Cirrus@Austlit

'Political history looms large in this issue, with focus on the democratic process and on the state as a guarantor of ‘security’. Carolyn Holbrook continues an inquiry that – as she shows – has engaged others in recent years: what use have political elites made of the term ‘security’? She traces one of this word’s meanings – ‘citizens’ economic and social wellbeing’ – in Australians’ discussions, between the world wars, about initiating a national insurance scheme. Influenced by F.D. Roosevelt’s policies, a ‘security discourse was deployed alongside the existing language of thrift, good character and national efficiency, and slowly began to replace it’. But how to finance national insurance? And would it complement or compete with expenditure on rearmament? Answered either way, the question pointed to bipartisan commitment, in the 1940s, to expanding the responsibilities of the national government. Holbrook shows that in justifying massive immigration between 1947 and 1951, governments referred to both ‘economic’ and ‘military’ security. This ‘malleable’ term ‘expresses human aspirations, justifies the role of the state in the lives of its citizens, and moulds citizens’ expectations to the ideological proclivities of the state’, she concludes.' (Editorial introduction)

'Notwithstanding the defeat of the Voice referendum in October 2023, a demand for ‘truth-telling’ remains. Australian Historical Studies is pleased to host an ongoing discussion about what historical scholarship can contribute to truth-telling. In August 2023 (volume 54, no. 3), Mark Finnane and Jonathan Richards used the instance of Samuel Griffith to consider how to contextualise individual responsibility for the colonial state’s killing of Aboriginal people. In this issue we are pleased to publish a very different comment: Matthew Fitzpatrick’s reflections on lessons from the historiography of Germany. Fitzpatrick’s starting point is that Indigenous and non-Indigenous scholars differ in their investments in and approaches to critical narratives of colonisation. There is an ‘Indigenous space’, he cautions, that ‘should not be unthinkingly co-opted by non-Indigenous scholars’. The likely impetus of such co-option is a desire for truth-telling to be healing, redemptive, and decolonising. Advising non-Indigenous scholars to be suspicious of ‘all attempts at assimilation, reconciliation or relativisation’ of the pasts that they produce, Fitzpatrick enjoins historians to facilitate ‘the perpetual problematisation of irreducibly traumatic pasts’. The lesson from recent German historiography is that ‘multi-vocality’ – encouraging histories from many standpoints – militates against hopes of an ‘end point where the work of truth-telling is finished and differing historical experiences can be reconciled and transcended’. In Australian historiography, that multiplicity is more likely, he suggests, if we privilege the ‘local’ and question the possibility of a ‘national’ colonisation story. Fitzpatrick sees promise in ‘increasingly vocal and heterogeneous Indigenous voices’. (The heterogeneity of the ‘Indigenous space’ was amply demonstrated, after his paper was written, in the 2023 debate about constitutional recognition.) As well, he champions ‘voices from Australia’s own migrant community’ – to which Australian Historical Studies (vol. 53, no. 4, November 2022) has recently given a platform in the Themed Issue ‘Their Own Perceptions: Non-Anglo Migrants and Aboriginal Australia’.' (Fiona Paisley : Editorial introduction)

'Archives, multilingual or otherwise, have histories of their own. Jacques Derrida has described those who are the creators of archives as exercising social order (the archons): they employ power through their interpretation of texts and stories of the past.  The interrelation between power and knowledge, and the building of a collective, public memory, operates in both the material and metaphorical spaces of the national archive. Archives constitute the set of rules which define the limits and forms of human expression, conservation, memory and appropriation. Bias and subjectivity are structurally part of the official archive through the evaluation appraisal, cataloguing, censoring, description – including errors – preservation and translation of sources.  In this way, archives can establish the legitimacy of governments and shape ideas of national history. At the same time, in Foucault’s terms, archives are ‘systems of statements’ as ‘events’ and ‘things’.  Although they are governed by institutional infrastructures they cannot really be described in their totality. Also, the material and stories they preserve can challenge or form a threat for the state power.' (Editorial introduction)

'In our first article, Mark Finnane and Jonathan Richards write in response to the provocation of Henry Reynolds that leading figures in the history of colonial Australia – some honoured in the naming of universities, for example – should be held to account for their conduct. Investigating how one such figure – Samuel Griffith, Attorney-General 1874–78, Premier of Queensland 1883–88 and both Attorney-General and Premier 1890–93 – could be held morally responsible for his part in the violent dispossession of Aboriginal people, Finnane and Richards acknowledge the proximities between history writing and the more overtly political work of ‘truth telling’. They test the accusation that in both his political and legal offices, Griffith failed to condemn several well-publicised killings of Aboriginal people including those carried out by Native Police, thus with the apparent endorsement of the state. By examining a series of cases in which Griffith’s decisions and policies are documented, they portray Griffith as both ‘lawmaker’ and ‘war-maker’ – responsible for ‘policies and prosecutions that both harmed and protected Aboriginal subjects of the Crown’. The difficulties of bringing violence – both among and against Aboriginal people – under the rule of British law were not his alone. The ‘politics of memory’ will determine whether this singularly commemorated man will now be singularly condemned.' (Publication summary)

'This themed issue aims to investigate the role of visual culture in defining, contesting and advancing ideas of Australian citizenship and its attendant rights, from white settlement to the present  Acknowledging, but looking beyond, the legal status of citizenship, these articles seek to explore the broader processes through which this cultural category is constituted and deployed. This question is timely in an era when global networks such as economic and business processes, communication, and the movement of people are increasingly interconnected, and yet simultaneously we see both the resurgence of hypernationalism, as well as the assertion of rights based on difference within, against and across the nation state. Important recent research has focused upon the role of visual culture within geopolitical processes, from climate change disaster to the impact of the Covid pandemic, and especially the challenges shared by many nations, such as new nationalisms, the escalation of anti-immigrant rhetoric, the revitalisation of white supremacist movements, economic inequality both domestically and globally, and threats to democracy such as ‘fake news’. Many of these global challenges have contributed to the recent interest in how visual culture helps to both assert and challenge the meanings of citizenship.' (Jane Lydon, Editorial introduction)

'Until World War II provoked a major rethinking of Australian federalism, the working relationships between the national and State levels of the Australian state evolved as a series of solutions to particular problems facing Australia, such as stopping the spread of influenza and ameliorating war veterans’ poverty. In this issue we publish two articles that continue this theme of ‘intergovernmental relations’. Mark Finnane takes us back to the High Court decision known as ‘Smithers’ (1913) in order to reveal how constitutional lawyers, before and after that case, considered the authority of a State of Australia. Could New South Wales police prevent a criminal from entering from another State? On one view, federation (Sections 92 and 117 of the Australian constitution) had ended or weakened such State power, and yet the federal compact had not given a ‘police power’ (or a police force) to the national government. As Finnane shows, one issue in this debate was the scope of ‘police power’. Among Australian jurists who had been following the development of constitutional law in the United States, ‘police power’ referred to the ‘fundamental responsibilities of State governments to protect the health and welfare of their populations’. Future emergencies are likely to recreate public mandates for States to wield authority so broadly conceived, Finnane concludes.' (Publication summary)

'At the end of the last century, Ann Curthoys outlined the history of ‘two distinct yet connected public and intellectual debates concerning the significance of descent, belonging and culture’ in Australia. The first revolved ‘around the cleavage between Indigenous and non-Indigenous peoples’, and especially the issue of how to grapple with the lingering effects of past colonialisms. The second centred on immigration and the challenge migrants – particularly non-Anglo migrants – have presented to Australian society at large. Curthoys argued that in public commentary and within numerous scholarly fields, including history, these debates were kept largely separate until the 1988 Bicentenary and its celebration of multicultural Australia, which included Indigenous people amongst the country’s broader diversity. Pauline Hanson’s ascendancy to Federal Parliament in 1996 pushed these debates into ‘uneasy conversation’ with each other as her public rhetoric frequently attacked both Indigenous people and migrants from Asia as groups who, in her view, were unable to assimilate. Curthoys argued that the two debates ‘can neither be conceptualised together nor maintained as fully distinct’, but rather must be situated within an understanding of Australia as a ‘society which is colonising and decolonising at the same time’. ‘All non-Indigenous people, recent immigrants and descendants of immigrants alike’, wrote Curthoys, ‘are beneficiaries of a colonial history. We share the situation of living on someone else’s land’. (Editorial introduction)

'The articles in this issue offer case studies of interactions between the global and the local. They illustrate how imperial, colonial and national histories have been unevenly and incompletely constituted in the embodied encounters and exchanges between individuals and through local representations and media, especially newspapers. In combination, they draw our attention to the appearance of otherwise marginalised histories and voices in the popular imaginary as well as official archives. Several offer insights into the interests of Australasia in the Asia-Pacific region, attesting to the shifting ground on which white authority and territoriality was often constituted.' (Fiona Paisley and Tom Rowse : Editorial introduction)

'Several articles in this issue focus on cities – in particular Melbourne and Sydney, the two largest capitals. That cities may be considered as gendered spaces is Shurlee Swain’s starting point. In both cities, female workers – mistresses of boarding houses, midwives and nurses – made places (‘gynocentric zones’) in which to dispose of ‘the unwanted products of women’s bodies’. Swain’s study ingeniously brings together two databases: about babies born at Melbourne’s Women’s Hospital (compiled by Janet McCalman), and about newspaper advertisements for adoption (compiled by Swain herself). As she shows, by locating their work close to public maternity hospitals, and yet remaining ‘invisible, unacknowledged’, these working women contributed to each city’s aura of ‘respectability’.' (Editorial introduction)

'In this our first issue as incoming editors, we first thank the outgoing editors, David Roberts and Lisa Ford, for the wonderful work they have done. We very much look forward to working with contributors and the rest of the editorial team, comprising our Editorial Assistant, Annalisa Giudici, the book and exhibition review editors, and the Editorial Board.' (Fiona Paisley and Tim Rowse, Editorial introduction)

'It is with a mixture of relief and sadness that we sign off on our very last issue of Australian Historical Studies. We are particularly proud of this issue. In it we gather some new and innovative work, ranging from discussion of convict voyages to eastern Australia and analysis of the Chinese diaspora in Australia to a sobering exploration of rape culture in the 1942–43 trial of Errol Flynn. This issue also includes a state of the field essay on Captain Cook by Kate Fullagar and a fabulous line-up of museum, film and book reviews, including Heather Goodall on Grace Karskens’ latest blockbuster, Ann Curthoys on Henry Reynolds and Megan Davis and George Williams, and Ruth Balint on Sheila Fitzpatrick’s latest.' (Editorial introduction)

'This special issue of Australian Historical Studies brings together scholars whose work explores the political impact of the sexual and feminist revolutions in Australia. The articles illuminate the connections and divergences between the sexual and feminist revolutions of the late twentieth and early twenty-first century. They explore how and why these transnational movements had distinctive and transformative impacts in Australia, both expanding and narrowing ideas about sex, gender and sexuality. The articles also examine instances when questions of gender and sexuality have become sites of political contest, and the ways in which those contests intersected with other traditions and transformations in Australian political history.'  (Editorial introduction)

'We are pleased to present this collection of articles for Australian Historian Studies, the third to be produced during the most extraordinary and trying of times. Our thoughts go out especially to our friends and colleagues in Melbourne, the spiritual home of Australian Historical Studies, and especially to the ever-reliable Annalisa Giudici who would never let a pandemic get in the way of a publishing deadline. While 2020 has been the unkindest of years, we offer this issue as further proof that Australian historical research continues to flourish in the hands of both our senior and emerging scholars.' (David Andrew Roberts Editorial introduction)

'Our second issue of 2020 arrives in very strange times and we wish our readers health and well-being in the face of a global pandemic. We extend particular thanks to the indefatigable Annalisa Giudici for helping us to produce this issue in this very challenging environment.' (Lisa Ford and David A. Roberts, Editorial introduction)

'We are pleased to present the first issue of Australian Historical Studies for 2020, the second year of our tenure as editors. We begin the new year with an especially interesting and important collection of essays on ‘Aboriginal mobilities’.' (Editorial Introduction)