School of Historical and Philosophical Studies - Theses
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ItemA networked community: Jewish immigration, colonial networks and the shaping of Melbourne 1835-1895( 2015)Current scholarship on empire considers those Britons engaged in processes of colonisation as culturally homogeneous, but this view negates their cultural complexity. From the first forays of the Port Phillip Association, Jewish settlers and investors have been attached to Melbourne. Although those settling in Melbourne were themselves predominantly British, they brought with them not only the networks of empire, but also the intersecting diasporas of European Jewry and the new and expanding English-speaking Jewish world. This thesis considers how the cosmopolitan outlook and wide networks of the Jewish community helped shape Melbourne.
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ItemPrison or paradise: disease and medicine in the Bermudian convict establishment (1824-1863)( 2015)This PhD thesis is an inquiry into the rates of disease among the convict population in the Bermudian convict establishment and the medical practices used to treat these patients as a way to understand their living conditions. It has gone beyond the Colonial Office 37 series to survey other available data such as the ADM 101 series of the Royal Naval Hospital records and Commissioners’ Inquiries to show the extent to which the hulks themselves played a role in the cause and exacerbation of disease among the convict population. A quantitative analysis of hospital data uncovered the dominant diseases by considering both the contemporary methods of disease nomenclature and ICD-10. This comparison proves that no matter how a disease was classified the most dominant diseases were those that were the result of or were exacerbated by the filthy accommodation within the hulks. Comparisons of mortality and patterns of illness between Millbank and Gibraltar show a wider context of disease causation, and the extent to which conditions in Bermuda were better or worse than these other prisons. Quantitative analysis of therapeutics used in Bermuda and comparison of therapeutic trends between Bermuda, the hulk establishment at Woolwich and convict ships at sea, will show that practices in Bermuda were in part relative to the availability of therapeutics yet also conformed to West Indian norms of treating inflammatory conditions. Part of this investigation into medical facilities shows the extent to which clinical medicine influenced the doctor-patient relationship in Bermuda; how convicts had little or no say in their treatment. Furthermore, the doctor had access to the patient’s body as an instrument of the production of medical knowledge, the outcome of which seems to benefit the Bermudian convicts in cases of epidemic yellow fever when other treatments failed. Further investigation into the convicts in the First Fleet and Swan River Colony in Australia, Wakefield prison, Coldbath Fields prison, and Woolwich and Chatham hulk establishments in England will demonstrate that this use of the convicts’ body as an instrument in the production of medical knowledge was common-place and not limited to Bermuda. Overall, these factors paint a more accurate picture of the lived experience for the Bermudian convict.
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ItemCanada and Australia: federation and nationhood( 2015)In the second half of the nineteenth century, federation movements emerged in the two most significant areas of settlement in the British Empire. They resulted in the establishment of the Dominion of Canada and the Commonwealth of Australia – new nations, but ones which remained firmly within the Imperial fold. The similarities of the two nations' forms of government, combining constitutional monarchy, responsible government, and federalism might suggest that Australian constitution-makers drew inspiration from Canada's Fathers of Confederation, the constitution they framed, and the achievement of Canadian nationhood. However, accounts of Australian Federation typically dismiss Canadian influence. Until now, there has been no comprehensive study that has compared the two movements and the constitutions they produced. This thesis explores the reasons why Australians and Canadians adopted the forms of government they did, and examines how Australia's constitutional framers were influenced by the British North America Act and Canada's experience of Confederation and nationhood. It will do this, first, by placing the movements in their historic context within the British Empire. It will then examine the significant development of Canadian-Australasian relations in the period leading up to Australian Federation and the means by which Australians came to understand Canadian government. Subsequently, the thesis will turn to a closer examination of the constitutions of both nations. First, this will involve an analysis of the form and language of the two documents. Second, a series of chapters will explore how the constitutions embody ideas of democracy, autonomy, and federalism. These chapters will consider why the constitutional framers made the decisions they did – sometimes making the same decisions, at others making decisions that differed sharply. In uncovering this neglected history, the thesis will draw upon a variety of published and archival sources, including the personal papers of leading politicians and constitutional scholars. Unlike previous studies, the thesis draws on extensive research in both Canada and Australia to reveal exchanges that have not made it into the story of Australian Federation.
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ItemDisappointments of the nation: war, disillusionment and narratives of decline in interwar Australia( 2015)This thesis investigates historiographical and literary representations of World War I in Australia. It noted that Australian historiography on the War in Australian cultural memory and representation focus primarily upon the 'martial nationalist' account of WW1 as a site of national birth, most famously articulated by C.E.W. Bean, and that Australian cultural historians argue that the common British tropes and myths of 'lost innocence', 'disillusionment' and nostalgia for an 'Edwardian Summer' associated with WW1, are not represented in Australian creative responses to the war in the interwar period. This thesis argues that there is a tradition of historical interpretation that regards WW1 as an event that frustrated national potential, rendered a formerly consensual society divided, and strangled the young nation's early promise. It furthermore pointed out that this attitude can be discerned in literature of the interwar period, and informed the writing of both the radical cultural nationalists, such as Vance Palmer, and the 'Vision school', such as Norman and Jack Lindsay. In the interwar period, both groups were moved by their sense of the loss and damage wreaked by the war upon Australia, to advocate a return to a nostalgically recalled pre-war past, a renaissance to recapture the innocence that had been lost in war, and a protectionist attitude in culture, that advocated Australia's return to its more self-contained pre-war state and a rejection of the modernising influences that followed in the wake of war. A paranoid nationalism thus emerges in both literary movements, indicating the existence of what Raymond Williams has called a 'structure of feeling' in interwar Australia, structured around nostalgia and disillusionment with the nation that emerged from WW1, that informs later historiography and popular history.
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ItemGay print media’s golden era: Australian magazines and newspapers 1970-2000( 2015)The late 20th century was a golden era for Australian gay print media: more than five million copies annually of gay and lesbian publications were printed at its peak, with revenues of nearly eight million dollars a year. Yet there was not even a leaflet before 1969 because homosexuals then did not dare to publish in the climate of active oppression. Growing liberal attitudes within sections of broader society, and, at a practical level, reform of censorship laws made gay publishing possible. The remarkable growth of this industry stands as testimony to the dramatic change in mainstream society’s attitudes towards homosexuality, and changes within the gay community itself, during the final decades of last century. From 1970 to 2000 nearly 100 significant magazines and newspapers were produced around the country. Publishers used print media to advance gay movement aims, despite pursuing a variety of visions and goals for how they saw a better world for gay and lesbian people. Their publications allowed discussion of what it meant to be gay or lesbian in Australia; provided an arena to present positive viewpoints regarding homosexuality that countered dominant mainstream attitudes; and brought people together through personal classifieds and information about bars and other community activities. In order to sustain their businesses, publishers took commercial opportunities presented to them. And they needed to expand their operation to attract readers and advertisers. This offered economic viability to the publications, and allowed publishers to sustain a reliable workforce and improve their product. All publishers were forced to deal with the business side of their operation, which often caused tension between their initial goals for a better world and the need to run the business. A key resolution of this tension came through adopting the promotion and defence of community as a primary political project. This allowed publishers to freely develop synergies with advertisers that helped build and develop community infrastructure, such as venues, festivals, and small businesses. Expansion of the sector magnified the impact of this synergy on the community’s growth. It allowed movement ideas and information on community activities to reach and influence a much wider audience, and the day-to-day pursuit of business activity, in particular advertising revenue and distribution outlets led to a myriad of direct relationships with mainstream society that challenged prejudice and helped normalise homosexuality.
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ItemPhotography for history’s sake: the Military History and Information Section in the Middle East 1941-1942( 2014)This thesis explores the creation, objectives and operation of the Military History and Information Section (MH&IS) in the Middle East from August 1941 to mid-1942. It compares the MH&IS to equivalent official war photographic organisations in Britain and the United States, and considers the photographic results of the MH&IS in the Middle East. The concept of historical record photography held by its leader, John Treloar, is evaluated according to a set of themes.
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ItemThis is total War: re-exploring Australia's Second World War through the lens of total war( 2014)This thesis explores Australia's Second World War through the lens of total war. Using "ideal type" methodology, it aims to explore how total war was articulated, understood and implemented in a belligerent country that has previously been neglected by total war scholars.
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ItemA woman of spirit: Lorna Osborn (1922-2011) and her circles: citizenship and influence through religion and education( 2011)This thesis explores the life of the prominent and influential Victorian Methodist and Uniting Churchwoman and educator, Lorna Osborn (nee Grierson) who taught for a quarter of a century at Melbourne Church of England Girls' Grammar School. It analyses aspects of her family background, her education at school and university, her marriage and children, and the formation of the networks that underwrote her religious, social and educational activities as a mature woman from the 1940s to the 1980s. Though Australian women received political citizenship at federal level in 1902 following Federation, male-dominated social structures meant that most women, particularly if they were married and mothers of young children, seldom accessed positions that entailed influence, authority and effective leadership in business, politics or many of the professions, prior to the changed consciousness about gender following the second-wave feminist campaigns of the 1970s. The thesis illuminates how Protestant Christianity, especially Methodism, though it set limits to acceptable female behaviour, also provided spaces for women's agency outside the strictly domestic sphere. Osborn herself did not try to enter male preserves. Esteemed as an active and efficient churchwoman, she was able to operate at high levels in church affairs. Stemming from this foundation, Osborn was embedded in supporting networks which later helped her forge an impressive career at Melbourne Church of England Girls' Grammar School, where fresh circles of colleagues and students invigorated and extended her possibilities for innovation. Educationally on the conservative wing, Osborn's strong adherence to Christianity and to advancing the rights of girls to higher education drove her impressive, dynamic career that promoted talented middle-class girls into an advantaged position to compete academically and professionally in the wider society. This study of Lorna Osborn's life throws light onto the experience of many other women in her circles.
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ItemA new deal for the territories?: The abolition of the indentured labour system in colonial Papua and New Guinea( 2014)On 15 October 1945, the Australian Minister for External Territories, Eddie Ward, announced the immediate cancellation of all indentured labour contracts in the Australian colonies of Papua and New Guinea. Almost all of the 32,000 Papuan and New Guineans under employment contracts put down their tools and returned to their villages.1 Massive post-war reconstruction and rehabilitation efforts came to an immediate halt and expatriateowned plantations could no longer function. While the abruptness of Ward’s proclamation shocked supporters and opponents of the system, the proposal was by no means new. (From introduction)
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ItemSustaining the resistance: the role of Australian activist organisations in resisting the Indonesian occupation of East Timor, 1975 - 1991( 2014)This thesis focuses on the activities of Melbourne based activist groups ACFOA and AETA as representative aid and solidarity organisations as defined in transnational activist literature. It explores their early activities, and how they responded to changing circumstances through the 1970s and 1980s inside the territory, within Australia, and internationally. It will show how activist efforts evolved from solidarity to advocacy, from expressions of outrage to considered framing of issues, and how a nexus between the two organisations developed that facilitated them playing complementary and effective roles in sustaining the idea of continued resistance within Australian politics, media, and international civil society. It does not attempt to chart the entire history of the organisations, or that of the independence struggle. Instead, through ACFOA and AETA it seeks to provide the first account of specific Australian activism in the under-explored period of 1975 - 1991. (From introduction)