School of Historical and Philosophical Studies - Theses
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ItemGroups in Victorian politics, 1889-1894( 1963-12)To most Australian historians, the political history of Victoria during the final decades of the nineteenth century is a closed book. Except for the considerable attention bestowed on the labor party, which was after all of minor importance in Victoria until the early years of this century, few historians indeed have ventured to comment even briefly on this colony’s political life.
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ItemShow business: a history of theatre in Victoria 1835-1948( 1949)...The material available to the student of the theatrical history of this State and Nation, is relatively sparse, and extremely scattered. Much has been covered in newspaper articles, but no attempt has ever been made to pull the material together and show it as part of a continuous story, superimposed upon the background of the political, social and economic history of the State. That is what I now attempt to do. If it does nothing more than bring the basic information within reasonable compass, I will not feel I have failed. If, on the other hand, it should arouse an interest in either the history or the practice of Theatre, in its widest sense, so that a multitude of young men and women may be rescued from the slough of saccharine sentimentality into which Hollywood has led them, to an increasing interest in legitimate Theatre, the development of which is considered by some to be a concomitant of National greatness, then I shall feel that I have indeed succeeded. (From introduction)
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ItemE.H. Lascelles and the Victorian Mallee: a survey of settlement 1850-1905( 1966)This survey deals with a portion of the Victorian Mal1ee, in the North-West of the state, stretching from Lake Corrong across to Lake Tyrrell. From 1883 to 1890 the area under wheat in Victoria remained stagnant at about 1,100,000 acres as the process of settling farmers on pastoral lands slowed down. The one area in Victoria where the wheatlands increased in the 1890's and 1900's was the Mallee. E. H. Lascelles was largely responsible for the rapid extension of wheat growing in the area during the 1890's. Geographical considerations play a large part in the Mallee story. The area is isolated, the Mallee growth distinctive and the rainfall light and unpredictable. This survey is an attempt to trace the interaction of man and this environment, with the necessary changes and adaptations which took place as the squatters gave way before the selectors. However because the Mallee covers such a large area - virtually all of the North-West corner of the state - it was impossible to survey the whole in such a short study. So E. H. Lascelles and the belt of country in which he was primarily interested formed a suitable and contained segment of the area, with concentration upon the sub-division schemes at Hopetoun and Tyrrell Downs.
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ItemWilliam Thomas and the Port Phillip Protectorate, 1838-1849( 1966)Between 1839 and 1849 the total number of Aborigines living in the area between Melbourne and Western Port declined by 50 per cent, despite the impact of the most intensive attempt to civilize Aborigines ever made in Australia. Those Aborigines who did survive showed no signs whatsoever of adopting the white man’s culture. The elaborate scheme known as the Protectorate had failed. Various reasons have been put forward for this failure. Some colonials maintained that the “sneaking murdering black cannibals” were incapable of improvement and even many Christians concluded that the Aborigines were suffering under the judgement of God and therefore could not be helped much by human agencies. The Protectors accused the Government of deliberately hindering their activities and of doing nothing beneficial for the Aborigines. The Government — or at least La Trobe, who was “practically the Government” — maintained that conflict between settlers and Aborigines was an inevitable stage in the spread of civilization, that the Protectors were incompetent and that the Protectorate was an unnecessary encumbrance on the Government. And the Aborigines for their part, said that “all White Men Bungalarly”, thereby signifying their contempt for anything white. Was there any truth in all of these mutual recriminations? The truth — in my opinion — lies in the conflict of ideas. The settlers wanted land and were prepared to sacrifice the rights of the few natives to the God of profit. The Government, while pressed by its English overlords to look after the rights of the Aborigines, lent heavily towards the views expounded by the settlers and pursued a vacillating role, sometimes supporting the Protectors in the hope that they would convert the Aborigines into an economic asset, more often turning a blind eye to abuse. The Protectors tried to stamp their own philosophy and religion — a philosophy and religion which had been successfully applied in England for the reform of the lower classes — on the Aborigines. Each of these groups, then, tried to impose a particular pattern of behaviour on the Aborigines, but the Aborigines, having their own ideals and aspirations, regarded all of these groups as hostile and rejected them. This thesis attempts to describe and examine these conflicting ideas, and in particular, to examine the Aborigines reactions to the schemes devised for their reform. (From Introduction)
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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 origins and rise of the Victorian brown coal industry 1835-1935( 1966)This history thesis was written at a time when the Victorian brown coal industry approaches its jubilee. It is also a period when the industry, together with the power and fuel industry, faces a new era of challenge and expansion. With this in mind, I have attempted to analyse, firstly, the various forces behind the establishment of a brown coal industry. Often these forces have been neglected or taken for granted, generally on the basis, that here was an expensive mineral resource open for exploitation. This particular reasoning is far from accurate, as I will attempt to show by a detailed study of the course and tempo of developments before the formal establishment of the industry. The second concern has been an attempt to capture and assess the problems of the industry in its gradual rise to the eventual position of a modern and vital Victorian industry.
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ItemThe history of Brighton, 1841-1859: a study of the private township formed on Henry Dendy's special survey in 1841( 1952)If there were to be a theme to this preface, as to the body of my enquiry into the first twenty years of the history of Brighton, it would be in the nature of a plaint for the neglected art of writing local history in Australia. In Victoria, Melbourne itself has been badly enough served. Only in the eighteen-seventies and eighties, when, contemporaneous with the meetings of the Old Colonists' Society, we had the writings of Edmund Finn and T. A. Browne, had any serious work been done on the capital until quite recently. And it was worse in other areas. Often no interest was shown until it was too late. The first publication of records and reminiscences seemed to wait for the stimulus of a special occasion. Many were inspired by that off-shoot of antiquarianism, the jubilee, and by then there was a long gap to bridge. It was thus not until fifty years after the first settlement of a district, or after the founding of its institutions, such as churches, mechanics institutes and local government that any publication was made.
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ItemGerman and Austrian refugees in Melbourne 1933-1947: a study of their migration, reception and integration into the Melbourne community( 1965)The group of people who have been studied in this thesis are people who left Germany and Austria between 1933 and 1939, because Hitler’s policies made life intolerable or impossible and came to Australia as immigrants or internees between 1933 and 1942. These immigrants who were labelled Refugees or “reffos” in colloquial Australian, were distinct from the group of post war refugee immigrants known as S.Ps (Displaced Persons) – not necessarily in origin for many of the immediate post war refugees had similar German and Austrian Jewish backgrounds – but the later group had different war time experiences and faced a different situation when they arrived in Australia. The first victims of Hitler’s policies were his political and ideological opponents and especially those who had been publically anti-Nazi, members of opposition political parties, Trade Unionists, writers and publicists. But for the most part those who came to Australia were the victims – or they would have been the victims – of his anti-semitic racial policies which increasingly endangered the livelihood of all those of Jewish faith and of Jewish descent though this does not mean they were not often his political opponents too. After September 1935 Jewish descent included all those whose parents or one parent, grandparents or one grandparent had professed the Jewish religion; Nazi anti-semitic measures also victimised those married or engaged to anyone in the above categories even if they had no “Jewish blood” in their veins. Baptised Christians, half, quarter and one-eighth Jews were known as “non-Aryans.” (From Introduction)
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ItemThe history of the defence forces of the Port Phillip District and Colony of Victoria 1836 - 1900( 1957)In this atomic age, the security of a nation is effected in many ways. The gift of a shipload of wheat, the discovery of a rare mineral, the raising or lowering of a trade barrier, and the political speech of a very important person at a very unimportant dinner have their influence on security as surely as the defence pact or the military training programme. With the new settlement at Port Phillip in 1836 there were no such complications. The British navy protected it from without, the British army from within, and no other major power felt the strength or the need to risk war with Britain for the sake of an infant colony twelve thousand miles distant. The settlement itself was too insignificant to have an influence on world affairs of the time. Yet if it had no influence on the world, it was influenced by the world. A stone cast into the political waters of Europe sent ripples to the shores of Port Phillip. …
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ItemTemperance and the liquor question in later nineteenth century Victoria( 1966)Progressive research into the temperance movement in Victoria made it quite clear that the subject could not be organised as a conventional narrative. Its wide-ranging nature led me to dispense with a formal chronology and group events according to 'idea' rather than to 'time'. The result is a series of self-contained chronologies which sometimes overlap. This aids the interpretative presentation although it has obvious limitations from the point of view of narrative.