History Australia

Numerous scholarly critiques of Gavin Menzies’ 1421: The Year China Discovered the World have revealed a plethora of factual errors and inconsistencies, but to little effect. Menzies has simply co-opted different artefacts to support his thesis, or has varied the thesis itself to dodge specific criticisms. Not until historians and intellectuals cease sparring with Menzies on his own terms, and instead criticise the flawed methodological basis of his enterprise–coupled with factual repudiations–can the 1421 thesis be discredited in a manner that affords no recourse. This article has been peer-reviewed.

Who does not think of masculinity and the Australian national character when they hear the word ‘mateship’? There are plenty of reasons for this, not least the efforts of labour leaders and blokish nationalists at the turn of the twentieth century. In this paper, however, I show that radicals in early 1890s Adelaide tried to give ‘mateship’ and the ‘brotherhood of man’ a feminist twist. This was especially the case among the men and women who took part in the Murtho experiment, a short-lived village settlement set up on ethical socialist principles in 1894. Their endeavours highlight the fact that notions of mateship, brotherhood and fraternity developed throughout Anglo culture in this period, not just in Australia. They also highlight the importance of ethical socialism to many of South Australia’s first-wave feminists, leading them to feel a sense of mutuality with labour and radical causes. This article has been peer-reviewed.

The presence in Australia of English and American magazines has not attracted significant critical attention in histories of magazines or writing. But the defence of imported magazines at a 1930 Tariff Board Inquiry stresses their importance to Australian magazine culture during the 1920s. This paper considers the evidence presented to the Inquiry in conjunction with the magazine holdings of several libraries and a small news- agency. In the commercial and cultural operations of retailers and lenders a new idea of Australian magazine culture emerges; one that does not reject imported culture, but embraces it as a significant element of its very existence. This article has been peer-reviewed.

Birth, death and marriage traditionally evoke our most powerful expressions of intimacy and sentiment. Yet for numerous Australian families up to the 1970s, those occasions triggered the opposite sentiments: estrangement, conflict and hostility, which sometimes endured beyond the grave. The cause: 'mixed marriage' between Catholics and Protestants in a pre-multicultural Australia, where religion was still code for a social and political identity that reflected English-Irish tensions derived from colonial days. This article is based on 48 oral histories recorded by Siobhan McHugh for a forthcoming doctoral thesis at the University of Wollongong. The marriages, which range from 1924 to 1983, are recalled by spouses, children and clergy.

The stereotyped transition of the Irish in Australia from rebellious dissenters to respectable citizens glosses an abiding sense of difference that was reproduced down the generations of Irish-Australians. Exploring these tensions in the personal biography of John Vincent Barry, a prominent judge, intellectual and civil libertarian of the mid-twentieth century, offers an unusual opportunity to assess what it meant to be of second or third generation Irish descent in a settler society. These tensions are examined through the rich archive of Barry's private papers as well as his public writing and action. Yes Yes

Curtin researcher Tom Fitzgerald amassed a wealth of evidence that John Curtin wrote under the pen name "Vigilant" in the early years of his editorship of the Westralian Worker. If true, the personal and literary columns penned by "Vigilant" provide new insights into the inner temperament of Australia's war time Prime Minister. Fitzgerald's evidence for Curtin as "Vigilant" is presented in this paper and the attribution is further explored by applying stylistic tests developed at the Centre for Literary and Linguistic Computing at the University of Newcastle (NSW).

The Brisbane Fascio, established in 1930 as part of the Italian Fascist Party’s attempt to disseminate its ideology amongst Italian emigrant communities, enjoyed only limited success. By examining the Brisbane Fascist organisation and the reasons for its failure, this article addresses the particular elements that affected the response of Italian emigrants to Fascism and further illuminates the political, class and economic factors which shaped Italian community life in Queensland before World War II. This article has been peer-reviewed.

The recognition and conservation of contemporary history is a growing interest of both professional and lay communities. In creating archives and cultural collections of local and wider interest, collaborative partnerships can produce rich and innovative constructions of history. This paper outlines the development of the Victorian Women on Farms Gathering Heritage Collection which involves a collaborative partnership committed to the appropriate preservation of cultural materials and stories associated with the Women on Farms Gatherings. The Gatherings are an annual event organised in various rural communities across Victoria since 1990, and this paper records the women’s own recognition of their heritage, and the partnership that was subsequently established between representatives from the Gatherings and Museum Victoria. This arrangement enabled pathways in history-making to be forged. The scope of the collection and decision making processes supporting its management are outlined, prior to an analysis of how this collection illustrates generic and theoretical issues surrounding the innovations that can be supported in creating living history.

Recent debate about the history of historiography and the nature of history has tended to polarise between the postmodernist view and various more ‘conservative’ positions. This article critically examines a recent contribution to the debate, Ann Curthoys’ and John Docker’s Is History Fiction?, and proposes an alternative way of understanding the history of historiography that reveals the nature of history in a very different light. This article has been peer-reviewed.

This article considers some of the potential possibilities and pitfalls in teaching History as a compulsory course for professional degrees in areas such as education and journalism. It considers two quite different models for curriculum design based on distinct student cohorts, and suggests some of the dangers that need to be avoided, and some of the arrangements that need to be considered for desirable outcomes, in such service teaching situations.