The W.K. Hancock Prize was instituted in 1987 by the Australian Historical Association to honour the contribution to the study and writing of history in Australia by Sir Keith Hancock. Offering a $2000 prize and citation, it is intended to give recognition and encouragement to an Australian scholar who has published a first book in any field of history in 2008 or 2009.
2010 W.K. Hancock Prize Winners
Dr Natasha Campo
From Superwomen to Domestic Goddesses: The Rise and Fall of Feminism
Peter Lang, 2009
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Citation
Natasha Campo holds a PhD in history from La Trobe University and currently works in the National Centre for Australian Studies at Monash University. The panel of judges were impressed by her work's originality in conception and in scholarship. This is a lively and relevant history that is innovative in its willingness to tackle contemporary history. It is well situated in the secondary literature, formulates clear questions and develops a strong argument.
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Dr Natasha Campo
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2010 W.K. Hancock Prize Commendation
Dr Clare Corbould
Becoming African Americans: Black Public Life in Harlem, 1919-1939
Harvard University Press, 2009
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Citation
Clare Corbould is a senior lecturer in the History Department at the University of Sydney, and holds a doctorate from that institution. The panel admired the way her history marshalls a complex argument that works on a number of levels –' social, racial, cultural – to produce a rich and compelling read.
The judges congratulate all the entrants in what proved to be a strong field. The range and quality demonstrate that despite dire predictions the production of history in Australia continues to flourish.
Prof. Marian Quartly
Prof. Ann Curthoys
Dr Tim Minchin
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2008 W.K. Hancock Prize Winners
Robert Kenny
The Lamb Enters the Dreaming: Nathaniel Pepper and the Ruptured World
Melbourne: Scribe Publications, 2007
Citation
The winner is Robert Kenny, The Lamb Enters the Dreaming: Nathaniel Pepper and the Ruptured World (Melbourne: Scribe Publications, 2007). This book tells the story of Nathaniel Pepper, a man of the Wotjobaluk people in the Wimmera, north-western Victoria, who was baptised in 1860 by Moravian missionaries. Pepper's celebrity as a successful convert and evangelist, at a time when the Aboriginal people were beginning to be seen as a race providentially doomed to extinction, is a leading theme throughout. The deeply-rooted antiquity of European ideas is frequently explored, but so too is the Aboriginal world-view, and the "wrench in the sky" caused by confrontation between old and new Aboriginal understandings.
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It is a remarkable and compelling piece of work. Based on wide reading and beautifully written, it presents a highly original account of race-relations in a remote part of settled Australia during the first decades of colonial self-government, the period between the great age of imperial humanitarianism and the consolidation of the White Australia policy. These are decades not often explored for their own sake by historians of Australian race relations, and Kenny's treatment is masterly.
Pepper's conversion provides an opening not only for the exemplary consideration of one incident but also for a much wider and bolder consideration of understandings of belief and spirituality in nineteenth-century Australian society, both European and Aboriginal. There is a clear understanding of the
limits of scholarship when it comes to some of the more profound mysteries of the human condition. Indeed, this is one of the lessons to be taken from the book. In some excellent character sketches, for instance, full allowance is given for complex and unfathomable motive, among both Europeans and Aborigines.
The book enlarges our understanding of the rich creativity of Aboriginal engagement with the invading culture. In doing so it also shows a highly imaginative sense of place and landscape. A first-person narrative style is used to great advantage, and held in fine and effective balance with highly skilled critical judgement. It is a brilliant book. |
2008 W.K. Hancock Prize Highly Commended
Tracey Banivanua-Mar
Violence and Colonial Dialogue: The Australian-Pacific Indentured Labor Trade
Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 2007
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Citation
This book examines the Pacific islander labour trade and islanders' experience in Queensland between the 1860s and the first years of the twentieth century. It focuses especially on the question of violence, and it makes very thorough and scholarly use of original sources in the area, including some not hitherto used, in exploring the significance of violence for the larger processes of colonisation. It shows excellent understanding and control of theory in building upon existing scholarship.
Arranged conceptually around vertical colonial practice and the horizontal world the islanders' made, the book evokes very effectively the impact of violence on individual lives and communities, during transportation, employment and, in the end, repatriation. The book is of international significance for the light it casts on the on-going relationship between colonial power and agency among indigenous, colonised peoples. Banivanua-colonialism,
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Mar has made a major intervention in the field especially by revealing the ways that violence adhered not just to the 'frontier', and to original chaotic moments of but also to its later, more regulated and legally sanctioned forms.
The literary standard is high, and it is especially effective in its presentation of individual experience. There is a real immediacy and tangibility about the depiction of encounters between labourers on the one hand and traders and employers on the other. This is especially important in conveying violence as blunt reality, beyond and above more abstract scholarly concerns.
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2006 W.K. Hancock Prize Winner
Tony Roberts
Frontier Justice: A History of the Gulf Country to 1900
University of Queensland Press
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Citation
The W. K. Hancock Prize for 2006 is awarded to Tony Roberts for his first book, Frontier Justice: A History of the Gulf Country to 1900 (University of Queensland Press).
Underpinned by meticulous research and informed by the author's awareness that he is analysing 'a momentous time' in both Aboriginal and Australian history, Frontier Justice traces the history of the Gulf country from the first contacts between the Indigenous occupants and European incomers to 1900.
Roberts has constructed a detailed and evocative account of 'the most colourful and lawless part of Australia's last frontier', based on extensive archival research, accounts from participants and the families of participants, and his own familiarity with the region. The power of this book derives from its comprehensiveness and balance. The author has identified a 'catalogue of killings' that includes fifty-three incidents on the Northern Territory side of the border in which there were multiple Aboriginal deaths. While this litany of horror is central to Roberts' account, the
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author also recognises the presence of non-combatants, the hardships experienced by Europeans as they claimed the Gulf country, and variations in the actions and beliefs of individuals within those groups who imposed, witnessed and suffered from frontier justice.
Roberts' compelling account of the Gulf Country is a significant contribution to the history of northern Australia and the history of Australian race relations.
Andrew Bonnell
Clive Moore
Joanne Scott
July, 2006
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2004 W.K. Hancock Prize Winners
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Mary Anne Jebb
Blood, Sweat and Welfare: A History of White Bosses and Aboriginal Pastoral Workers
University of Western Australia Press
Warwick Anderson
The Cultivation of Whiteness: Science,
Health and Racial Destiny in Australia
Melbourne University Press
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Citation
The W. K. Hancock Prize for 2004 is shared by Mary Anne Jebb for her first book, Blood, Sweat and Welfare: A History of White Bosses and Aboriginal Pastoral Workers (UWA Press) and Warwick Anderson, for his first book, The Cultivation of Whiteness: Science, Health and Racial Destiny in Australia (Melbourne University Press). The authors in different ways exemplify characteristics prized by the historian for whom the Australian Historical Association named this prize for a first book on any field of history.
Hancock never tired of telling his students that good historians must be prepared to get their boots dirty seeing the country they wrote about. Mary
Anne Jebb must have worn out many pairs of seven league boots as she traversed the vast Kimberley region in search of information about the Aboriginal workers in the pastoral industry. Blood, Sweat and Welfare is a powerfully written book, based on careful and lengthy research. Bringing her story well into the 20th century, Jebb has greatly extended scholarly knowledge of the role of indigenous workers in the pastoral industry and compliments work previously done on the Pilbara region. One of the great strengths of the book is its skilled use of interviews taped by the author. She brings to life both
European and Aboriginal people who would probably otherwise be lost to the written record. While much has been written about violence and discrimination
on the pastoral frontier, Jebb's work gives a personal face to what often seemed impersonal forces at work.
Another characteristic prized by W.K. Hancock was what he called 'span', a breadth of vision beyond the usual scope of historical monographs. Warwick
Anderson's book, The Cultivation of Whiteness exemplifies a span that many mature scholars might envy. It is a fascinating, well written and thoroughly researched book which clearly enunciates the ideology undergirding concepts of 'the white man' in the Tropics. Drawing on relatively neglected sources from doctors, medical journals and other health professionals, Anderson covers a century of theorizing about race and environment in Australia. It provides a treasure trove of information for scholars working in this area.
A third characteristic beloved of Professor Hancock was longevity—not just his own, though he was still turning up to work every day until well into his eighties, but long-lived works of scholarship. In the opinion of the judging panel, both Blood Sweat and Welfare and The Cultivation of Whiteness are destined for decades of useful life on library shelves.
2004 W.K. Hancock Prize Highly Commended
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John Connor
The Australian Frontier Wars: 1788–1838
University of New South Wales Press
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Brigid Hains
The Ice and the Inland: Mawson, Flynn, and the Myth of the Frontier
Melbourne University Press
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Norman Etherington
Bobbie Oliver
Michael Sturma
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2002 W.K. Hancock Prize Winner
John Ferry
Colonial Armidale
University of Queensland Press, 1999
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