. (1) "Modern Psychiatry", wrote the psychiatrist Reginald Ellery, "was born in the shell craters of Flanders". (2) Indeed, it is no exaggeration to attribute the emergence of a new...

John Treloar, official war art and the Australian War Memorial *.
September 1, 2007... "He was not a man I would put in charge of artists." The words are those of Nora Heysen, the Australian artist, and she was speaking about John Treloar, long-time Director of the Australian War Memorial. Heysen made the remark in 1989 in an...

Australian Dictionary of Biography: Supplement 1580-1980.(Book review)
September 1, 2007... Australian Dictionary of Biography: Supplement 1580-1980. Edited by Christopher Cuneen, Jill Roe, Beverley Kingston and Stephen Garton (Melbourne: Melbourne University Press, 2005), $74.95 hb. The first volume of the Australian Dictionary...

The Europeans in Australia: a History Volume Two: Democracy.(Book review)
September 1, 2007... The Europeans in Australia: A History Volume Two: Democracy. By Alan Atkinson (South Melbourne: Oxford University Press, 2004), pp xxiii + 440, index, illustrations. A$59.95 hb. "Among the ancient inhabitants of Australia are its ants" and...

Engines of Influence: Newspapers of Country Victoria, 1840-1890.(Book review)
September 1, 2007... Engines of Influence: Newspapers of Country Victoria, 1840-1890. By Elizabeth Morrison (Melbourne: Melbourne University Press, 2005), pp.xi + 366. Eight illustrations, six maps. $49.95. In writing about newspaper history for more than a...

Genocide and Settler Society: Frontier Violence and Stolen Indigenous Children in Australian History.(Book review)
September 1, 2007... Genocide and Settler Society: Frontier Violence and Stolen Indigenous Children in Australian History. Edited by A. Dirk Moses (New York and Oxford: Berghahn Books, 2004), A$42.95 pb. In a decade marked more by campaigning attempts at...

Mixed Relations: Asian-Aboriginal Contact in North Australia.(Book review)
September 1, 2007... Mixed Relations: Asian-Aboriginal Contact in North Australia. By Regina Ganter, with contributions by Julia Martinez and Gary Lee (Perth: University of Western Australia Press, 2006), ISBN 1 920694 41 2, pp. xv, 280, 2 maps, 76 illustrations....

Struggle Country: The Rural Ideal in Twentieth Century Australia.(Book review)
September 1, 2007... Struggle Country: The Rural Ideal in Twentieth Century Australia. Edited by Graeme Davison and Marc Brodie (Clayton, Victoria: Monash University E-Press, 2005), pp. xvi + 173. $34.95 pb. 1 feel it is ironic that the genesis and production...

My Dearest Brown Eyes: Letters Between Sir Donald Cleland and Dame Rachel Cleland during World War II.(Book review)
September 1, 2007... My Dearest Brown Eyes: Letters Between Sir Donald Cleland and Dame Rachel Cleland during World War II. Introduced and edited by Nancy Lutton (Canberra: Pandanus, 2006), xxvi + pp. 323, $34.95 pb. Although Donald and Rachel Cleland are best...

Dear Dr Janzow: Australia's Lutheran Churches and Refugees from Hitler's Germany.(Book review)
September 1, 2007... Dear Dr Janzow: Australia's Lutheran Churches and Refugees from Hitler's Germany. Edited by Peter Monteath (Adelaide: Australian Humanities Press, 2005), 116 pp., $30.00 pb. This publication was prepared to accompany an exhibition of...

An Historian's Life: Max Crawford and the Politics of Academic Freedom.(Book review)
September 1, 2007... An Historian's Life: Max Crawford and the Politics of Academic Freedom. By Fay Anderson (Melbourne: Melbourne University Press, 2005), pp xi + 398, $49.95 pb. Max Crawford's life had some intriguing transitions. Coming from radical...

B.A. Santamaria. Your Most Obedient Servant. Selected Letters: 1938-1996.(Book review)
September 1, 2007... B.A. Santamaria. Your Most Obedient Servant. Selected Letters: 1938-1996. Edited by Patrick Morgan (Melbourne: The Miegunyah Press in association with the State Library of Victoria, 2007), pp. 579 + xv, $49.95 hb. How do you want to read...

Australia's Own Cold War: The Waterfront Under Menzies.(Book review)
September 1, 2007... Australia's Own Cold War: The Waterfront Under Menzies, By Tom Sheridan (Carlton: Melbourne University Press, 2006), pp. 391, $49.95, pb. Australia's wharfies feature in both popular imagination and the national historiography as the...

Asian Alternatives: Australia's Vietnam Decision and Lessons on Going to War.(Book review)
September 1, 2007... Asian Alternatives: Australia's Vietnam Decision and Lessons on Going to War. By Garry Woodard (Melbourne: Melbourne University Press, 2004), pp. x + 355, $39.95 pb. In June 1964, Prime Minister Robert Menzies promised President Lyndon B....

The Life and Death of Harold Holt.(Book review)
September 1, 2007... The Life and Death of Harold Holt. By Tom Frame (Crows Nest Sydney: Allen and Unwin, 2005), 372pp + xx ISBN 1 74114 672 0, $35.00. Most Australians would have only two colourful memories of Harold Holt, Liberal Prime Minister of Australia,...

The Long, Slow Death of White Australia.(Book review)
September 1, 2007... The Long, Slow Death of White Australia. By Gwenda Tavan (Carlton North: Scribe, 2005). Pp.298. $32.95 pb. The dissolution of the White Australia Policy in the 1960s and 1970s and the nation's subsequent rebirth as a multicultural and...

The Longest Decade.(Book review)
September 1, 2007... The Longest Decade. By George Megalogenis (Melbourne: Scribe, 2006), ISBN 1 920769 79 x. 352 pp. $32.95 pb. George Megalogenis refers to the years between 1990 and the present day as the longest decade for much the same reason that Eric...

Slicing the Silence: Voyaging to Antarctica.(Book review)
September 1, 2007... Slicing the Silence: Voyaging to Antarctica. By Tom Griffiths (Sydney: University of New South Wales Press, 2007), pp. 399, $34.95, pb. This is a most engaging and important book. It is almost the story of a one-off pilgrimage in which the...

Amassing Treasures for All Times: Sir George Grey, Colonial Bookman and Collector.(Book review)
September 1, 2007... Amassing Treasures for All Times: Sir George Grey, Colonial Bookman and Collector. By Donald Jackson Kerr (Delaware: Oak Knoll Press; Dunedin: Otago University Press, 2006), pp. 351 + 14 pp. of plates. US$49.95/NZ$59.95. Sir George Grey...

142 Strand: A Radical Address in Victorian London.(Book review)
September 1, 2007... 142 Strand: A Radical Address in Victorian London. By Rosemary Ashton (London: Chatto and Windus, 2006); pp. 386; 20.00 [pounds sterling] (UK). This fine book centres on John Chapman, his seven years' stint as a book publisher, and, from...

War Experiences in Rural Germany, 1914-1923.(Book review)
September 1, 2007... War Experiences in Rural Germany, 1914-1923. By Benjamin Ziemann, translated by Alex Skinner (Oxford, New York: Berg, 2007), pp. xiii + 302. 19.99 [pounds sterling]/US$34.95 pb, 55.00 [pounds sterling]/US$99.95 hb. This work was originally...

Confront! Resistance in Nazi Germany.(Book review)
September 1, 2007... Confront! Resistance in Nazi Germany. Edited by John J. Michalczyk (New York: Peter Lang, 2004), 251 pp., US$39.95, ISBN 0-8204-6317-5. The papers in this volume stem from a conference on resistance in the Third Reich held at Boston College...

Writing the Holocaust: Identity, Testimony, Representation.(Book review)
September 1, 2007... Writing the Holocaust: Identity, Testimony, Representation. By Zoe Vania Waxman (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006). ISBN: 0199206384 Hardback, 240 pages; US$45.00. Writing the Holocaust attempts to outline the history of Holocaust...

Armageddon des Kommunismus--Strategie, Wirtschaft und die DDR 1970-1990.(Book review)
September 1, 2007... Armageddon des Kommunismus--Strategie, Wirtschaft und die DDR 1970-1990: By Bernd F. Schulte (Hamburg: Hamburger Studien zu Geschichte und Zeitgeschehen, Bd. 3, 2006) pp. 675. 39.80 [euro] pb. The Hamburg historian has here added to the...

Mussolini's Italy: Life under the Dictatorship, 1915-1945.(Book review)
September 1, 2007... Mussolini's Italy: Life under the Dictatorship, 1915-1945. By R.J.B. Bosworth (London: Allen Lane, 2005), pp. xxvi + 692, $59.95 hb. Over the past decade Richard Bosworth has established himself in the English-speaking world as the leading...

From Roosevelt to Truman: Potsdam, Hiroshima, and the Cold War.(Book review)
September 1, 2007... From Roosevelt to Truman: Potsdam, Hiroshima, and the Cold War. By Wilson D. Miscamble C.S.C. (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2007), pp. xx + 393, $69.95 hb. At precisely 5:30 a.m., on Monday July 16, 1945, at "Trinity", the code...

Missed Opportunities: US Diplomatic Failures and the Arab-Israel Conflict 1947-1967.(Book review)
September 1, 2007... Missed Opportunities: US Diplomatic Failures and the Arab-Israel Conflict 1947-1967. By Candace Karp (Claremont, CA: Regina Books, 2004); Pp. xi + 309. Two maps. ISBN 1-930053-32-0. $35.95 pb. Under the suggestive title Missed...

Regionalism and Globalization in East Asia: Politics, Security and Economic Development.(Book review)
September 1, 2007... Regionalism and Globalization in East Asia: Politics, Security and Economic Development. By Mark Beeson (Houndsmill, Hampshire, and New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007), 336 pp., $32.95 pb, $93.95 hb.. Beeson tells us that this book is "an...

Political Economy from Below: Economic Thought in Communitarian Anarchism, 1840-1914.(Book review)
September 1, 2007... Political Economy from Below: Economic Thought in Communitarian Anarchism, 1840-1914. By Rob Knowles (New York and London: Routledge, 2004), 75.00 [pounds sterling] hb. Within the academy, and especially manifest in undergraduate programs,...

Plague Ports: The Global Urban Impact of Bubonic Plague, 1894-1901.(Book review)
September 1, 2007... Plague Ports: The Global Urban Impact of Bubonic Plague, 1894-1901. By Myron Echenberg (New York and London: New York University Press, 2007), pp. xvi+349. Illustrated. US$48.00. The third plague pandemic of one hundred years ago has not...

Darwin's Coat-Tails: Essays on Social Darwinism.(Book review)
September 1, 2007... Darwin's Coat-Tails: Essays on Social Darwinism. By Paul Crook (New York: Peter Lang, 2007), pp. xiv+340. US$79.95. There is so much written about the English naturalist and father of evolutionary theory, Charles Robert Darwin, that it is...

The God Delusion.(Book review)
September 1, 2007... The God Delusion. By Richard Dawkins (London: Bantam Books, 2006) ISBN 0-618-68000-4. 20.00 [pounds sterling] hb, 8.99 [pounds sterling] pb. The Dawkins Delusion? Atheist Fundamentalism and the Denial of the Divine. By Alister and Joanna...

The Philosophy of War and Peace.(Book review)
September 1, 2007... The Philosophy of War and Peace. By Jenny Teichman (Imprint Academic: Exeter, 2006), 275 pp., ISBN 184540050X. 17.95 [pounds sterling] pb. In her Preface, Jenny Teichman, Emeritus Fellow of New Hall, Cambridge, and author or editor of some...

The Law of Armed Conflict: Constraints on the Contemporary Use of Military Force.(Book review)
September 1, 2007... The Law of Armed Conflict: Constraints on the Contemporary Use of Military Force. Edited by Howard M. Hensel (Aldershot and Burlington: Ashgate, 2007), pp. xiv + 266. 25.00 [pounds sterling]. In these tumultuous times of terror and...

Connected Worlds: History in Transnational Perspective.(Book review)
September 1, 2007... Connected Worlds: History in Transnational Perspective. Co-edited by Ann Curthoys and Marilyn Lake (Canberra: Australian National University E Press, 2005), pp. x + 278. $25.00. This useful and engaging book of essays speaks to the...

Ways of Knowing: Competing Methodologies in Social and Political Research.(Book review)
September 1, 2007... Ways of Knowing: Competing Methodologies in Social and Political Research. By Jonathon W. Moses and Torbjorn L. Knutsen (Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007), pp. xiv + 330. $67.00. This would be a useful text for undergraduate...