School of Historical and Philosophical Studies - Theses

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    The settlement of Melbourne 1851-1893: selected aspects of urban growth
    Campbell, Joan ( 1970-02)
    Melbourne was the obvious choice as a prototype of a nineteenth century colonial city in the following study in urban history. It succeeded early to a pre-eminent position within Victoria, indeed of the entire Australian continent and its position of supremacy went unchallenged until the twentieth century. It was never seriously threatened by the claims of rival cities such as Ballarat, Sandhurst or Geelong. In this respect, Melbourne was a classic primate city with a whole-state hinterland and was justly described as "the commercial metropolis of the South". Its favourable geographic location, centrally placed between eastern and western halves of the colony, together with its position at the northern end of Port Phillip Bay provided the logical point of convergance for a railway network spanning the reaches of the interior. This gave a nodal quality to the city which made it the sole effective input-output point for all commerce with the mainland interior.(For complete abstract open document)
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    Some aspects of the development of the metal trades in Ballarat 1851-1901
    Cope, Graeme Stuart ( 1971-08)
    This thesis is an attempt to provide a special examination centering on some aspects on the development of metal processing and fabricating industries in the Victorian gold mining town of Ballarat from its foundation in 1851 to the end of its first half century in 1901. It is in effect a case study of a particular group of manufacturing activities made with the intention of improving general historians' understanding of the forces behind the establishment and growth of secondary industries in the non-metropolitan towns of nineteenth century Australia.
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    The emergence of a bayside suburb: Sandringham, Victoria c. 1850-1900
    Gibb, Donald Menzies ( 1971-03)
    The past neglect of the Australian city by historians is frequently the subject of lament. The neglect can be highlighted by noting that not only has the impact of the city been generally avoided in Australian historiography despite its overarching importance but also by the fact that Melbourne and Sydney still lack biographies. By contrast, major British and United States cities have had substantial treatment. Therefore, in the circumstance of very considerable gaps in Australian urban historiography, there is probably little need to justify a research topic which tackles the emergence of Sandringham, a Melbourne suburb in the late 19th century. Apart from the narrow and local purpose of providing a means by which local residents can further identify themselves with their community, a suburb history can provide a case study in urbanization which can be of relevance to the whole field of urban history and more specifically, it can enrich the written history of the city of which it is part.
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    How the south-east was held: aspects of the quadripartite interaction of Mount Gambier, Portland, Adelaide and Melbourne 1860-1917
    Ferguson, Bruce A. ( 1977)
    This thesis examines aspects of the "perennial theme of discussion", acknowledging the involvement of four participants, viz., Mt. Gambier, Portland, Adelaide and Melbourne. The assertion of regional generality was supported by the fact that between 1866 and 1921 the Mt. Gambier district rarely contained less than 39% of the total population of the South-East of South Australia. Indeed, in 1911, over 48% of the region's population lived in the vicinity of Mt. Gambier. Furthermore, as Hirst noted, Mt. Gambier was the only old South Australian country town to maintain a steady rate of growth between 1870 and 1917. These facts contributed to the belief, to be longheld by both Adelaide and Melbourne, that Mt. Gambier was the key to the South-East of South Australia. The holding of Mt. Gambier was then thought to be a necessary precursor to the holding of the South-East. Learmonth and Logan have each produced very useful studies of the Victorian port of Portland and its hinterland. Their perceptions, however, remain essentially "Victorian". While the proximity of the border between Victoria and South Australia was acknowledged, no rigorous attempt was made to study historically its regional influence. This thesis also aims to remedy that situation. (From introduction)
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    E.H. Lascelles and the Victorian Mallee: a survey of settlement 1850-1905
    Wessels, Sheila Frances ( 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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    The early history of the Diamond Valley, 1836-1854
    Wilkinson, David J. ( 1969)
    “History,” said Francis Bacon, “maketh men wise.”, and whether the historian’s matter be a wide-ranging study of civilizations or a local history on the smallest scale, I believe this is the primary aim he must keep clearly before him. History is a purposeful discipline, motivated and directed by this objective. From an examination of the past the historian seeks wisdom for the present; this is the ultimate criterion of all historical writing and all historiographic values and judgements are tributary to it. The study and writing of history is both a science and an art. As a scientist the historian seeks out and balances his source materials, evaluates their validity, and analyses them to determine the facts of the past. But the history he writes must go further than a bare recital of facts which is a dull product, sterile of wisdom. My experience in this work is that the study of history becomes ultimately an act of understanding by a creative imagination and a disciplined mind, steeped in the facts of the past, and keenly aware of the present, and this has been my objective. History is no less scientific or “true” because it is an imaginative re-creation: contemporary writers on the method of the physical sciences make a very similar claim for their disciplines. History is about the men of the past whose thoughts and ideas rough-hewed our destiny, and our minds can be schooled to reach back to their times just as their best minds stretch forward towards us. Like a physical science, history is always a transitional understanding. The disciplined and creative historian with the hindsight of a century may perceive within the ideas and actions of the past significant developments germane to his purpose that were indiscernible to all but the acutest minds of the period he is studying. These may be nowhere explicitly recorded in the documents, for the men of the past were no more able than we ourselves to foresee what meaning future generations might be seeking from the records of their times. Documentary sources may provide specific statements of men’s conscious objectives and motives in the past, but each historian’s research, directed by his quest for wisdom in his own day, sets them in a new context, ae meaning which a later age reads from the record of men’s attested deeds and stated policies may be very different from that which their authors attributed to them. Thus there can be no comprehensive final understanding of the past. In every age men will re-write their history to answer the questions of their time, seeking wisdom from the past to bring order into the confusion of the present, by adding to it a perspective, a proportion, a direction, and a rationale. To attain an insight into our past is to illuminate our present and give us the priceless wisdom to know ourselves and shape our destiny. The writing of history is an art. The historian who seeks to convey to other men what he has found in his studies will require all the artistry he can command to tell his story well within the discipline which historiography prescribes. He must communicate to the minds of his readers a re-creation of the past that gives meaning to the present. He must be aware that his selection and marshalling of facts and his allocation of emphases are swayed by subjective considerations and by the questions of his own time which he is seeking to answer, and that these inevitably bias the history he writes. Finally, since a historian’s primary obligation is to be correct about what happened in the past, he must take care that his bias does not falsify the accuracy of the whole. His task becomes a delicate gauging and balancing of priorities. He cannot tell the whole truth, but he is required to tell nothing but the truth and not to distort the remainder. (From Introduction)
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    Labor politics in Coburg 1919-1940
    Rasmussen, Carolyn Anne ( 1978)
    This study examines the activities and attitudes of the Coburg branch of the ALP (Victorian Branch) over the years 1919 to 1940 with particular emphasis on relations between the branch and the Central Executive, and the political representatives of the area. Until the mid 1920's branch attention was focussed principally on local activities capitalising on the strengthening Labor vote in the district, but it was already an assertive and ambitious branch. By the end of the decade the district was safe for Labor but success in municipal elections proved elusive and as the first signs of the depression appeared the branch came under the dominant influence of a group whose major concerns were international politics and socialism. Appalled at the performance of Labor Governments and radicalised by their experience of the depression the branch became extremely critical of Labor Party leadership and profoundly frustrated by its failure to provide opportunities for effective action - even to assist the unemployed. The leadership survived the crises of these years more or less intact but in the eyes of the Coburg branch it was seriously discredited. With the fall of Labor in Victoria the branch turned its attention to the Movement Against War and Fascism resulting in a series of escalating conflicts with the Central Executive which continued to moved towards the right throughout the thirties while the Coburg branch became more left-wing. In the polarisation of the ALP following the Spanish Civil War the Coburg branch became the focus of 'anti-Communist' forces whose dubious activities were more or less condoned by the Central Executive. Loyalty to the ALP however ran deep and it was not until the Central Executive cancelled the pre-selection ballot for the state seat of Coburg in 1940 that a number of activists finally decided to challenge the Party by putting forward an ‘independent' Labor candidate. Charles Mutton was successful and he held the seat until he was re-admitted to the ALP in 1956 and thereafter till he retired in 1967.
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    Instability in governments and parties in Victoria in the 1920s
    Vines, Margaret ( 1975)
    While many books and theses have been written about Federal politics, in the 1920s, and about Federal political figures, nothing substantial has yet been written about the Victorian Politics in the same period. Federal politics, as happened repeatedly in the events of the 1920s, have overshadowed the State in the historiography of the period also. The consequence for the researcher is a complete dearth of secondary material. In the absence of any specific historical account of Victoria in the 1920s, secondary source material amounts to: brief references in the fast chronological gallop of a Centennial History; the early years of a biography of a politician who made his mark in Federal politics; or the analysis, usually statistical, of a political scientist who seeks rather to generalise about the Australian scene as a whole. Unfortunately, the same concentration on Federal politics also affects the survival of manuscript material. Very few of the Victorian politicians or their associates have left private papers. The papers of H.W.S. Lawson, Premier 1918-24, were burnt by his son when he died in 1952. The very few who have left papers seem to have retained letters of sympathy or congratulation to the exclusion of much else. This was certainly the case with Sir William McPherson, M.L.A. 1913-1930, and Premier 1928-29. Thus, to gain clues about the behind-the-scenes negotiations and events of the period has been extremely difficult. The complete disappearance of all the official papers of the Nationalist Party compounds the difficulty, the more because they were less inclined than the Country Party or the Labor Party to air their internal dealings in public. The papers of F.W. Eggleston and J. Hume Cook, in the National Library, Canberra, proved invaluable for the period 1917-1924, in the Nationalist Party, but there are no similar sources for the second half of the decade. This shortage of manuscript material has entailed a concentration on newspapers and parliamentary material. The events of Victorian politics, since Federation, but particularly since 1914, have been shrouded in obscurity. My first task was the essential one of finding out what actually happened. For events in the Country Party, B.D. Graham’s “The Formation of the Australian Country Parties” was invaluable. In the absence of any work at all on the Victorian Nationalist Party, I have had to trace the emergence of the Victorian Party in the 1901-17 period and before, as well as its behaviour in the decade of the 1920s. This has meant, in this thesis, a much longer account of the role of the Nationalist Party, than of the Country Party – not because the Nationalist Party was necessarily more important in the political instability of the period, but simply because so much less has previously been know about it. (From Introduction)
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    The origins and rise of the Victorian brown coal industry 1835-1935
    Spaull, Andrew D. ( 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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    Victoria at war 1899-1902: aspects of the colonial involvement in the South African War
    Chamberlain, Walter Maxwell ( 1977)
    Most writings of the South African War, 1899-1902, have stressed either the triumph of British arms, or the unjust nature of the war, but not the contribution made by the volunteers from the colonies. This thesis reconstructs aspects of Victoria’s participation in the South African War, examines the effects of the involvement on the government, the people, and the economy, and attempts to rectify some misconceptions which appear to have arisen in connection with the Colonials.