Australian History
Book Details

A History of Australia

The People Make Laws 1888–1915

Volume 5

Manning Clark

The fifth volume of Clark’s monumental work covers Federation, the Boer War and Gallipoli.

Opinion

‘. . . a novelist, a painter, a theologian and prophet, and from these callings he brings some of the qualities of imagination, the sense of wonder, and the will to create order from chaos, which is as vital to the historian as those other more common and essential skills.’ Geoffrey Blainey

‘. . . He looked for great human issues and presented them as moral dramas.’ Donald Horne

About this Title

The grand themes of Volume V carry Australia’s story forward to the tragic days of December 1915. We read of the growth of federal sentiment, resulting at last in Federation for the six colonies in 1901, the Boer War and Gallipoli. Professor Clark closes his account with their evacuation from that ill-omened peninsula, bound for greater suffering and greater glory in France.

Always the historian of ideas and ideals, Clark’s compassionate eye discerns the unhappy fate of the Aborigines, victims always of the triumph of ‘progress’. ‘Progress’ was a force that also yielded little benefit to women by way of status or regard. The land boom of the 1880s, the confrontation between true Australian nationalists and those who saw themselves as ‘Australian-Britons’ and the labour movement are all sharply depicted.

Here we meet a great gallery of men and women who made us in the fateful shaping of 1888 to 1901, when ‘the people made laws’.

Table of Contents

Preface; Acknowledgements; Abbreviations; 1. Friends of Mammon and Prophets of Eden; 2. A Coat of Conservative Varnish; 3. Moral Improvers and Economic Developers; 4. A Time of Tumult; 5. ‘Federation or Revolution’; 6. The Tablets of the Law; 7. ‘Embourgeoisement’; 8. The ‘Cooking’ of Mr Deakin; 9. The Era of the Common Man; 10. On the Rim of a Maelstrom; 11. ‘Ideals Cast to the Winds’; 12. Epilogue; Index

About the Author

Manning Clark was senior lecturer at the University of Melbourne, and later, Professor of History in the School of General Studies, Australian National University. In 1972 he became the first Professor of Australian History. In June 1975 Clark was made a Companion of the Order of Australia, in recognition of his writing of the monumental A History of Australia. He was named Australian of the Year for 1980. Professor Clark died in May 1991.

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978-0-522-84223-4