School of Historical and Philosophical Studies - Theses
Permanent URI for this collection
Search Results
1 - 10 of 12
-
ItemP. R. Stephensen and Transnational Fascism: From Interwar Adoption to Postwar Survival and Transmission( 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.
-
ItemCommunicable Knowledge: Medical Communication, Professionalisation, and Medical Reform in Colonial Victoria, 1855-66( 2020)This thesis examines the process of medical professionalisation in colonial Victoria from 1855-66. During this eleven-year period the medical profession of colonial Victoria were able to create Australia’s first long lasting medical societies and medical journal, found the first medical school, and receive legislative support of their claims to exclusive knowledge of medicine. The next time an Australian colony would have these institutions created would not be for another 20 years. This thesis examines these developments through a framework of communication, primarily from the medical community itself. Communication was central to the process that resulted in the creation of the above listed institutions. Here communication is examined as the driving force behind the two processes of professionalisation: the internal, community creating and boundary forming aspect; and the external process through which the community gains external recognition of their claims. For Victorian practitioners during the period of this study the internal process drives the creation of the societies, the journal, and the medical school, whereas the external process is typified by the campaign for ‘Medical Reform’ that sees the community engage in agitation for legislative backing of their conception of medicine as science over other alternate medicines. Communication was not isolated within the colony. As such the place of the Victorian medical community as a node within transnational networks of knowledge exchange is examined. As Victoria was better integrated into these networks than its colonial neighbours, an examination of the involvement of said flow of information in the creation of professional communities is considered an important part of this analysis. Behind these processes of community creation, I trace a thread of disunity sparked by professional differences. Highly publicised arguments over differences in medical opinion play out in the colonial press. This comes to a head at the end of the period of study. Despite their focus on communication the medical community ignores the role their public conduct plays in this process. The end result is that, while they were able to create these lasting institutions, their public conduct saw the public’s opinion of them stay low through to the end of the century.
-
ItemMorality of politicians in a democracy( 2008)This thesis argues that one way of understanding the morality of politicians is from the perspective of their role morality, which is derived from their representative role in a democracy. The thesis argues that politicians' role morality is to advocate for their constituents in a way that upholds democratic values and the institutional arrangements required to give effect to democratic values. The thesis sets out the values underlying a democracy and argues that the traditional view of the nature of representation, as either a delegate and/or a trustee, does not provide an adequate understanding of the role of the representative. The delegate and/or trustee model assumes some form of `contactual' arrangement between representative and citizen whereas representation in a democracy is more like an ongoing relationship where citizens continue to exercise their sovereignty through an active interrelationship with their representatives. This way of viewing the role of the democratic representative places a greater responsibility on the political representatives to see their role as facilitating citizens' self government through an open, deliberative process in the Parliament. It is difficult to determine how well politicians uphold democratic values because of the competitive views as to how democratic values ought to be translated into institutional form. In order to see how well politicians are fulfilling their role morality of upholding democratic values, some other sort of criteria are required which may help in making such assessments and which do not rely on partisan views. Two sets of criteria are developed - one set is derived from the deliberative nature of representation and the other set is embedded in the idea of institutional accountability. These sets of criteria are applied in three different stories in order to assess the action of politicians but also to point to areas for practical reform which may support politicians to fulfil their role morality.
-
ItemWith my needle: embroidery samplers in colonial Australia( 2008)This thesis examines a group of more than one hundred needlework samplers stitched in the Australian colonies during the nineteenth century. It uses them as documents of social history to examine the lives of individual girls and women during that time, and to trace changing expectations of girls, especially in the later decades of the century. Although there are many individual stories that can illuminate certain aspects of Australian history such as migration, settlement, and death and mourning, these samplers are most useful as documents in the examination of girls' education and the social expectations transmitted through the education system. It addresses the contradiction between the sampler's continuing presence in girls' schooling and the increasing irrelevance of the skills embodied in it. The thesis argues that needlework samplers retained their place in girls' education well into the twentieth century because of their significance as symbols of feminine accomplishment. They were physical expressions of a definition of respectability that was based on the `feminine ideal' of the nineteenth century and allayed anxiety about girls' involvement in formal schooling.
-
Item“A very unfortunate circumstance”: the colonial evolution of defining British sovereignty emanating from murdercases in New South Wales, 1790 –1836( 2005-11)Governor Arthur Phillip did not magically extend British sovereignty over the continent of Australia when he read his orders to the assembled convicts and members of the military in January 1788. To the international community, this act of declaratory sovereignty claimed Australia for Britain. Gaining practical legal authority over the indigenous population, however, took years and a number of court cases to obtain. The British established their sovereignty over the Australian Aborigines by integrating them into the British legal system. This legal incorporation eventuated in stages. Three important stages were: first in 1790, when the British attempted to punish Aborigines for the murder of white men, secondly in 1827, when the British tried to punish white settlers for the deaths of indigenes, and lastly in 1836 when the British decided to punish indigenes for murders committed amongst themselves. Previous colonial experience influenced British officials’ dealing with the indigenous population of Australia. Many of the colonisers who settled in Australia, Britain’s penultimate colony, had lived in other parts of the British Empire. This prior colonial experience shaped the views and outlooks of legal policy towards the Aborigines.
-
ItemFrom idol to artform: missionaries and material culture in the Pacific( 2012)In Hawai’i the introduction of woven cloth and sewing circles led to the development of a distinctive form of quilting. In Arnhem Land in Australia the transition to a market economy through the promotion of local art and craft production led to the material transformation of bark painting from objects of temporary use to artefacts of permanent significance. In both of these cases missionaries played a key, though often unintentional, role in the development of these artforms. This thesis is an exploration of Indigenous creativity and purpose combining with missionary influence on Pacific material culture. Particular focus is made of the development of quilting in Hawai’i in the nineteenth-century and bark painting at Yirrkala in the twentieth-century, culminating in Lili’uokalani’s 1895 ‘Queen’s Quilt’ and the 1963 Painted Bark Petition. During periods of social change, transformations occur in material culture produced by a society. Exploring the relationships between missionaries and Indigenous peoples through artistic expressions of the time illuminates many aspects of these relationships otherwise restricted to European-dominated accounts. Material culture is used as an historical source material to explore cultural changes and corresponding notions of authenticity, as expressed through missionary and museum collections. This thesis is concerned with the two-way nature of cultural exchanges, with particular reference to the art produced through these relationships, art that is both aesthetically beautiful and socially powerful. Queen Lili’uokalani’s Crazy Quilt and the Yirkaala bark petitions both appropriated aspects of European culture in order to create new objects of significant cultural, political, and social importance, and were generated out of missionary-Indigenous relationships.
-
ItemDeviant motherhood in the late nineteenth century: a case study of the trial and execution of Frances Knorr and Emma Williams for child murder( 2002)The 1890s saw the rise of a pro-natalist movement in Australia that focused on child saving and the emergence of the 'ideal mother' stereotype. Moves by the medical profession and women's organizations to educate women to become 'ideal' mothers were coupled with proscriptive attempts by law enforcement agencies and the judiciary to criminalize 'bad' mothers. Within this period Frances Knorr and Emma Williams became the archetypal 'deviant mother' when they were executed only months apart for crimes involving child murder. They were to be the only women ever hanged for such crimes in Victoria. This thesis aims to problematize these executions by looking at the ways in which nineteenth century Victorian society operated to construct these women's criminality. The thesis will argue that the growth of government intervention and regulation throughout the 1890s, beginning with the introduction of the Infant Life Protection Act in Victoria in 1890, engendered a climate whereby women were increasingly told to embrace motherhood as their sole vocation. 'Maternal instinct' became a central part of a woman’s identity. Advocates of maternal love succeeded in elevating the quality of the relationship between a mother and her child to a social and moral good. Moreover, the demonization of women such as Knorr and Williams was necessary to a process that saw the eventual idealization of the mother as 'the angel of the home' and 'the mother of the Empire'. Hence, whilst the State's preoccupation with regulating motherhood, pregnancy and birth was aimed at all classes, it was women of the lower working class who came under ever increasing scrutiny and who were the most likely to become scapegoats in a campaign to find and eradicate the 'bad' mother archetype. Above all, the trials and executions of these two women provided a site for the discursive production of femininity, motherhood and female criminality. The 1890s were a time of contesting notions of motherhood and womanhood. The newspapers, the judiciary and the Slate all engaged in the process which rendered the women under examination here, as deviant. Taking a Foucauldian approach, these women's bodies became the sites on which discourses concerning motherhood and womanhood were enacted. Furthermore, notions of gender become central to a process of criminalization in which both Knorr and Williams were depicted as less feminine because of their crimes. As a result the 'criminal' mother of the twentieth century was born.
-
ItemSome aspects of the federal political career of Andrew Fisher( 2005)Andrew Fisher was prime minister of Australia three times. During his second ministry (1910-1913) he headed a government that was, until the 1940s, Australia's most reformist government. Fisher's second government controlled both Houses; it was the first effective Labor administration in the history of the Commonwealth. In the three years, 113 Acts were placed on the statute books changing the future pattern of the Commonwealth. Despite the volume of legislation and changes in the political life of Australia during his ministry, there is no definitive full-scale biographical published work on Andrew Fisher. There are only limited articles upon his federal political career. Until the 1960s most historians considered Fisher a bit-player, a second ranker whose main quality was his moderating influence upon the Caucus and Labor ministry. Few historians have discussed Fisher's role in the Dreadnought scare of 1909, nor the background to his attempts to change the Constitution in order to correct the considered deficiencies in the original drafting. This thesis will attempt to redress these omissions from historical scholarship. Firstly, it investigates Fisher's reaction to the Dreadnought scare in 1909 and the reasons for his refusal to agree to the financing of the Australian navy by overseas borrowing. It will consider the proposition that Andrew Fisher, while wanting an Australian Navy, was not prepared to go to foreign lenders for finance, believing that, overall, Australia was rich enough to pay for her defence without burdening future generations with debt. Secondly it enquires into his attempts in his second ministry of 1910-1913 to correct the Constitution, by referenda, in the areas of trade, commerce, and labour in order to be able to carry out the fighting platform of the Labor Party.
-
ItemThe private face of patronage: the Howitts, artistic and intellectual philanthropists in early Melbourne Society( 2005)This thesis investigates a case of upper-middle class, private patronage in Melbourne, focusing on three decades between 1840 and 1870. Evidence points to the existence of a lively circle of intellectual and artistic activity around the Quaker family of Dr Godfrey Howitt and his wife, Phebe, from the Midlands who arrived at the Port Phillip District in 1840. The presentation of a group of fine, rare colonial water-colours and drawings to the National Gallery of Victoria by a direct Howitt descendant, Mrs James Evans in 1989, was the point of inspiration for this subject. Godfrey Howitt, one of the first experienced medical practitioners in the colony, had much in common with the Superintendent of Port Phillip. Their friendship gave the Howitts entrée into the uppermost social circles of the colony. Financially, the family prospered due to Howitt's professional practice which insulated them against economic downturns and provided a steady accumulation of wealth. While as a Quaker, Phebe Howitt had little background in the fine arts, she began to exercise patronage in support of her artist friends, most of who arrived with the gold rush in 1852. With it came Godfrey Howitt's elder brother, William, a famous English author. In London in 1850, William and Mary Howitt's daughter, the feminist painter and writer, Anna Mary, had become engaged to Edward La Trobe Bateman. A brilliant designer and cousin of Superintendent La Trobe, Bateman introduced the young, still struggling Pre-Raphaelite artists with whom he was closely associated, to the English Howitts. Arriving in Melbourne in 1852, William was followed shortly afterwards by Bateman and two artists, including the Pre-Raphaelite sculptor, Thomas Woolner. The gold rush also attracted Eugene von Guérard, and Nicholas Chevalier in due course. In 1856, as a guest of the Howitts' on her first Victorian visit, Louisa Anne Meredith, writer, botanical artist and social commentator, was introduced to their artistic and literary circle. The Howitts' friendship with these artists thus took on a very different hue from the normal patterns of patronage. Beyond commissioning works of art from artists returning empty handed from the gold fields, Phebe Howitt supported them in other ways until suffering a catastrophic stroke towards the end of 1856. During that period, the founding of the new Victorian colony's cultural institutions became a source of official artistic commissions for the first time. Through friends in influential positions like Justice Redmond Barry and Godfrey Howitt, Bateman was employed in various design projects for new public buildings and gardens. With the purchase of Barragunda at Cape Schanck in 1860, Godfrey Howitt assumed a central role as patron. In making the house available to Bateman and his artist friends, he and his daughter, Edith Mary, repeated the unusual degree of patronage formerly exercised by Phebe Howitt before her illness. By 1869, Woolner, Bateman and Chevalier had departed the colony and from 1870, von Guérard was taken up with the National Gallery of Victoria. Although succeeding generations of the family maintained contact with all the artists in their circle, by Godfrey Howitt's death in 1873, the prime years of Howitt patronage had passed.
-
ItemSydney Dance Company: a study of a connecting thread with the Ballets Russes( 2009)This thesis addresses unexplored territory within a relatively new body of scholarship concerning the history of the Ballets Russes in Australia. Specifically, it explores the connection between the original Diaghilev Ballets Russes (1909- 1929) and the trajectories of influence of Russian ballets that visited Australia. This thesis addresses unexplored territory within a relatively new body of scholarship concerning the history of the Ballets Russes in Australia. Specifically, it explores the connection between the original Diaghilev Ballets Russes (1909- 1929) and the trajectories of influence of Russian ballets that visited Australia. This study sketches the origins of the Ballets Russes, the impact its launch made on dance in the West, and how it progressed through three distinguishable phases of influence. It summarises the important features of the visits to Australia of Russian ballet companies from Adeline Genee in 1913 to the culturally altering impact of the revived Ballets Russes companies over three extended tours between 1936 and 1940. It charts the formation of viable ballet companies in Australia, commencing with Kirsova in 1939 and Borovansky in 1940, to the Australian Ballet in 1962 and the Sydney Dance Company led by Murphy between 1976 and 2008. Drawing on distinctions between classical and contemporary dance, it attempts to demonstrate the groundwork of example established by the Russian ballet, and, particularly, the revived Ballets Russes visits up to 1940. Data for this thesis was drawn from a personal interview with Graeme Murphy, original documentary research in public collections in Australia, government and Sydney Dance Company archives, newspapers and secondary literature.