Apr 24, 2010Brad rated it really liked it
As a recent immigrant down under I wanted an entry point to understanding the Australian experience. This book met my needs. Blainey does a great job of showing how his themes of climate and distance weave through the history of the people living here starting from before the Europeans arrived. Most the book is, of course, the history of the relatively new nation of Australia, but in glorifying the present he doesn’t shy away from sensitive issues such as Aboriginal relations, immigration and the environment. Rather, he provides a measured, well researched, yet very Australian perspective. Having just moved here from the US, I also enjoyed how he provides many parallels with the American experience, teasing out some not so obvious ways the two former British colonies relate to one another. (less)
good read, very accessible intro into Australian history that gives a nice feel what it would have been like to live in AU 20, 50, 100, 200 or more years ago.
I probably would not agree with all of the political perspectives of the author as they come across often as quite pragmatic. At least they're always balanced and acknowleding the complexities of any situation, whether it is the relationship between Aboriginal Australians and British settlers or Australia's relationship to neighbouring countries.
Maybe those disagreements made me engage even more with the book than I would have had otherwise. (less)
I probably would not agree with all of the political perspectives of the author as they come across often as quite pragmatic. At least they're always balanced and acknowleding the complexities of any situation, whether it is the relationship between Aboriginal Australians and British settlers or Australia's relationship to neighbouring countries.
Maybe those disagreements made me engage even more with the book than I would have had otherwise. (less)
Sep 09, 2014Lisa rated it it was ok · review of another edition
Shelves: audio-book, australia, c20th, non-fiction, history
Hmm. I hope Australian school kids aren't being given this to read. Blainey has somehow managed to tell the fascinating story of our country's history in such a way that even a history lover like me found it boring.
I suppose it goes with the idea of it being a Shorter History - there's not enough space to do more than skim over events, be highly selective, and make sweeping statements about things. But too often when he made what appeared to be an unsubstantiated claim about public opinion in times past I found myself asking 'how can he know that in the era before public opinion polling?' On the audiobook there's no endnotes, references or suggested further reading list to check the statement against. Blainey is, of course, one of Australia's eminent historians, but still, in the shadow of the 'history wars' in this country, I'm not willing to assumethat any historian has valid evidence for his opinions.
There's too much about economic history, and what there is seems politically biased. And too much about mining, and virtually nothing about the knowledge economy, which is after all what we'll be relying on for exports to sustain our standard of living once we've dug up all the minerals.
There's also nothing about the founding of Melbourne (so see my review of
.
Most notably, in his summation about the High Court of Australia's Mabo judgement, he doesn't give the reason for the High Court's ruling. That is, that under British law at the time of colonisation, the indigenous people owned the land, and that unless that land had been transferred into the legal system and had a proper legal title it still belonged to those indigenous people, as long as they had maintained continuous occupation of it. Blainey makes it sound as if this ruling was a strange aberration by the High Court trying to usurp the powers of the parliament, but all it was doing was applying the law as it stood. The result was that Crown land (i.e. all the bits that weren't owned by somebody or some corporation) where a tribe was still living belonged to that tribe. The reason there was such angst about this is that there are still vast swathes of Australia which are leased to farmers and more often these days to farming corporations. These are most often 99-year leases with absurdly low lease payments. These farmers have been there so long that they think and act as if they own the land, but they don't, and they had to negotiate with Aborigines who'd at last succeeded in using the legal system to achieve their land rights. THis is a highly significant moment in Australian history, and it's quick and easy to explain (as I just have) but Blainey chooses not to do it, as he also chooses not to say anything about Reconciliation.
I could go on, because I think this is not an unbiased history - he's a bit churlish about Labor PMs and he fawns over his favourite Liberal ones i.e. Menzies and Howard - but I'd have to listen to it again to check my facts, and I definitely do not want to do that! (less)
I suppose it goes with the idea of it being a Shorter History - there's not enough space to do more than skim over events, be highly selective, and make sweeping statements about things. But too often when he made what appeared to be an unsubstantiated claim about public opinion in times past I found myself asking 'how can he know that in the era before public opinion polling?' On the audiobook there's no endnotes, references or suggested further reading list to check the statement against. Blainey is, of course, one of Australia's eminent historians, but still, in the shadow of the 'history wars' in this country, I'm not willing to assumethat any historian has valid evidence for his opinions.
There's too much about economic history, and what there is seems politically biased. And too much about mining, and virtually nothing about the knowledge economy, which is after all what we'll be relying on for exports to sustain our standard of living once we've dug up all the minerals.
There's also nothing about the founding of Melbourne (so see my review of
.Most notably, in his summation about the High Court of Australia's Mabo judgement, he doesn't give the reason for the High Court's ruling. That is, that under British law at the time of colonisation, the indigenous people owned the land, and that unless that land had been transferred into the legal system and had a proper legal title it still belonged to those indigenous people, as long as they had maintained continuous occupation of it. Blainey makes it sound as if this ruling was a strange aberration by the High Court trying to usurp the powers of the parliament, but all it was doing was applying the law as it stood. The result was that Crown land (i.e. all the bits that weren't owned by somebody or some corporation) where a tribe was still living belonged to that tribe. The reason there was such angst about this is that there are still vast swathes of Australia which are leased to farmers and more often these days to farming corporations. These are most often 99-year leases with absurdly low lease payments. These farmers have been there so long that they think and act as if they own the land, but they don't, and they had to negotiate with Aborigines who'd at last succeeded in using the legal system to achieve their land rights. THis is a highly significant moment in Australian history, and it's quick and easy to explain (as I just have) but Blainey chooses not to do it, as he also chooses not to say anything about Reconciliation.
I could go on, because I think this is not an unbiased history - he's a bit churlish about Labor PMs and he fawns over his favourite Liberal ones i.e. Menzies and Howard - but I'd have to listen to it again to check my facts, and I definitely do not want to do that! (less)
Nov 21, 2012Colin rated it it was ok
The kindest thing you can say about this book is that it is old-fashioned. But there were times when I was going through it when I felt it was reprehensible. The author seems not terribly interested in critiquing the past. One rhetorical device becomes the book's refrain. The author mentions that "some have blamed" or "it has become common to blame" this or that decision of the Anglo-Australian or Hiberno-Australian elite. Then the author claims that it was in fact entirely "understandable" that, say, Melanesians should have been kidnapped and forced to work on Queensland plantations. Perhaps it is understandable, given the greed and racism of some plantation owners, but it is still horrific, and the author skips too lightly over the moral issues involved. The author also doesn't seem particularly interested in critiquing his sources. In the earlier chapters the reader is often treated to physiognomic accounts of white Australians. These sources could be used to shed light on all sorts of issues in the mentalities of 18th and 19th century Australians and/or Britishers, but the author of this book seems content just to quote them without analyzing what they mean. What is the point then of returning to these sources? Does the author take them at face-value as accounts of some Australian superiority? Does he want the reader to take them that way?
I picked up this book to get a general outline of Australian history. I'm not sure I learned more from this than from looking up individual Wikipedia articles. In talking to friends in Australia about this book, though, I realize that this book has given me something more interesting and more intangible: an acquaintance with a particular Australian narrative of self. All the same, this is an acquaintance I'm not sure I'd like to cultivate. (less)
I picked up this book to get a general outline of Australian history. I'm not sure I learned more from this than from looking up individual Wikipedia articles. In talking to friends in Australia about this book, though, I realize that this book has given me something more interesting and more intangible: an acquaintance with a particular Australian narrative of self. All the same, this is an acquaintance I'm not sure I'd like to cultivate. (less)
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