The Australian Historical Association
The site for and about historians working in or on Australia.
Norman Etherington’s Big Game Hunter: The Life of Frederick Courteney Selous is a portrait of Selous – adventurer, hunter and naturalist – a tells the story of an adventurer, hunter and naturalist in late nineteenth-century Africa, who would inspire novelists such as Rider Haggard and Wilbur Smith. The book describes Selous’ extraordinary adventures, from elephant-hunting, and Read more …
Members of the EC have drawn up a document that outlines the proposed scope, criteria, categories and process for the ranking of academic journals publishing history research. The AHA invites comments on this document, especially on the criteria for ranking. Please send comments to AHA Executive Officer by 12 August 2016. In line with the practice adopted by the Read more …
Nick Brodie has edited the letters and provided the commentary for George Martindale’s Dodging the Devil: Letters from the Front, Gallipoli, Fromelles and Bullecourt (Hardie Grant), which collects messages and photographs Martindale sent to his family in Melbourne documenting his daily life during World War I.
Russell McGregor’s Environment, Race and Nationhood in Australia: Revisiting the Empty North (Palgrave Macmillan) offers a timely and compelling account of why past generations of Australians saw the north of their continent as an empty land, and why those past perceptions still matter.
At the AHA AGM, held during the conference on Thursday 7 July at 5.00pm, the following office bearers and ordinary members were elected to the Executive Committee: Lynette Russell – President Joy Damousi – Vice-President Alison Holland – Secretary Paul Sendziuk – Treasurer Martin Crotty Karen Downing Ruth Morgan Tim Rowse Christina Twomey Melanie Burkett, Read more …
Kirstie Close-Barry’s A Mission Divided: Race, Culture and Colonialism in Fiji’s Methodist Mission (ANU Press) provides insight into the long process of decolonisation within the Methodist Overseas Missions of Australasia, a colonial institution that operated in the British colony of Fiji. The mission was a site of work for Europeans, Fijians and Indo-Fijians, but each Read more …
Karen Speedy has expertly translated and provided a critical introduction to Georges Baudoux’s Jean M’Barai The Trepang Fisherman (UTSePress). Published in English for the first time, this book exposes the rich, complex and brutal world of a South Sea Islander caught up in the duplicitous trade that came to be known as Blackbirding, which draws Read more …
André Brett’s Acknowledge No Frontier: The Creation and Demise of New Zealand’s Provinces, 1853–76 (Otago University Press) examines a formative but largely forgotten era of New Zealand’s history. It is an account of the evolution of individual provinces and the central government’s use of public works, especially railways, to gain support for their abolition and Read more …
The Australian Historical Association is delighted to announce the winners of its 2016 prizes and awards. Winners were announced tonight, Thursday 7 July 2016, at the AHA Annual Conference dinner in Ballarat, Victoria. (Click links to read judges’ citations.) The Allan Martin Award is a research fellowship to assist early career historians further their research Read more …