School of Historical and Philosophical Studies - Theses
Permanent URI for this collection
Search Results
1 - 10 of 11
-
ItemThe Forgotten Broadcaster: Alan Bell and the Spirit of England( 2018)From Prologue: As he stepped off the boat at Circular Quay, Alan Bell was wonderstruck. “Was it England I had come from?” he asked, “or some misty outer planet?”1 England, with its wintery landscape seemed a whole world away when Bell met the lazy blue skies of Australia in May 1942. Having spent weeks at sea, the well-known London journalist had arrived in Sydney fascinated by the country he would call home for the duration of the war.2 Melbourne would be the city from which he played his part in the conflict as a radio broadcaster for 3DB.3 Every night of the week, except Saturday and Sunday, Bell delivered ten minute talks that discussed and analysed Australia’s involvement in the war.4 His broadcasts served as a propaganda service that demonstrated a clear bias towards Britain’s war effort in Europe, informing his listeners that defeat of Hitler was more necessary to the war effort than defeating the Japanese in the Pacific………
-
ItemCollection, collation & creation: girls and their material culture Victoria, 1870-1910( 2018)The thesis broadly explores the lives of girls who resided in the colony/state of Victoria, Australia between 1870 and 1910. A largely understudied and underappreciated area of historical study, the thesis takes a broad scope. Three case studies- urban girls’ collection of dolls, rural girls’ collation of scrapbooks, and Indigenous Victorian girls’ creation of fibrecraft- illustrate that tangible material culture can serve as evidence for intangible and marginalised histories. It overarchingly contended that girls, in any historical period, can express agency and resilience, individuality and creativity, through their material culture. In interacting with their day-to-day, seemingly mundane things, girls challenged, however subtly, repressive societal ideals that attempted to circumscribe their identities and their lives.
-
ItemBeyond boycotts: Melbourne's response to Japanese aggression in China, 1937-1939( 2018)University of Melbourne, Bachelor of Arts (Honours) History Thesis.
-
ItemThe unseen victors: the Royal Australian Engineers in the forgotten New Guinea campaigns( 2018)This thesis argues that the road, bridge and overall infrastructure creation undertaken by the Royal Australian Engineers during World War Two were crucial to the success of the New Guinea campaigns, particularly the Lae-Salamaua (22nd April 1943 - 16th September 1943) and Huon Peninsula campaigns (22nd September 1943-15th January 1944). The roads and bridges built by the Royal Australian Engineers were vital to the movement of supplies and troops through the jungles and mountains of New Guinea and this infrastructure also enabled the successful deployment of both tanks and artillery in the jungle. The thesis further argues that, despite the importance of these engineering efforts, army engineering and the ingenuity it involved, has been ignored in Australia's military history which instead focuses on narratives of sacrifice and glory.
-
ItemAllen Dulles, the CIA and the 1953 Coup in Iran( 2018)This thesis explores the role of Allen Dulles, the Director of the CIA, in the 1953 coup in Iran.
-
ItemCold War Cradles: the demobilisation of youth in occupied Japan (1945-50)( 2018)This thesis examines Japanese childhood during the first five years of the American occupation. Focusing on the education system, magazines for children and children’s books, the thesis explores the ways in which children were educated and socialised into the postwar national imagined community. Taking the Cold War as an interpretive framework, this thesis identifies a new subjectivity and political worldview engendered within children's culture, one that emphasised individualism, liberalism and democracy. The propagation of these values, this thesis argues, was the result of an interplay between the American agenda for social intervention and local ideas about Japanese nationhood and citizen-making in a context of public demobilisation and Japan’s position in Cold War geopolitics. Drawing upon previously under-studied Japanese-language print and visual sources, this thesis explores the articulation and dissemination of a new children’s culture during a pivotal period in Japanese history.
-
Item'Experiments in Australianity': The Publicist, Australian nationalism, and the embrace of German National Socialism( 2018)This thesis examines ‘The Publicist: the paper loyal to Australia First’, a monthly newspaper published in Sydney from July 1936 until March 1942 which turned to German National Socialism in its pursuit of an Australian nationalist agenda. The thesis explores why the magazine’s authors embraced German National Socialism and how Nazi ideology interacted with a particular version of Australian nationalism. The two main actors behind ‘The Publicist’, William John Miles and Percy Reginald ‘Inky’ Stephensen, embraced German National Socialism as part of their development of a complex Australian nationalism. In part, this embrace reflected their efforts to distance Australian nationalism from the dominant notion of Australia as a British nation. In the process, elements of National Socialist ideology also influenced Miles’ and Stephensen’s Australian nationalism. Chapter 1 examines the comparison between Stephensen’s belief in ‘Race and Place’ and Nazi ‘blood and soil’ ideology. I argue that Stephensen developed his notion of ‘Race and Place’ independent from his embrace of National Socialism, and specifically disavowed a connection between the two ideologies, preferring to emphasise the distinction between Australia and Britain. Chapter 2 analyses Hitler’s speeches as they were presented in ‘The Publicist’, and Miles’ and Stephensen’s conception of leadership, in order to determine why they embraced Hitler and Nazi Germany. I argue that Miles and Stephensen saw Germany under the Treaty of Versailles as analogous to Australia as a British Dominion, and embraced the leadership style of Hitler because he was a man who led Germany to national resurgence. Chapter 3 examines the anti-Semitism of ‘The Publicist’, mostly through the reaction of Stephensen, Miles, and a third contributor, Martin Watts, to a proposed scheme to establish a settlement in the Kimberley region for Jewish refugees. I argue that Stephensen and Miles combined a version of the White Australia Policy with Nazi-inspired anti-Semitism in a distinctive conceptualisation of the nation and the threats that it faced.
-
ItemGekokujo: folklore, reformation and suppression in the Samurai era( 2018)Whilst the concept of gekokujo (low overcoming high) is well documented in the study of medieval Japan it has traditionally been confined to the militarism that characterized the late fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. This is not without reason as the phrase tends to appear more frequently in the historical record after the Onin War which began in 1467. The purpose of this thesis is essentially to expand these parameters and consider the role of gekokujo in Japanese society prior to this event, as well as to consider the various civil or literary contexts to which gekokujo may have applied. By utilizing a wide range of sources from folk stories to clan codes and shogunate case rulings this thesis examines gekokujo and its applications from the establishment of the Kamakura Shogunate in 1192 to the conclusion of the Sengoku Period in the year 1600. The thesis has three main assertions: 1) Evidence of gekokujo as a thematic concept can be traced at least as far back as the emergent Japanese folklore of the 13th century. 2) Gekokujo may have civil as well as military manifestations. 3) The concept of gekokujo influenced civil, legislative and social systems. The manner by which the latter occurred was dependent upon time and region. Whereas under the Kamakura regime it could be argued that gekokujo played a role in mechanisms of meritocratic class mobility, the fear of gekokujo held by the ruling class during the political turbulence of the Sengoku Period appears to have contributed to the legislative restrictions implemented provincially by the independent daimyo in the 15th and 16th centuries. In utilizing a diversity of sources the thesis takes an expansive approach in an attempt to create a holistic blueprint of gekokujo’s social impact across a four hundred year period.
-
ItemMelbourne Chinatown redevelopment: the unwritten perspective from the Chinese community( 2018)This thesis presents a history of Melbourne’s Chinatown revitalisation in the 1970s and 1980s from the Chinese perspective. In 1970, with its heritage significance, the City Council and later the State government decided to revitalise the area and transform it into a tourist attraction in 1975 and 1983 respectively. Interestingly, responses from the Chinese community to the revitalisation in 1975 (i.e., stage-one redevelopment) and 1983 (i.e., stage-two redevelopment) were very different: there was resistance towards the project in 1975 while no criticism was noted towards that in 1983. The thesis seeks to fill the gap of this part of Chinatown history and understand the Chinese attitude to the establishment of Chinatown ‘on its own term.’ Two major questions were discussed in the thesis: (i) who in the Chinese community had resisted the redevelopment and what were the reasons that might have influenced their judgment to the redevelopment and (ii) why there was a shift of attitude among the Chinese community within a short span of eight years between 1975 to 1983? Apart from looking into council records, newspapers (in both English and Chinese), oral testimonies of the Chinese representatives and businessmen who were involved in or witnessed the revitalisation are the primary source that the research relies on to conduct a thorough investigation of the Chinese’s perception of the revitalisation. To ensure the accuracy of sources, this thesis sought to correlate with other primary sources, such as newspapers and testimonies from other interviewees. Accounts that were not verifiable were removed from the thesis. The thesis is divided into three chapters. The first chapter is an overview of the objectives and motivations of the revitalisation in 1975 and 1983, as well as a comparison of the Chinese responses towards the revitalisation between its first and second stage. The second chapter is a further discussion of the Chinese resistance in 1975-6. It identified the group in the Chinese community who had resisted the project and explored the major reasons that had driven the resistance. In particular, it investigated how David Wang’s inadequate representativeness in the Chinese community (a Chinese politician and businessman in Melbourne who had very likely initiated the revitalisation to the council) might have led the project to be less appealing to some of his Chinese fellows. The last chapter focused on the stage-two redevelopment in 1983 and explained the shift of attitude in terms of the different objective of the latter scheme; the consultation process; and the changing circumstances of the Chinese experience in Multicultural Australia.
-
ItemThey came to heal: Australia’s medical immigrants, 1960 to the present( 2018)This thesis examines the patterns of migration of international medical graduates (IMG) since 1960 and the processes used to decide who would be licensed to practice. It draws on several historiographical genres. Quantitative methods were used extensively to ascertain trends for which explanations based on political and social history could be sought. Complementing this larger picture, a collection of oral histories explores the social causes and consequences of migration, and the actualities of Australia’s licensing processes as experienced by individual immigrants The thesis fills a gap in historical research on the subject by compiling and analysing information previously reported only incompletely and in cross-sectional fashion during this period, juxtaposing it with examples that reveal the human impact of fluctuating official policies during this time. It will argue that Australia has unresolved problems when it comes to balancing the desire of immigrant doctors to practise in their new country with the expectations of the population for equitably distributed and high-quality health care.