School of Historical and Philosophical Studies - Theses
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ItemThe transformation of Australian military heroism during the First World War( 2019)This thesis examines how Australian heroism was defined and represented during the First World War. I present an in-depth analysis of two sets of primary sources: Victoria Cross (VC) medal citations and Australian wartime newspapers. Victoria Cross citations are official British military descriptions of battlefield acts that have earned a serviceman the VC medal and therefore offer a window into how British and dominion commanders awarded and prescribed heroism. My analysis of all British and dominion VC citations, from the institution of the medal in 1856 to the end of the First World War in November 1918, show that the type of act that was primarily awarded the VC changed in late 1916 and early 1917. While most VCs were awarded for acts of saving life before this point, this changed to an emphasis on acts of killing. Statistics compiled from VC citations also show that Australians were exceptional in the way they were awarded the medal during the conflict, receiving proportionally more awards for killing and fewer for life saving than any other British or dominion nation. Analysis of major Australian newspapers’ representations of military heroism during the war reveals a similar trend. Australian newspapers primarily represented stretcher-bearers and wounded men as the heroes of Gallipoli in reports throughout 1915, yet from the entry of Australian forces into the Western Front in 1916, newspaper representations of heroism focused far more on men who killed the enemy. This thesis offers an original contribution to the literature by showing how and why pre-war ideals of heroism transformed in Australia during the course of the First World War. It specifically identifies the dominant model of Australian heroism that existed in 1914, and traces how it was displaced by new ideals of heroism considered more necessary and apt for the conditions of the Western Front. In identifying the shifting ideals that were officially recognised and widely represented as epitomising the highest forms of military valour, this thesis is the first to examine the nature of Australian hegemonic heroism during the First World War. In analysing the dominant heroic model in Australia during the First World War and showing how and why this model transformed over the course of the conflict, this study presents new insights into the nature of heroism and masculinity in wartime Australia.
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ItemThrough Fire and Flood: Migrant Memories of Displacement and Belonging in Australia( 2019)Natural disasters are a significant feature of the Australian environment. In a country with a rich history of immigration, it is therefore surprising that historians have not yet examined the specific challenges faced by immigrants within this hazardous environment. This thesis examines migrants’ memories and experiences of bushfires and floods in Australia. Drawing on oral history interviews and regional case studies, this thesis explores the entanglement of migration and natural disaster in Australia and in the lives of migrants. Oral history interviews with migrants who have experienced bushfires in Victoria or floods in Maitland, New South Wales, are at the heart of this study. This thesis contributes to scholarship in three distinct fields—migration and environmental history, and disaster studies—and brings them together through an examination of migrants’ memories of bushfires and floods in Australia. Although traumatic experiences, displacement, and a changed and challenged sense of home, community and attachment to place and environment are common themes of both migrants and survivors of fire and flood, rarely have the similarities between these experiences been noted. This thesis is not a history of natural disasters in Australia, nor a retelling of a history of immigration to Australia, but an exploration of experiences of ‘double displacement’. This thesis argues that migrants’ recollections reveal how their burgeoning sense of home, community and attachment to place and environment was challenged by natural disasters. It highlights how their experience of ‘double displacement’ contributed to a new sense of home and belonging in a natural disaster-prone country.
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ItemThe Influence of the friendly society movement in Victoria, 1835-1920( 2019)ABSTRACT Entrepreneurial individuals who migrated seeking adventure, wealth and opportunity initially stimulated friendly societies in Victoria. As seen through the development of friendly societies in Victoria, this thesis examines the migration of an English nineteenth-century culture of self-help. Friendly societies may be described as mutually operated, community-based, benefit societies that encouraged financial prudence and social conviviality within the umbrella of recognised institutions that lent social respectability to their members. The benefits initially obtained were sickness benefit payments, funeral benefits and ultimately medical benefits – all at a time when no State social security systems existed. Contemporaneously, they were social institutions wherein members attended regular meetings for social interaction and the friendship of like-minded individuals. Members were highly visible in community activities from the smallest bush community picnics to attendances at Royal visits. Membership provided a social cache and well as financial peace of mind, both important features of nineteenth-century Victorian society. This is the first scholarly work on the friendly society movement in Victoria, a significant location for the establishment of such societies in Australia. The thesis reveals for the first time that members came from all strata of occupations, from labourers to High Court Judges – a finding that challenges conventional wisdom about the class composition of friendly societies. Finally, the extent of their presence in all aspects of society, from philanthropic to military, and rural to urban, is revealed through their activities and influence in their communities. Their physical legacy has diminished as buildings were demolished or re-purposed, but it remains visible in some prominent structures in major Victorian cities. A final legacy is the Victorian community’s on-going financial use of private health insurance cover. This financial prudence has its roots in the friendly society movement. Theirs is largely an invisible history but one deserving of being told.
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ItemBeyond the aetiology debate: the “great LSD scandal” at Newhaven Private Hospital & the social foundations of mental health legislation in Victoria, Australia( 2017)This research presents a case for the extension of existing analyses of Australian psychiatric scandals beyond the conclusion that such events are an inherent feature of the profession by virtue of its failure to resolve the aetiology debate. A mid-century impasse in the aetiology debate – the continuous shifting over time of professional commitment between organic and environmental aetiologies of mental illness – has been identified as the catalyst for the emergence of the therapeutic paradigm of eclecticism that fostered the deep sleep therapy and ‘Therapeutic Community’ programs that were central to Australia’s two infamous psychiatric scandals at Chelmsford and Townsville, respectively. While these two affairs were enduring the scrutiny of commissions of inquiry, the recommendations of which translated to the legislative reform of mental health services in the states of New South Wales and Queensland, a third such scandal was unfolding at Newhaven Private Hospital in Victoria involving the “injudicious use” of therapeutic LSD. By the late 1980s and early 90s, a number of former “patients” of Newhaven emerged claiming that they had never suffered any mental illness and that the LSD they had received had not been administered for therapeutic purposes but rather as a recruitment tool for a fringe religious sect known as The Family that had commandeered the hospital and the loyalty of a number of its staff. What constituted the scandal at Newhaven, however, was the fact that these activities continued unchallenged despite the implementation of statutory regulations – the Poisons (Hallucinogenic Drugs) Regulations 1967 – designed specifically to protect against the abuse of therapeutic hallucinogens. Having avoided any formal inquiry of its own, the Newhaven case represented not only a compelling narrative history opportunity, but also a test of the robustness of the prevailing argument that such scandals emerge as a consequence of the profession’s failure to achieve consensus on the aetiology of mental illness against the implication that inadequate legislation facilitated the abuse. Using the case of Newhaven as a working example, this research analyses the historical mental health legislation of Victoria and parliamentary debates to construct a legislative history of the aetiology debate and confirm its role in the emergence of psychiatric scandal, arguing that the Poisons (Hallucinogenic Drugs) Regulations 1967, and indeed mental health policy more broadly, were in fact products of the debate. Furthermore, it demonstrates how, far from being insulated within the profession of psychiatry, the debate itself was informed by wider prevailing social, cultural, political and economic trends. The abuse of therapeutic LSD unfolded under permissive regulations which reflected the permissive nature of broader mental health policy embodied in the Mental Hygiene Acts and their signature initiative of deinstitutionalisation. This permissiveness was a symptom of the underlying atmosphere of eclecticism that characterised mid-century psychiatry in Victoria as it sought to accommodate simultaneously the biological and social bases for the eugenic and community-based measures, respectively, that developed in response to the co-emergent social forces of the ‘mental hygiene’ and ‘anti-psychiatry’ movements.
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ItemAn imaginary economy : gambling, commodity, meaning( 2005)This thesis draws on the example of the contemporary phenomenon of electronic gaming machine (EGM) use in the Australian state of Victoria in order to construct an argument in the mode of social theory, relating the psyche's demand for meaning to the nature of consumption in contemporary capitalism. The thesis argues that EGM consumption may be viewed as an example of commodification of the 'interiority' of the subject. Two paths are utilised. The first is a theoretically oriented discussion of the necessity impelling humans to the generation of meaning, and the manner in which this meaning is created. This discussion also encompasses the importance of signification and processes of institution for the maintenance of heteronomous society, and the pseudo-mastery of social institutions. It involves a discussion of the creation of the social individual as consuming individual. The second path is a discussion of empirical material (including official data and the accounts of gamblers) which is used to generate an argument about the socio-economic processes maintaining heteronomous society, and the development of an ethic of life focussed on intensified forms of capitalist consumption. Arguments drawn from Nietzsche, Weber, Castoriadis and others are utilised to illustrate the fragmentation of the originary monad, required for successful creation of the social subject, and how this process of socialisation draws and must draw on processes of meaning creation and signification to create a social relationship formed between society and the psyche, via the concatenation of the social and radical imaginaries. The centrality of the significations of commodity and money is utilised to argue that consumption of EGMs is an exemplary example of contemporary consumption, the consumption of interiority, in which consumption has become a duty and an ethic, providing apparent access to a much desired state where monadic unity is apparently available, at a price.
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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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ItemA history of Churchill Island: settlement, land use and the making of a heritage site( 2015)This thesis utilises a public history approach to respond to the desires of the project’s public stakeholders to obtain a rigorous and detailed history of Churchill Island, and to examine its nature as a heritage site. It examines how Churchill Island has been variously imagined and used to make a permanent settler colonial space. In doing so it argues that the history of the island offers a rich example of the complexity of settlement in Victoria. An exploration of the intersections between the practices of community engagement, academia and history, the thesis responds to the challenges thrown up by the History Wars and the Churchill Island Project by making a history of settlement that is both academically critical and publicly accepted.
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ItemGreat Britain's exiles sent to Port Phillip, Australia, 1844-1849: Lord Stanley's experiment( 2014)This thesis examines the origin, operation and outcome of the exile scheme implemented in Port Phillip between 1844 and 1849. It argues that the scheme announced by Lord Stanley, British Colonial Secretary, was an experiment in prisoner reform and labour deployment originating in imperial desperation and expediency. It notes how the scheme divided European settlers and inflamed the issue of separation from New South Wales. I conclude that this significant, often-overlooked episode in Australia's immigration history had positive outcomes for many, whilst others re-offended, partly due to government mismanagement. The early 1840s was a time of economic distress and increasing crime in Britain, but also a time of changing attitudes to prison reform. This period also witnessed economic depression in the Australian colonies. The exile scheme was created largely in response to the deteriorating employment circumstances in the penal colony of Van Diemen’s Land, to which the exiles were destined. One aim of the experiment was to provide opportunities for the exiles to begin new lives in the colony. Between 1844 and 1849, Britain transported to Port Phillip nine shiploads of conditionally-pardoned exiles from Pentonville, Millbank and Parkhurst Prisons. These 1,727 men and boys had experienced lengthy periods under the ‘separate system’ of incarceration, during which they learned a trade and improved their literacy levels. Upon arrival they landed as free men in Melbourne, Geelong and Portland, provided they did not return to Britain during the remainder of their sentences. The despatches containing Lord Stanley’s announcement and instructions accompanied the exiles in the first ship, the Royal George. These despatches were addressed to the Governor of New South Wales, Sir George Gipps, to the Lieutenant-Governor of Van Diemen’s Land, Sir John Eardley-Wilmot, and to the Superintendent of Port Phillip, Charles La Trobe. The exiles were enthusiastically received by pastoralists anxious for rural labourers, but stigmatized and feared by the townspeople who dubbed them ‘Pentonvillains’. The dread of a convict taint, inflamed by the press, resulted in the exiles’ presence becoming a catalyst which unleashed a spirit of defiance amongst the townspeople against the imperial government’s policy. Their response accelerated political action, which re-emerged in the campaigns of the Anti-Transportation League. This thesis seeks to give greater voice to the exiles and their descendants. In so doing, it draws on a wealth of archival sources in Britain and Australia, supplements limited secondary sources on this topic and utilises for the first time information provided by family historians. In particular, this thesis has benefitted from a meticulous examination of the prison registers. My thesis argues that while the exile scheme had positive outcomes for many participants who established productive lives in Australia, others were less successful in the colony. Finally, this thesis asserts that, despite the failures, the exile scheme was a qualified success, and that many exiles and their descendants have contributed significantly to Australian society.
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ItemA history of zoological acclimatisation in Victoria, 1858-1900( 2014)Zoological acclimatisation in Victoria between 1858 and 1900 was an attempt to restore, understand and improve the distribution of animals in the colony. Studying it provides a deepened scholarly understanding of colonial science, Australian and transnational environmental history, and the world-wide nineteenth-century acclimatisation network. The actions of the Acclimatisation Society of Victoria (ASV) and its successor organisations, the regional fish acclimatisation societies and the Fisheries and Game branch of the Department of Agriculture, can be best explained by an evolving combination of scientific, aesthetic, utilitarian and political conceptualisations of the Victorian landscape and its flora and fauna. In part, the importation of exotic organisms and translocation of native organisms was an attempt to address and repair post-colonisation ecological damage. Furthermore, zoological acclimatisation was conditioned by disputed and changing notions of evolution, biogeographic distribution and climate both within the ASV and in broader colonial Victorian society. These arguments are substantiated by combining the techniques and scholarship of environmental history and the history of science. This combination allows for sophisticated analysis of zoological acclimatisation as a process of introducing exotic species and managing both introduced and native species. Zoological acclimatisation in Victoria, seen in these expansive terms, was more complex, contradictory, long-lasting and influential than previously realised.
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ItemHomefront hostilities: the first world war and domestic violence in Victoria( 2004)This thesis examines the influence of the First World War on domestic violence in Victoria, Australia. A reading of court cases, newspaper reports, official records and oral testimonies reveals a connection between the war and individuals' violent behaviour within marriage, apparent during the war and in the decade following the cessation of hostilities. This connection explains what appears to be an increased incidence of domestic violence in the immediate aftermath of the war. A link between veterans' war trauma and domestic violence - frequently assumed in the historiography - existed, but this was just one aspect of the war's impact on domestic violence and did not account for all cases of returned-soldier wife abuse. The war contributed to both veterans' and civilian men's wife abuse by idealising male aggression and by provoking a range of experiences that personally disempowered men. Against the masculine ideal of the fearless Anzac, many men's self-esteem diminished. Failure to enlist, failure to fight, and failure to cope with horrifying memories of battle were some of the ways in which men fell short of their own and society's expectations of manliness. Male insecurity was further exacerbated by women's increased self-assertions. The war afforded many women greater social and economic autonomy, a situation which made wives' separation from violent husbands more viable. The war was influential, too, in shaping social responses to domestic violence. The new masculine hierarchy of wartime affected judicial determination of who was, and who was not, accountable for acts of violence. Official leniency towards returned-soldier perpetrators was noticeable both during and after the war, and in the post-war years such leniency also extended to civilian defendants. While the outbreak of war sparked renewed enthusiasm for male chivalry towards women, this ideal disappeared rapidly after 1918. ln a context of male antagonism towards women's apparent advancement, a new male ambivalence towards wife abuse emerged within the public realm. The notion of men as victims, rather than as brutal tyrants, informed much official reaction to actual cases of domestic violence. Greater official indifference to men's violence against their wives after the First World War was the result not only of men's fears of female encroachment on male privilege, but of a changing interpretation of the causes of domestic violence. The widespread phenomenon of shell shock in soldiers served to further the currency of psychological theories of human behaviour. In the post-war decade, the stereotype of the disturbed violent veteran both emerged from, and influenced, the proceedings of cases of domestic violence in Victorian courts. The idea that returned-soldier violence was a product of battle nerves weighed on cases of wife abuse, regardless of whether the facts of individual cases evinced such a connection. The violence of civilian men also increasingly came to be understood in a psychological framework during the 1920s. As the community's awareness of psychological factors burgeoned, the belief that domestic violence was an outcome of extraordinary stresses on ordinary men's minds began to prevail in the public sphere. Such an understanding helped to dismantle the dominant pre-war stereotype of the working-class 'wife-beater'.