Australian History
Book Details

The Unknown Nation

Australia After Empire

James Curran and Stuart Ward

The Unknown Nation unravels the origins, influence and implications of our hesitant coming of age.

Opinion

'Curran and Ward have written an important, serious book about Australia's learning to stand on her own two feet.'
Michael McKernan, Canberra Times, 12 June 2010

'This book offers an impressively thorough account of the struggles of the verious intellectuals, academics, politicians and commentators who have spent the past century agonising over Australia's sense of self.'
Terry Oberg, The Courier Mail, 24/04/10

About this Title

'This book is fresh, provocative and full of insights. Sympathetic to the new nationalism of the 1960s and 1970s it dissects the flaws in this nationalism and its inability to replace the British race myth. It captures the dilemma of contemporary Australia-a nation still searching for a new myth of national self-realisation. Readers of all persuasions will benefit from this readable and challenging account.'
Paul Kelly

The Unknown Nation is an illuminating history of Australia's putative 'search' for national identity.

James Curran and Stuart Ward document how the receding ties of empire and Britishness posed an unprecedented dilemma as Australians lost their traditional ways of defining themselves as a people.

With the sudden disappearance in the 1960s and 1970s of the familiar coordinates of the British world, Australians were cast into the realm of the unknown. The task of remodelling the national image touched every aspect of Australian life where identifiably British ideas, habits and symbols--from foreign relations to the national anthem--had grown obsolete. But how to celebrate Australia's past achievements and present aspirations became a source of public controversy as community leaders struggled to find the appropriate language and rhetoric to invoke a new era.

The Unknown Nation unravels the origins, influence and implications of our hesitant coming of age.

About the Author

James Curran is a Senior Lecturer in History at the University of Sydney. He is the author of The Power of Speech: Australian Prime Ministers Defining the National Image (2004) and a former analyst at the Office of National Assessments. In 2010 he is the Fulbright Professional Scholar in Australia-US Alliance Studies at Georgetown University, Washington DC.

Stuart Ward is Associate Professor at the University of Copenhagen. He is the author of Australia and the British Embrace: The Demise of the Imperial Ideal (2001) and editor of Australia's Empire (with Deryck M Schreuder, 2008). In 2008-09 he was Keith Cameron Chair of Australian History, University College Dublin.

978-0-522-85645-3