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Books > History > Australasian & Pacific history
The University of Melbourne was already over 110 years old when
this history begins. The second oldest university in Australia, it
has been graced with a number of histories written by eminent
historians. Each of these histories has documented the University's
evolution and diversification from the perspective of their time.
Shifting the Boundaries: The University of Melbourne 1975-2015
continues that story, but the period covered is entirely within
living memory. It pauses at ten-year intervals, the first at 1975,
to look back at the previous decade. We are invited to enter the
University of Melbourne as a living institution, and to watch it as
it responds to changing expectations of students, staff and
community, to shifting policy frameworks and to an evolving
economic and social context. The principal themes that arc across
this story involve massive growth, the evolution towards a
research-intensive institution, changing pedagogical imperatives,
bureaucratisation and internationalisation in the face of declining
public funding.
The first comprehensive account to place the Pacific Islands, the
Pacific Rim and the Pacific Ocean into the perspective of world
history. A distinguished international team of historians provides
a multidimensional account of the Pacific, its inhabitants and the
lands within and around it over 50,000 years, with special
attention to the peoples of Oceania. It providing chronological
coverage along with analyses of themes such as the environment,
migration and the economy; religion, law and science; race, gender
and politics.
Inner-city Sydney was the epicenter of gay life in the Southern
hemisphere in the 1970s and early 1980s. Gay men moved from across
Australasia to find liberation in the city's vibrant community
networks; and when HIV and AIDS devastated those networks, they
grieved, suffered, and survived in ways that have often been left
out of the historical record. This book excavates the intimate
lives and memories of HIV-positive gay men in Sydney, focusing on
the critical years between 1982 and 1996, when HIV went from being
a terrifying unidentified disease to a chronic condition that could
be managed with antiretroviral medication. Using oral histories and
archival research, Cheryl Ware offers a sensitive, moving
exploration of how HIV-positive gay men navigated issues around
disclosure, health, sex, grief, death, and survival. HIV Survivors
in Sydney reveals how gay men dealt with the virus both within and
outside of support networks, and how they remember these
experiences nearly three decades later.
This book fills an important gap in the history and intelligence
canvas of Singapore and Malaya immediately after the surrender of
the Japanese in August 1945. It deals with the establishment of the
domestic intelligence service known as the Malayan Security Service
(MSS), which was pan-Malayan covering both Singapore and Malaya,
and the colourful and controversial career of Lieutenant Colonel
John Dalley, the Commander of Dalforce in the WWII battle for
Singapore and the post-war Director of MSS. It also documents the
little-known rivalry between MI5 in London and MSS in Singapore,
which led to the demise of the MSS and Dalley's retirement.
The Australian Army from Whitlam to Howard is the first critical
examination of Australia's post-Vietnam military operations,
spanning the 35 years between the election of Gough Whitlam and the
defeat of John Howard. John Blaxland explores the 'casualty cringe'
felt by political leaders following the war and how this impacted
subsequent operations. He contends that the Australian Army's
rehabilitation involved common individual and collective training
and reaffirmation of the Army's regimental and corps identities. He
shows how the Army regained its confidence to play leading roles in
East Timor, Bougainville and the Solomon Islands, and to contribute
to combat operations further afield. At a time when the Australian
Army's future strategic role are the subject of much debate, and as
the 'Asian Century' gathers pace and commitment in Afghanistan
draws to an end, this work is essential reading for anyone
interested in understanding the modern context of Australia's
military land force.
Now in one definitive volume, Botany Bay and the First Fleet is a
full, authentic account of the beginnings of modern Australia. In
1787 a convoy of eleven ships, carrying about 1400 people, set out
from England for Botany Bay, on the east coast of New South Wales.
In deciding on Botany Bay, British authorities hoped not only to
rid Britain of its excess criminals, but also to gain a key
strategic outpost and take control of valuable natural resources.
According to the conventional account, it was a shambolic affair-
under-prepared, poorly equipped and ill-disciplined. Here, Alan
Frost debunks these myths, and shows that the voyage was in fact
meticulously planned - reflecting its importance to Britain's
imperial and commercial ambitions. In his examination of the ships,
passengers and preparation, Frost reveals the hopes and schemes of
those who engineered the voyage, and the experiences of those who
made it. The culmination of thirty-five years' study of previously
neglected archives, Botany Bay and the First Fleet offers new and
surprising insights into how Australia came to be.
John Costello's The Pacific War has now established itself as the standard one-volume account of World War II in the Pacific. Never before have the separate stories of fighting in China, Malaya, Burma, the East Indies, the Phillipines, New Guinea, the Solomon Islands, and the Aleutians been so brilliantly woven together to provide a clear account of one of the most massive movements of men and arms in history. The complex social, political, and economic causes that underlay the war are here carefully analyzed, impelling the reader to see it as the inevitable conclusion to a series of historical events. And the bloody fighting that indelibly recorded names like Midway and Iwo Jima in the annals of human conflict is described in detail, through its ominous conclusion in the mushroom clouds of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
Women are significantly underrepresented in politics in the Pacific
Islands, given that only one in twenty Pacific parliamentarians are
female, compared to one in five globally. A common, but
controversial, method of increasing the number of women in politics
is the use of gender quotas, or measures designed to ensure a
minimum level of women's representation. In those cases where
quotas have been effective, they have managed to change the face of
power in previously male-dominated political spheres. How do
political actors in the Pacific islands region make sense of the
success (or failure) of parliamentary gender quota campaigns? To
answer the question, Kerryn Baker explores the workings of four
campaigns in the region. In Samoa, the campaign culminated in a
"safety net" quota to guarantee a minimum level of representation,
set at five female members of Parliament. In Papua New Guinea,
between 2007 and 2012 there were successive campaigns for nominated
and reserved seats in parliament, without success, although the
constitution was amended in 2011 to allow for the possibility of
reserved seats for women. In post-conflict Bougainville, women
campaigned for reserved seats during the constitution-making
process and eventually won three reserved seats in the House of
Representatives, as well as one reserved ministerial position.
Finally, in the French Pacific territories of New Caledonia, French
Polynesia, and Wallis and Futuna, Baker finds that there were
campaigns both for and against the implementation of the so-called
"parity laws." Baker argues that the meanings of success in quota
campaigns, and related notions of gender and representation, are
interpreted by actors through drawing on different traditions, and
renegotiating and redefining them according to their goals,
pressures, and dilemmas. Broadening the definition of success thus
is a key to an understanding of realities of quota campaigns.
Pacific Women in Politics is a pathbreaking work that offers an
original contribution to gender relations within the Pacific and to
contemporary Pacific politics.
On the 11th of November 1934 over 300,000 people gathered on the
slopes of Melbourne's Domain to witness the dedication of the
Shrine. It was the largest state war memorial Australia would build
and it commemorated the sacrifice of no fewer than 114,000
Victorians who served in the Great War. A Place to Remember charts
the Shrine's history from the first fatalities of the Gallipoli
landing to the present day. With deft hand and luminous style,
Bruce Scates masterfully situates the Shrine in its larger
physical, cultural and historical landscape. Archival image and
first person vignette mesh with vivid prose to reveal The Shrine
then and now; its changing patterns of meaning through the many
conflicts in which Australians have fought and died, and the
enduring significance of this grand memorial in the heart of
Melbourne, for generations to come.
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