School of Historical and Philosophical Studies - Theses
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ItemJames Connolly and the Irish Left (1916-1940)( [1987])James Connolly (1868-1916) is a major figure not only in Irish history but also on the broader canvas of international socialism. A man of many parts - militant labour organiser, socialist leader, military commander, newspaper editor, writer, political theorist - his life's work was dedicated to socialist revolution and as such provides a fascinating example, one might even say 'model', of a revolutionary life. The thesis examines Connolly's political theory and practice as it developed over the quarter-century of his active commitment to the 'cause' of socialist revolution and reconstruction, and then proceeds to an exploration of the extent to which Connolly's political legacy provided the Irish Left, during the years 1916-40, with an effective practical and theoretical instrument of revolutionary socialism. The thesis comprises two main sections and a short interlinking chapter. Part One is an interpretation of Connolly's political thought and practice and consists of seven chapters under the heading - 'The Women's Movement', 'Religion', 'Syndicalism' , 'Socialism and Nationalism', 'The Revolutionary Party', 'Violence' and 'Revolution'. The second section uses the same seven subject headings to analyse the Irish Left's understanding of and reaction to Connolly's political legacy. Connolly had little opportunity to indulge in abstract political theorising. The questions which concerned him related to the immediate problems and demands of effective labour organisation and revolutionary strategy, pressing problems which he encountered during his daily activities as a labour leader and dedicated revolutionary. Thus, although socialist fundamentals remained sacrosanct, Connolly was always willing to learn from experience and to grasp new opportunities whenever they arose. This of course meant that his political positions altered over time, and that his thoughts and writings on issues such as party organisation underwent considerable change over the years. The first section of the thesis charts and analyses those changes. A political figure of Connolly's stature was bound to exert some influence on the Irish Left in the years after his execution and the Part Three of the thesis is devoted to an exploration and assessment of the nature and extent of this impact. The general conclusion of the thesis is that while Connolly provided great inspiration to the Irish Left, his political analyses and revolutionary schemas were, in the main, inadequately understood and thus misinterpreted and misapplied. Connolly's political legacy was essentially one of opportunistic revolutionary adventurism. His legacy had revolutionary potential but it was not one which provided a systematic guide, in terms of either theoretical clarity or organisational structure, to the Irish Left.
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ItemWitnessing Australian stories: history, testimony and memory in contemporary culture( 2010)This thesis identifies and examines a new form of public memory-work: witnessing. Since the late 1980s, witnessing has developed in response to the increased audibility of the voices of Australian Indigenous peoples and asylum seekers. Drawing upon theories of witnessing that understand the process as an exchange between a testifier and a ‘second person’, I perform a discourse analysis of the responses of settler Australians to the rise of marginal voices. Witnessing names both a set of cultural practices and a collective space of contestation over whose stories count as ‘Australian’. Analysing a range of popular texts - including literature, autobiography, history, film and television programmes - I demonstrate the omnipresence of witnessing within Australian public culture as a mode of nation building. Though linked to global phenomena, witnessing is informed by, and productive of, specifically national communities. From Kate Grenville's frontier novel The Secret River (2005), through to the surf documentary Bra Boys (2007), witnessing has come to mediate the way that people are heard in public, and how their histories and experiences are understood within cultural memory. Linked to discourses on national virtue and renewal, witnessing has emerged as a liberal cultural politics of recognition that works to re-constitute settler Australians as ‘good’ citizens. It positions Indigenous peoples and asylum seekers as ‘objects’ of feeling, and settler Australians as ‘gatekeepers’ of national history. Yet even with these limits, witnessing remains vital for a diverse range of groups and individuals in their efforts to secure recognition and reparation for injustice. Though derided under the Howard government as an ‘elite’ discourse, for a large minority of settler Australians witnessing has become central to understandings of ‘good’ citizenship. With the election of Rudd - and the declaration of two national apologies - witnessing has been thoroughly mainstreamed as the apotheosis of a ‘fair go’.
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ItemAccommodation and retreat: politics in Anglo-Dutch New York City, 1700-1760( 1982)This thesis began as a study of popular politics in pre-Revolutionary New York City. In the course of this inquiry into the antecedents of crowd activity in the revolutionary era, I discovered that in the first six decades of the eighteenth century popular political involvement in New York was minimal and sporadic. Indeed, one of the most striking aspects of New York City politics in this period is the quiescence of the populace. Overt conflict involving large numbers of people is absent. Moreover, there is very little evidence of widespread involvement in election politics, and no evidence at all that the hegemony of the ruling elite was ever challenged from below. The focus of my analysis therefore shifted to a study of the social basis of New York’ s City's elite-dominated politics and also to the factors inhibiting the development of popular politics there. The hypothesis of my new enquiry was that if eighteenth century New York. City, unlike Boston, had a reputation for quiescence, even inertia, then that quiescence and inertia must have been essentially related to the social structure of the town. This was not an easy hypothesis to test, as few sources have survived to illuminate the nature of colonial New York City society. Nevertheless, an examination of those sources which are susceptible to quantitative analysis revealed something as yet undiscovered about the town: the Dutch townsfolk, most of whom were descendants of the original settlers of New Netherland, formed a cohesive and self-recognizing community until mid-century. This finding suggested another hypothesis: it was that if we can establish that the Dutch and Dutch-identified townsmen of New York City were less inclined than the English townsmen to become involved in adversary politics, then the persistence of the Dutch needs to be considered as an important factor inhibiting both the escalation of political conflict and the radicalization of the town's politics. Testing this hypothesis proved to be a difficult task. The first problem was to determine just who were Dutch or Dutch identified in eighteenth century New York City. The second was to ascertain whether the Dutch - as Dutch - played a role in the town's politics after 1700. This involved determining whether Dutch-identified townsmen had a distinctively different political orientation from the English. Positive proofs that they did are hard to come by, but negative evidence - such as their failure to organize at the polls - suggests strongly that the Dutch were indeed disinclined to become involved in the adversary politics at which the English and English identified excelled. In fact, the Dutch in eighteenth century New York City avoided or retreated from conflictual situations. The impact which this disinclination had on the evolution of New York City politics is examined in this thesis. More broadly, this thesis challenges the recently established paradigm of analysis emphasizing the modernity and increasingly democratic nature of eighteenth century New York City politics. The main problem with this model is that it creates the erroneous impression that in the six decades prior to the Stamp Act riots, New York politics moved relentlessly forward towards the Revolution and the modern era. Much of my analysis may seem negative. Much of it is. I am concerned to show that the evidence for an evolutionary view of colonial New York politics does not exist for New York City in the period 1700 to 1760. The history of the town in that period is rather the history of what did not occur. More particularly, it is the history of the non-evolution of a democratically-orientated or radical mode of politics.
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ItemAn age of certainty: three generations of Melbourne radicals, 1870-1988( 2001)This thesis traces the history of a Melbourne family, the Higgins-Palmer family, over three generations, focusing on the political formation and activities of six family members: H B Higgins, Nettie Palmer, Vance Palmer, Esmonde Higgins, Aileen Palmer and Helen Palmer. It seeks to locate them in the evolution of radical politics in Australia, and particularly in Melbourne, from the 1890s to the 1960s. The thesis begins with an examination of the career of H B Higgins in the context of the Victorian tradition of radical liberalism. It follows the development of H B Higgins's niece and nephew, Nettie Palmer (nee Higgins) and Esmonde Higgins, who both, in different ways and to different degrees, reacted against that tradition. Nettie's career before 1914 leads us to the rise and fall of the Victorian Socialist Party, Esmonde's postwar career to the formative years of the Australian communist party. The thesis then moves to the 1930s, when both Nettie Palmer and Esmonde Higgins have become disillusioned with their earlier beliefs but when Nettie's daughters, Aileen and Helen Palmer, have become active communists. The various family conflicts that arise from this are considered. In the 1950s Helen Palmer leaves the Communist Party, and Vance and Nettie Palmer and Esmonde Higgins move to the end of their careers, rediscovering in various ways the Melbourne radical and liberal tradition. The thesis tries within the space available to give as full a picture as possible of the lives and careers of six complex and highly articulate people, all of whom at various times played important roles in aspects of Australian political, intellectual and cultural history. Their literary careers are necessarily given only brief consideration, at risk of some distortion of their priorities in life. The focus is on the evolution of their political views, their political relationships with one another, and their involvements in the wider political life of 20th century Australia.
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ItemThe economic and political development of Victoria 1877-1881( 1951)Alfred Deakin wrote in a short (unpublished) memoir on the period surveyed in this thesis, “Whatever the relative importance or interest of the years 1875 – 1882 may be, it is certain that the tide of political life ran then much more fiercely than at any subsequent period.” It was to see why political life was so bitter and ran ‘so fiercely’ that this work was undertaken. Letter books and other MS material belonging to members of the Victorian Legislature in the period have been made available by several Victorian families and the access given to this material has been of great assistance to the writer. The division into sections – Part I Economic Development and its relation to Politics, Part II, Political Development – has been made necessary by the pioneering character of the work. Although the whole theme of the thesis centres in the complex interaction of economic and political development, the division was found necessary in order to deal more completely with topics on which there has been no detailed study.
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ItemThe road to Singapore: Australian defence and foreign policies 1919-1941( 2008)Nationalist historians have argued, variously, that Australia was betrayed by Britain in 1941-42 with the fall of Singapore, and plunged into crisis, or conversely, that the nation was 'armed and ready' for the much feared Japanese invasion. Arguing that neither proposition is true, this thesis establishes that Australia was not armed and ready even for a much feared large-scale Japanese invasion. Nor was the nation ready for the small-scale Japanese attacks which were more probable and which, under Imperial defence, were a local defence responsibility. This thesis explains why Australia was unprepared. It does this by exploring Australian understandings of Imperial defence, assessing Australian responses to international crises 1919-1939, evaluating criticisms of those responses, and analysing the nature of domestic politics. It concludes with a socioeconomic analysis of Australia's key elites - political, military, and industrial.(Open document for complete abstract)