Ernest Scott Prize Shortlist: 2009
The Ernest Scott Prize is awarded annually to the book judged to be the most distinguished contribution to the History of Australia or New Zealand published in the previous year. The Prize is based on a bequest by Mrs Emily Scott in memory of her husband, Sir Ernest Scott, who held a professorship in the department of History at the University of Melbourne.
Five fine books have been shortlisted by the judges for this year's Prize. The judges for this year are Professor Alan Atkinson from the University of Sydney and Associate Professor Charlotte McDonald from the University of Wellington. The winner will be announced at the Australian Historical Association dinner, Wednesday 1 July 2009. The shortlist is:
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John Docker,
The Origins of Violence: Religion, History and Genocide
(UNSW Press)
A wide-ranging reflection on ideas about violence and non-violence, set within the context of current international law. The unusual collection of source material makes for a genuinely original contribution to the literature.
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Marilyn Lake & Henry Reynolds,
Drawing the Global Colour Line: White Men's Countries and the Question of Racial Equality
(Melbourne University Press)
This is a very important book for what it says about the evolution of ideas about race and nation-building, mainly but not entirely in North America, Australia and South Africa, from the last decades of the nineteenth century to the inter-war period, and especially in the way it combines those ideas with new understandings of gender.
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Rachel Perkins and Marcia Langton (eds),
First Australians: An Illustrated History
(Miegunyah Press)
A lavish and striking work, presenting a history as rich in text and image as in the human story it depicts. An important collaborative work powerful in its capacity to engage a wide readership.
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Jill Roe,
Stella Miles Franklin. A Biography
(Fourth Estate)
A beautifully written, exhaustive study. Roe's Franklin is depicted in glorious detail, living and writing her way from 1879 to 1954, and into the afterlife.
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Peter Rees,
The Other Anzacs: Nurses at War, 1914-1918
(Allen & Unwin)
A thoroughly readable and moving work, which offers a sensitive portrayal of the main characters and their circumstances, based on an impressive grasp of contemporary language and emotion.
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We congratulate the short-listed candidates and look forward to the announcement of the winner.
Joy Damousi
Head, School of Historical Studies
The University of Melbourne
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2008 Ernest Scott Shortlist
The Ernest Scott Prize is awarded annually to the book judged to be the most distinguished contribution to the History of Australia or New Zealand published in the previous year. The Prize is based on a bequest by Mrs Emily Scott in memory of her husband, Sir Ernest Scott, who held a professorship in the department of History at the Universtiy of Melbourne.
Three fine books have been shortlisted by the judges for this year's Prize.
The winner will be announced at the Australian Historical Association dinner, 9th July. The shortlist is:
John Fitzgerald, Big White Lie: Chinese Australians in White Australia, UNSW Press, 2007.
This is a mould-breaking book, with a strong argument, meticulous and extensive research, and a providing a new and challenging way of understanding Chinese-Australian history. Fitzgerald shows that historians have too often adopted the assumptions of earlier generations of uncomprehending Australians, and that it is possible to see the history of Chinese in Australia quite differently. Through extensive use of both Chinese and English language sources, it constructs an often surprising account of the ways in which Chinese people in Australia lived, thought, and acted. The subjects of this history come to life variously as democrats, liberals, nationalists, political activists, and successful businessmen often with international connections. This book will affect not only our understanding of Australian history but also the way we think about current issues, such as immigration policy and multiculturalism, more generally.
Raelene Frances, Selling Sex: A Hidden History of Prostitution, UNSW Press, 2007
This is a lively and well-written history which investigates the history of prostitution in Australia from the convict period through to the present. It considers many dimensions ˆracial, legal, political, and cultural ˆ of its subject, and demonstrates the connections between the sex industry in Australia and the international movement of sex workers. As the author writes, "through the lens" of sexual exchange we see a society working out its destiny both within national borders and in relation to the rest of the world. This is confronting history, well told.
Ray Fargher, The Best Man Who Ever Served the Crown? A Life of Donald McLean, VUW Press, 2007.
The issue of land ownership lies at the heart of this biography of one of the major figures in the history of nineteenth century New Zealand. McLean served in numerous government posts, from Sub-Protector of Aborigines to Native Minister. He was fluent in Te Reo and had a deep understanding of Maori custom and culture, yet he was also responsible for extracting more land from Maori ownership than any other colonial official. The McLean archive is one of the great repositories of information for colonial New Zealand and this biography brings to life the man behind the archive. It also engages with issues that remain central in the political and social life of New Zealand today.
We congratulate the short-listed candidates and look forward to the announcement of the winner.
Professor Joy Damousi,
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2007 Ernest Scott Prize Shortlist
The Ernest Scott Prize is awarded annually to the book judged to be the most distinguished contribution to the History of Australia or New Zealand published in the previous year. The terms of the prize stipulate that the book must be based on original research, and the author must normally be a resident of Australia or New Zealand. The
prize is based on a bequest by Mrs Emily Scott in memory of her husband, Sir Ernest Scott, who held a professorship in the Department of History at the University of Melbourne. This year the judges were Professor Mark Finnane and Professor Margaret Tennant.
Three fine books have been shortlisted by the judges for this year's Prize:
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Mixed Relations: Asian-Aboriginal Contact in North Australia, published in 2006 by University of Western Australia Press by Regina Ganter (with contributions by Julia Martinez and Gary Lee);
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Gathering for God: George Brown in Oceania, published in 2006 by Otago University Press by Helen Bethea Gardner; and
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Kin: A Collective Biography of a New Zealand Working Class Family, published in 2005 by Canterbury University Press by Melanie Nolan.
The winner will be announced at the Australian Historical Association conference at the University of New England on 25th September.
Judges' citations:
In Mixed Relations: Asian-Aboriginal Contact in North Australia, Regina Ganter has produced a history which rewrites the national story through individual stories that cross multiple racial, ethnic and cultural boundaries. This attractively produced work inverts Australian settlement history from its conventional focus on the South East to a perspective point in the North. Her focus on race relations moves away from the black/white binary which has preoccupied most writing on the topic to examine the polyethnicity of the North. The book is the product of a period of sustained research and engagement with local communities, reflecting deep archival work in manuscript and visual sources, as well as drawing reflectively on oral histories. This is a work which demands attention in its intellectual challenge to settler historiographies which have
privileged simplistic oppositions, proposing a rich new narrative of northern Australia as a place of mixed identities.
Gathering for God: George Brown in Oceania, by Helen Gardner, is a highly original biography of a Methodist missionary in the later nineteenth-century. While the focus is on a single life, the book moves beyond a biography into a sophisticated engagement with the multiple texts produced by the book's subject, George Brown, with sensitivity to the form as well as the context of these texts. Gardner re-assesses missionary endeavour in the light of its acceptance and continued influence within indigenous communities. In documenting Brown's ethnographic collecting, Garnder uses the notion of 'gathering' to consider the interplay of Christian mission and social anthropology over time, and the role of both in the colonisation of the Pacific. Especially fascinating is the tension between Christian notions of similitude, fellowship and individual improvement in the light of Christian teaching, and contemporary scientific theories emphasising racial difference.
In Kin: A Collective Biography of a New Zealand Working Class Family, an engaging study of a single immigrant family, Melanie Nolan questions wider assumptions about New Zealand labour history. The expansive engagement with many strands of New Zealand history, most particularly the historiographies of labour, gender and religion, takes the narrative out of the workplace into the arenas of the home, the church and voluntary association. Nolan uses the diverse pathways of members of a large Northern Irish migrant family to challenge labour and social historians in New Zealand and Australia to take seriously the reality of the multiple identities and diverse consciousness of 'working class' people, and their significance for the national history. Especially noteworthy are insights into the role of women in the home and community, and the formation of the careers of small businessmen and local politicians. The depth and variety of documentary research is supplemented by a wide range of illustrations capturing both the intimate and the public lives of Nolan's subjects.
Professor Joy Damousi, The University of Melbourne
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