The Fuss that Never Ended
The Life and Work of Geoffrey Blainey
A lively and distinguished assembly of fellow historians take a fresh look at Geoffrey Blainey’s distinguished career.
Opinion
The Fuss That Never Ended ‘probes the many aspects of the work of the man who has captured the public’s interest across all aspects of the community.’ (Campus Review, 19–25/3/2003)
‘This book gathers a group of fellow historians of various ages, interests, and political stances to comment on Blainey’s career and work. They [reveal] . . . a graceful and provocative storyteller.’ (Amazon.com, August 2003)
About this Title
It is time to reassess the work of Geoffrey Blainey, and consider his role in Australian history, politics and public life.
Deborah Gare, Geoffrey Bolton, Stuart Macintyre and Tom Stannage
Geoffrey Blainey has steered Australian history into the nation’s conversation. No one would dispute that he is a courageous public intellectual, a writer of rare grace and a master storyteller. And he has indeed provoked a rare fuss, both public and professional, with some of his comments on Asian immigration and Aboriginal land rights.
Blainey has challenged the academic history profession, not only with his ideas but also by his practice. A brilliant student, he looked set for Oxford but chose instead the austere west coast of Tasmania for his postgraduate research. For the next decade he earned a living with his pen. And instead of political history in the traditional academic mould, he wrote corporate histories that dispensed with footnotes.
Always probing and speculative, Blainey has dislodged many of the keystones in our understandings of Australia’s past. He was one of the first to write about the expansive social history of this land before 1788; he questioned whether Botany Bay was founded primarily as a convict colony; he argued that the Eureka uprising had economic rather than political causes; and he identified sport as a neglected key to the Australian character. His controversial views earned such newspaper headlines as ‘Brave Man Set Upon by Thugs for Telling Truth’.
In The Fuss That Never Ended a lively and distinguished assembly of fellow historians—of various ages, interests and political stances—take a fresh look at Blainey’s remarkable and sometimes controversial career.
Table of Contents
Preface
Contributors
Blainey and the Australian Historical Profession (Stuart Macintyre)
Half a Determinist: Blainey and the Mechanics of History (Graeme Davison)
The Tyranny of Distance Revisited (Geoffrey Bolton)
Triumph of the Colonists (Tim Rowse)
Light Green, Dark Green (Tom Griffiths)
A Man’s World? (Joanne Scott)
The Steven Seagal Factor: The Corporate Histories (Bridget Griffen-Foley)
White Ghost of Empire (Deborah Gare)
The Politics of Race (Andrew Markus)
From the Frontier to the Gulf (Ian Hodges)
Sport Matters (Tom Stannage with David Major)
My Lord the Workingman? (Charlie Fox)
The Media Game (Morag Fraser)
The Melbourne School of History: Memories and Reflections (Hugh Stretton, John Poynter, John Mulvaney and Ken Inglis)
Notes
Comprehensive Bibliography of Works by Blainey 1954–2001 (Grace Giannini)
Index
About the Author
Contributors
Geoffrey Bolton is Pro-Chancellor of Murdoch University and an adjunct professor at Curtin University of Technology. He is a Fellow of the Australian Academies of Humanities and Social Sciences, and of the Royal Historical Society, and an Officer of the Order of Australia. His publications include Edmund Barton: The One Man for the Job (2000) and The Oxford History of Australia (1986). He first met Geoffrey Blainey in 1950.
Graeme Davison is Professor of History at Monash University. He is the author of The Rise and Fall of Marvellous Melbourne (1978), The Unforgiving Minute (1993) and The Use and Abuse of Australian History (2000). He is the co-editor of The Oxford Companion to Australian History (1998, 2001).
Charlie Fox lectures in the History Department of the University of Western Australia. He is the author of Working Australia (1992) and Fighting Back (2000), joint author of Australians at Work (1989), joint editor of Under Blue Skies (1996) and editor of Historical Refractions (1993).
Morag Fraser has been the Editor of Eureka Street since 1991. She has won awards as a journalist, is featured regularly in collections of essays and is in demand as a judge in literary competitions. Morag is a commentator and columnist on the national scene in a number of diverse areas including politics, literature and religion.
Dr Deborah Gare is a historian in the Australian Studies Centre, Curtin University. She is the author of Lady Onslow's Legacy: A History of the Home of Peace and the Brightwater Care Group (2001) and of articles in such journals as Historical Journal, Quadrant and Australian Historical Studies. She was a co-editor of Limina from 1997 to 2001 and lectures also at the University of Notre Dame Australia.
Dr Bridget Griffen-Foley is an ARC postdoctoral fellow in the Department of History at the University of Sydney and a Harold White 2000 fellow at the National Library of Australia. She is the author of The House of Packer: The Making of a Media Empire (Allen & Unwin, 1999) and Sir Frank Packer: The Young Master (Harper Collins, 2000).
Dr Tom Griffiths is an historian with strong interests in the social, cultural and environmental history of Australia, the history of Antarctica and the comparative environmental histories of settler societies. Before joining the Australian National University in 1997, where he is now a Senior Fellow in the History Program of the Research School of Social Sciences, he researched and taught at the University of Melbourne, Monash University and the University of London, and held appointments at the State Library of Victoria, the Museum of Victoria and the Victorian Department of Conservation.
Ian Hodges is a historian in the Military History Section of the Australian War Memorial. His research interests include Bean's writings at Gallipoli and the Sinai and Palestinian campaigns of World War One. His first love is Thai history.
Professor Stuart Macintyre is the Ernest Scott Professor of History at the University of Melbourne, and is currently the Dean of the Faculty of Arts. His principal interests are labour and social history, both in Britain and Australia, the study of social and political change in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries and intellectual history. His most recent publications include The Reds (1988), and the Cambridge Concise History of Australia (1999), and he was the co-editor of the Oxford Companion to Australian History (1988). He has been a member of the Councils of the National Library and the State Library of Victoria, and has been involved in Civics Education for more than ten years.
Andrew Markus is associate professor in the School of Historical Studies, Monash University. His recent publications include Governing Savages (1990), Australian Race Relations (1994), The 1967 Referendum (with Bain Attwood, 1997), and The Struggle for Aboriginal Rights (edited with Bain Attwood, 1999). His latest book, Race Politics, was published by Allen and Unwin in 2001.
John Mulvaney AO CMG graduated in History at Melbourne University two years before Geoffrey Blainey. Except for two years studying archaeology at Cambridge, he taught in the Melbourne History Department from 1949 until 1964. At the Australian National University from 1965, Mulvaney took the Foundation Chair in Prehistory in the Arts Faculty between 1971 and 1985. With Blainey, he served on the Committee of Inquiry on Museums, 1974-75, and the Australian Heritage Commission. His 14 books include The Prehistory of Australia and a biography of Baldwin Spencer.
John Poynter was a student in the Department of History at Melbourne University from 1948 until 1950. He was appointed Ernest Scott Professor in the Department in 1966, but resigned in 1975 to become Deputy Vice-Chancellor. Since retirement in 1994 he has been an Honorary Professorial Fellow in the University's Australian Centre. Publications include Society and Pauperism (1969), A Place Apart: The University of Melbourne, Decades of Challenge (co-author 1996) and Doubt and Certainties: A Life of Alexander Leeper (1997); a book provisionally entitled Mr Felton's Bequests is in progress.
Tim Rowse is a Fellow at the Centre for Aboriginal Economic Policy Research, Australian National University. He has long-standing research interests in Indigenous matters, including health, economic and political development and the regional history (Central Australia) of colonial relationships. He is the author of Obliged to be Difficult: Nugget Coombs' Legacy in Indigenous Affairs (2000) and White flour, white power : from rations to citizenship in Central Australia (1998).
Joanne Scott teaches Australian Studies at the University of the Sunshine Coast. She has published in the fields of gender and race relations, labour history, the history of education, and oral history. She is currently co-authoring a history of the Queensland Premier's Department.
Tom Stannage is Professor of History and Executive Dean of the Division of Humanities at Curtin University of Technology. He is a Member of the Order of Australia, and a Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences in Australia. His books include The People of Perth, Lakeside City, Embellishing the Landscape, and Baldwin Thwarts the Opposition. He first wrote about Geoffrey Blainey for Historical Studies in April 1982.
Hugh Stretton is an Emeritus Professor of History at the University of Adelaide and is a Fellow of the Academies of the Social Sciences and the Humanities. His publications include Capitalism, Socialism and the Environment, and Political Essays. His most recent publication is Economics: A New Introduction.
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