School of Historical and Philosophical Studies - Theses
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ItemWorking wood: the state, wood science and industry: Australia, 1918–1949( 2021)This study identified the role of three national forest products laboratories and their relationship with other government agencies and specifically, to the Australian timber industry. The laboratories were established with several objectives, including to reduce the importation of timber, develop industry strategies for the use of Australian timbers, identify the properties of Australian woods and minimise problems for the timber industry. A further aim was to implement ‘national efficiency’ (discussed below). The work of the laboratories was based on a common theme: to encourage industries to understand that by using Australian timber, they would help both the nation and their businesses. A major objective of this thesis is to address the ‘doing’ of science in laboratories in conjunction with industry and government Archives from Australia and the United Kingdom were used. Not all of the archives had been opened which suggested that the thesis filled a gap in the history of the Australian wood science. Libraries were also used in Australia and the United Kingdom. A further methodology identified a ‘Triple helix’ between research, industry and government, which focused on collaboration between three organisations whose goals were to conduct research, to develop research outcomes and increase National efficiency. Archival material exposed the frequency of communications between the laboratories and the secondary timber industry. Six stories provided a broad perspective of the research conducted by the laboratories. Time frames of each chapters partially overlapped. The subjects connected across time, and provided depth to the thesis. Using the helix as the framework, the relationship between the laboratories, industry and the national science organisations was identified as collaboration, conflict, innovation, knowledge transfer and networking.
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ItemNo Masters But Ourselves: Black Reconstruction in the Deep South City( 2022)The destruction of slavery brought about dramatic opportunities and challenges for formerly enslaved Black Southerners, many of whom migrated to Southern cities in search of safety and freedom following the Civil War. During Reconstruction, the Deep South city offered economic, social and political opportunities that rural life could not, and it was in the city that Black Southerners were able to assert themselves in public and private spaces. These assertions of Black power and Black identity varied from seemingly minor interactions on the sidewalk, in the workplace or at school, to street celebrations, protests, strikes and pitched battles. Through an examination of Black daily life and the constant threat of white violence during this period, this thesis demonstrates how Black Southerners asserted radical ideas of Black power and freedom in the city space. Despite the relative freedom that urban life offered, white racial violence and brutality remained a constant – making the achievements of Black men, women and children in this period all the more extraordinary. It is through these – often temporary – achievements, that one can see the radical potential of Black Reconstruction to revise the foundations and future of the American republic, to an extent that was not then and has not now been fully realized.
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ItemContentious Routes: Ireland Questions, Radical Political Articulations and Settler Ambivalence in (White) Australia, c. 1909 - 1923( 2021)This thesis is a transnational history of the ‘Ireland Question' in the imperial and ethico-political imaginary of radical and labour movements in (‘White’) Australia during the ‘Irish revolutionary period’, broadly conceived. It traces the contestation of 'Ireland' as a political signifier, with attention to its constitutive differences, transnational circuitries, utopian investments, relations of recognition and desire, and articulatory practices. Where previous studies of Irish nationalisms in Australia have deployed 'the nation' as a consensualist category of analysis, this study reinterprets the ‘Ireland Question’ in postnational terms as contentious and within routes. Combining attention to settler-colonial difference with the discursive articulation of political forms, it situates the 'Ireland Question' firstly in relation to the political as a signifier of settler ambivalence, and secondly to politics as a social movement. Drawing on archival research in Australia, Ireland and Britain, it analyses personal papers, letters, political periodicals, state surveillance records, political ephemera and pamphlets. Beyond the 'Ireland Question' in the imperial labour movement, this study affords serious attention to historical dimensions at the hybrid boundaries of ‘long-distance nationalism’ including political travel performances in Ireland, non-nationalist transnational political networks ranging from feminist to socialist connections, and non-Irish political identification with 'Ireland.' It proposes that this unstable play of meanings comprised a heterogeneity of political positions and networks whose convergence during the conjuncture of 1916-1921 was both contingent and politically contested: one that signified in excess of either Australian nationalist historical teleologies or a coherent 'transnational Irish revolution.'
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ItemRemembering the counterculture: Melbourne’s inner-urban alternative communities of the 1960s and 1970s( 2019)In the 1960s and 1970s, a counterculture emerged in Melbourne’s inner-urban suburbs, part of progressive cultural and political shifts that were occurring in Western democracies worldwide. This counterculture sought to enact political and social change through experimenting with the fabric of everyday life in the inner-urban space. They did this in the ways in which they ate, socialised, lived, related to money, work, the community around them, and lived – often in shared or communal housing. The ways in which they lived, loved, related to the community around them, and found social and personal fulfilment was tied up with a countercultural politics. My thesis argues that these inner-urban counterculturalists embodied a progressive politics which articulated and enacted a profoundly personal criticism of post-war conservatism.
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ItemRed shadow: Malayan Communist Memoirs as Parallel Histories of Malaysia( 2019)The Malayan Emergency (1948-60) has long been understood from the perspective of the incumbent British and Malay(si)an governments and is universally regarded as a successful counter-insurgency operation against foreign-inspired communists. To date we still have a very limited understanding of what the struggle meant for members of the Malayan Communist Party (MCP) and rarely have their voice voices, those who fought on the other side of this struggle, been considered. However, over the last two decades, in the twilight of their lives, a number of members of the MCP have begun to share their personal stories about what they fought for and why. These new first-hand accounts present different insights into the struggle. This thesis uses a unique and as yet underutilized source for studying the members of the MCP: the Chinese-language memoirs of former MCP members. These memoirs present, in the words of MCP members themselves, their motives for why they joined the movement and what their life in the movement was like. I critically analyze these accounts paying attention to the ideas MCP members had for an independent Malay(si)a and the way in which the authors identify with that ideal. Through closer evaluation of the memoirs, this research gives voice to these largely forgotten revolutionaries.
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ItemHistorical archaeology and history: a Little Lon case study( 2015)This thesis is about the interpretation of historical archaeology. Recognised as an important source of historical evidence, Australian governments have long acknowledged historical archaeology’s importance in legislation since the 19th century. Despite statutory recognition however, exactly why historical archaeology is important and how it can contribute to our understanding of Australian history is poorly understood. Comprehending historical archaeology’s significance to constructions of history is of utmost importance, because without its unique perspective, a vast area of human experience will remain effectively unacknowledged. This thesis explores public understandings of historical archaeology’s contribution to history making, in order to gauge the range and complexity of problems that influence these vague perceptions.
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ItemAspects of ancient Near Eastern chronology (c. 1600-700 BC)( 2007)The chronology of the Late Bronze and Early Iron Age Near East is currently a topic of intense scholarly debate. The conventional/orthodox chronology for this period has been assembled over the past one-two centuries using information from King-lists, royal annals and administrative documents, primarily those from the Great Kingdoms of Egypt, Assyria and Babylonia. This major enterprise has resulted in what can best be described as an extremely complex but little understood jigsaw puzzle composed of a multiplicity of loosely connected data. I argue in my thesis that this conventional chronology is fundamentally wrong, and that Egyptian New Kingdom (Memphite) dates should be lowered by 200 years to match historical actuality. This chronological adjustment is achieved in two stages: first, the removal of precisely 85 years of absolute Assyrian chronology from between the reigns of Shalmaneser II and Ashur-dan II; and second, the downward displacement of Egyptian Memphite dates relative to LBA Assyrian chronology by a further 115 years. Moreover, I rely upon Kuhnian epistemology to structure this alternate chronology so as to make it methodologically superior to the conventional chronology in terms of historical accuracy, precision, consistency and testability.