'Each year, History Australia offers a prize for the best article from the previous calendar year. The editors are delighted to announce that Ben Silverstein’s article, ‘“Possibly They Did Not Know Themselves”: The Ambivalent Government of Sex and Work in the Northern Territory Aboriginals Ordinance 1918’ from issue 14(3) won the prize for 2017. In crisp prose, Silverstein’s article wove a theoretically informed line of argument around new empirical material to explore the regulation of Indigenous life in the service of the health of the settler population. Demonstrating ‘the malleability of racial categorisations’, it is an innovative article that will push the field forward in coming years.' (Matthew P. Fitzpatrick , Catherine Kevin & Melanie Oppenheimer From the Editors introduction)
'This article compares the memoirs of Sir Robert Menzies and John Howard, as well as Howard’s book on Menzies, examining what these works by the two most successful Liberal prime ministers indicate about the evolution of the Liberal Party’s liberalism. Howard’s memoirs are far more ‘political’, candid and ideologically engaged than those of Menzies. Howard acknowledges that politics is about political power and winning it, while Menzies was more concerned with the political leader as statesman. Howard’s works can be viewed as a continuation of the ‘history wars’. He wishes to create a Liberal tradition to match that of the Labor Party.' (Publication abstract)
'This article explores the representation of masculinity and race in the 1955 film Jedda. Popularly remembered as a ‘classic’ Australian film, Jedda is best known for its explicit critique of Indigenous affairs in the assimilation era. This article, however, contends that the film’s treatment of differing masculinities reveals its anti-assimilationist meanings, both through its affirmation of white, radical nationalist masculinity and its portrayal of Indigenous male sexuality as dangerous. Ultimately, Jedda concluded that assimilatory efforts were futile, and affirmed the cultural imagining of Australia as a white nation in which Indigenous people could make no claim for legitimacy.' (Publication abstract)
'John Desmond Peck enlisted in the Australian Imperial Force (AIF) in October 1939. Although he was born on 17 February 1922, he declared he was born on 16 February 1919. Author Peter Monteath suggests that, like others of his generation, the 17-year-old’s motivation for early and under-age enlistment derived from a yearning for new challenges and adventure. As Escape Artist: The Incredible Second World War of Johnny Peckattests, the young serviceman encountered many challenges and much adventure during combat with the 2/7th Battalion AIF against Italian forces at Bardia and Tobruk, and against the Germans in Greece and on Crete, and as an evader and escaper behind the lines on Crete and in Italy. He was 19 when he went into battle for the first time at Bardia; 20 when he was stranded for months on Crete after the Allied evacuation; 21 when he established an evasion network in Italy after the September 1943 Armistice; and 22 when he faced execution by the Gestapo, became an operative for the Special Operations Executive (SOE), fought with Italian partisans, and at one point commanded approximately 450 men and 30 officers. As his biography’s strapline claims, Peck’s war was ‘incredible’.' (Introduction)
