School of Historical and Philosophical Studies - Theses

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    Colonising Yolngu defence : Arnhem Land in the Second World War and transnational uses of indigenous people in the Second World War
    Riseman, Noah. (University of Melbourne, 2008)
    The thesis examines the involvement in World War II of the Yolngu people of Arnhem Land, in the context of colonialism in the Northern Territory, and with comparative attention to the war experiences of the indigenous people of Papua New Guinea. and the Native American Navajo. Yolngu participated in the war through various avenues, including the provision of labour for white Australian war initiatives. Most notably Yolngu served as auxiliaries to non-indigenous military units such as the North Australia Observer Unit, and they also participated in the Northern Territory Special Reconnaissance Unit, which was exclusively Aboriginal apart from its leadership. Rather than representing widespread white Australian appreciation of Yolngu skills or recognition of Yolngu equality, the military employment of Yolngu continued structures of ideas and practices inherent in settler colonialism in the north. The military authorities, with government endorsement, organised Yolngu to utilise their skills in defence of the colonial project that was of itself simultaneously robbing Yolngu of their land and rights. Yolngu had their own motivations to work alongside white military, and for the most part participated willingly. Analysis of oral testimony points to their courageous efforts and, unlike the non-indigenous documents, positions Yolngu as central actors in Arnhem Land during the war. Comparative analysis of other colonised indigenous peoples' involvement in World War ll�Pacific Islanders in similar units in Papua and New Guinea, and Navajo Codetalkers in the United States�highlights the existence of common colonial practices that existed transnationally, alongside indigenous peoples' own sense of agency. This study re-centres indigenous people in war narratives while demonstrating at the same time how governments' reliance on indigenous skills and labour in times of crisis did not represent a fundamental change in relations, although for white authorities there were, eventually, unanticipated outcomes from the war for indigenous peoples.
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    Ruby Rich: A Transnational Jewish Australian Feminist
    Rubenstein Sturgess, Cohava ( 2023)
    This thesis examines the life of Ruby Rich (1888-1988) - a leading figure in Australian and international feminist movements and a leading campaigner for women's rights. Alongside her feminist work, she was also a leader in the Australian Jewish community, internationally renowned pianist, peace campaigner and racial hygiene advocate. Rich lived in Australia, London, Paris, Berlin and Switzerland, and attended conferences in Palestine (later Israel), Turkey, Germany, Iran, Denmark, India, England and Italy. These trips imbued within her a cosmopolitan outlook, contributing to her social consciousness. Through a focussed study of key flashpoints in Rich’s life, this thesis analyzes Rich’s mobile life in tandem with her Jewishness in order to provide a nuanced cultural understanding of how Australian and international feminism intersected with a Jewish diasporic self. By connecting disparate sub-disciplines of history, this thesis reveals how Rich operated and positioned herself as an active transnational Jewish-Australian feminist.
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    “A Great and Beautiful Force”: The Making of Political Identities Among Women Activists on the Far Left in Australia, mid-1930s to early 1950s
    Saxon, Abbey ( 2023)
    This thesis examines the political identities of women activitists in the Communist Party of Australia and affiliated organisations from the mid-1930s to the early 1950s, focusing on the interventions of World War II. It suggests that political interactions between women within and beyond the far-left, women developed political identities shaped by gender and feminist issues, along with class. It explores their positioning in the domestic sphere, their political organisations, and the workplace, as spaces which were key to shaping female political identities, complicating suggestions that the time period of study, and the Communist Party throughout the 20th century, were lacking in women-focused activism. It utilises varied sources from the period, drawing on the Women's Sections of left-wing newspapers, feminist and Communist materials, and the novels of Communist women authors Katharine Susannah Prichard and Jean Devanny as sites of cultural framings of gender.
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    A Question of Trust: Secrecy and Intelligence Accountability in Cold War Australia
    Davis, Melanie Elizabeth ( 2023-07)
    Intelligence oversight and transparency have traditionally been conceptualised as a zero-sum equation in which decreases in secrecy were believed to come at the cost of intelligence agency efficacy. This thesis challenges that view. While a certain level of secrecy is protective, this thesis will demonstrate that excessive secrecy and a lack of accountability surrounding intelligence services is ultimately destructive. Using the role, functions and public perceptions of ASIO in Cold War Australia as a case study, I will establish that secrecy negatively affected intelligence efficacy in this period in Australia in multiple ways. With little to no guidance or oversight from Government, ASIO’s products became increasingly irrelevant to policymakers, and both Government and opposition members would lose sight of ASIO’s capabilities, limitations and value to Australian society. With no external guidance and no requirement to be accountable for its actions, secrecy allowed ASIO staff to break the boundaries of their legal remit and become involved in overtly political and partisan affairs. Significantly, secrecy also contributed to reduced trust in intelligence agencies and their staff. ASIO was deeply embedded within the community it served and significantly affected by the attitudes, beliefs and actions of the broader public. When intelligence agencies such as ASIO lose the trust of those they are supposed to protect, the morale of existing staff plummets, the recruitment of quality staff is made more difficult, influence with government and opposition is weakened and government spending on intelligence is threatened. The very legitimacy of intelligence agencies as a necessary element of democratic government can – and did – come in question, and with it, the future of the organisations themselves. Secrecy did not ensure intelligence efficiency in Cold War Australia: by destroying trust in the agency and its legitimacy in the eyes of the Australian public, it eroded it.
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    Working wood: the state, wood science and industry: Australia, 1918–1949
    Dadswell, Gordon Alexander ( 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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    A History of Australia's Immigrant Doctors, 1838-2021: Colonial Beginnings, Contemporary Challenges
    Yeomans, Neville David ( 2022)
    Since colonisation in 1788, Australia has been populated by immigrants. Among them, for all this period, there have been practitioners of Western medicine who qualified overseas. This thesis is about them, now termed International Medical Graduates (IMGs). Starting in 1838, when the first colonial medical Acts were promulgated, it explores who those graduates were, from where they came, why they migrated at specific times in response to geopolitical and other events, how were they received and what were their experiences. Their history is integral to the history of medical practice and medical politics in Australia. It has not previously been examined across the longue durée researched here; the purpose has been to better understand the evolving and continuous process of medical immigration, rather than the fragments that constitute the current historiography. The methodology is quantitative and qualitative. First, a prosopography was constructed comprising all IMGs registered in each colony, state, and territory from 1838 to 1984, supplemented by data from a random sample of contemporary IMGs to bridge to the present. From this, the time course, profile of donor countries, and characteristics of successive waves of IMGs has been documented, then linked to causal historical events, including the changing and frequently obstructive medical legislation. Throughout the colonial period and the first half of the twentieth century, nearly all immigrant doctors had trained in Great Britain and Ireland, often motivated by difficulties establishing practice at home and attracted by opportunities in a new land, but with source countries restricted by the Medical Acts. Then, as Australia opened to migrants from the rest of the world in the second half of the twentieth century, so the spectrum of IMGs expanded immensely—approximately, but not completely matching that of the immigrant populations overall. Currently, about 30 percent of the Australian medical workforce was born and trained overseas. A second aim was to understand and learn from the experiences of living IMGs. For this, 87 oral histories were recorded—using criterion-referenced, random, and snowball sampling. Many were negotiating the pathways to medical registration, under the now national regulator, the Australian Health Practitioner Regulation Agency (AHPRA). The thesis gives them a voice, and illustrates their difficulties and crises—sometimes at the hands of what seems to have been a Kafkaesque bureaucracy. The other pathway for some has been to persuade a specialist college that their overseas qualification is comparable to that of the Australian college. Interviews with college and AHPRA representatives confirm the author’s impression that much has been done recently to improve the fairness of those processes; but the thesis also provides evidence in the oral histories of what appear to be historical and recent injustices. Australia owes much to its IMGs. The thesis allows us to learn from their history during almost two centuries. It concludes with recommendations for how we can still assure the paramount need to protect Australian patients, yet also improve the effectiveness and fairness of our current processes for registering and supporting those who received their medical training overseas.
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    Revisiting Anzac in the Wake of World War Two: Memory and Identity in the Post-War Period, 1945-1960
    Donohoe-Marques, Anton Tarrant ( 2021)
    This thesis explores how war remembrance—in the form of commemorative observance and the building of memorials—developed in Australia in the period that followed World War Two, from 1945 to 1960. It investigates three key questions. First, what was the nature of the interplay between post-World War Two memorialisation and commemoration and the remembrance traditions that had been established during World War One and the interwar period? Second, how was Australia’s post-World War Two remembrance shaped by the particular social, political, and economic circumstances of the period? And finally, what influence did the process and practice of post-World War Two remembrance have on changing conceptions of the Anzac legend and Australian national identity? In addressing these questions, this study contains five distinct case studies, each of which explores a different aspect of war remembrance between 1945 and 1960. These case studies examine the building of memorials, the efforts of veterans to enact remembrance projects, the observance of Anzac Day, the construction of cemeteries overseas, and interactions between Australian war remembrance and foreign diplomacy. In large part these case studies investigate the Australian state’s efforts to enact control over memorialisation and commemoration. However, the thesis also explores various responses to these projects, analysing how resistance from people outside of government, particularly from veterans of both world wars, was an integral part of how war remembrance in the period took shape. Between 1945 and 1960 there was significant change in the ways that Australians remembered war. During World War One and the interwar period, Australians commemorated the war by building around 1,500 memorials, erected in towns and cities across the country. It was also during World War One that Australians began to observe Anzac Day each year on 25 April. But with the advent of a second global conflict, a new range of perspectives, experiences, and memories were incorporated into this pre-existing culture of war remembrance. Forms of commemoration also reflected the shifting circumstances of Australian society. In the post-World War Two period, communities grew rapidly through migration, industrialisation, and economic expansion. It was also a time in which a new generation of veterans returned and reintegrated into society. Finally, Australia was forging a series of new international partnerships during this period. These social, political and economic changes influenced the way that Australians imagined themselves, their place in the world, and the meaning of the Anzac legend. Post-World War Two remembrance was therefore distinguished by an enthusiasm for utilitarian memorials, by the inclusion of new veterans into the fold of war remembrance, and diplomatically, by the representation of new international relationships with the United States and other Pacific nations through commemoration and memorialisation.
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    Contentious Routes: Ireland Questions, Radical Political Articulations and Settler Ambivalence in (White) Australia, c. 1909 - 1923
    Yan, Jimmy H. ( 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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    P. R. Stephensen and Transnational Fascism: From Interwar Adoption to Postwar Survival and Transmission
    Parro, Joseph Yeno Bromham ( 2021)
    This thesis examines Percy Reginald ‘Inky’ Stephensen (1901 – 1965), Australian author, publisher, authors’ agent, and political activist, in relation to the transnational fascist phenomena of the twentieth century. It challenges previous characterisations of Stephensen as an Australian nationalist first and a fascist second, who retired from political activism after the war. It utilizes the historiographical frameworks of transnational fascism and historical network analysis to position Stephensen within the history of fascism: first as it spread over the globe in the interwar period through complex multidirectional processes of transfer, adoption, adaptation, and recontextualization; and then in the survival of fascism, and its transmission to new generations of actors, through marginalized mutually-re-enforcing subcultural networks after 1945. Fascism as it emerged in Europe deeply resonated with Stephensen’s nationalist vision of a racially homogenous white Australia, and his desire for a cultural and political revolution that would rescue European culture from the decadent liberal-democratic forces that were driving its decline. Australia’s history as a British colony, in particular the violent process of colonization, complicated fascist understandings of violence for Stephensen, but Hitler’s self-declared war against a racial Jewish-Communist enemy became a foundational component of Stephensen’s support for the White Australia Policy. After Stephensen’s release from internment, he played a significant role in the survival and transmission of fascism in Australia by providing emotional and ideological encouragement, validation, and support for like-minded actors, and serving as a conduit for material, information, and ideas in an internationally-connected extreme-Right network that existed in the political margins. Stephensen remained committed to the cause he had adopted prior to internment, and demonstrated an ability to edit his message for different post-war audiences, without compromising his belief in an international Jewish-Communist conspiracy that posed an existential threat to white nations. This thesis contributes to understanding not only the impact that fascism had in Australia, but also the processes by which fascism spread in the interwar period and survived in a hostile post-war environment.
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    Memory and Cooperation: Genocide recognition efforts among Armenians, Greeks and Assyrians in twenty-first century Australia
    Kritikakos, Themistocles ( 2021)
    This thesis examines a unique period in the early twenty-first century when Greeks, Assyrians and Armenians in Australia cooperated to achieve genocide recognition. The Armenian genocide during the First World War (1915) has been commonly associated with genocide in the late Ottoman Empire. Whilst the Armenian genocide has gained international awareness, the persecution of Greeks and Assyrians in the late Ottoman Empire (1914-1923) remains largely unknown. This thesis brings to public attention the intergenerational memories of traumatic experiences of Greeks and Assyrians living in Australia for the first time. Using an oral history method, it investigates the place these memories have in families and communities in Australia. The Greeks and Assyrians, traditionally neglected in the genocide discourse on the late Ottoman Empire, sought recognition alongside the Armenians. There were challenges to establishing a common narrative of victimhood given the Armenians were active in recognition efforts since the 1960s, and the Greeks and Assyrians only became active in the 1990s. The success of Armenian recognition efforts influenced intercommunal dialogue and collaboration in the late twentieth century, which led to solidarity at the turn of the century. By referencing each other’s experiences, and negotiating memories, they developed a common understanding of the past as co-victims of genocide. Genocide recognition was achieved in the Parliament of South Australia (2009) and New South Wales (2013) with the aim of attaining national recognition from the Australian Federal Government. The recognition of their experiences could only be achieved by reimagining the Australian humanitarian response to their plight (1915-1930). The narratives of the three groups became an Australian issue and provided them with a sense of belonging. However, this challenged the shared history between Australia and Turkey surrounding Gallipoli. The Australian connection spearheaded the recognition efforts, and provided new perspectives on Australian history. Nevertheless, the Australian Federal Government is yet to recognise their plight as genocide. Although differences inform how each group remembers the past, remembrance has been negotiated among the three groups to represent a common experience of genocide.