Browse
Recent Submissions
Item Book review: The World of Mortimer Menpes: Painter, Etcher, Raconteur(Flinders University, 2015) Kimura, TetsBook review: Julie Robinson (ed), "The World of Mortimer Menpes: Painter, Etcher, Raconteur", Art Gallery of South Australia, Adelaide, 2014, pp. 248.Item ASIO’s Surveillance of Brian Medlin(Flinders University, 2015) Kovac, AnnaThroughout the 1960s and 70s, thousands of South Australian protesters took to the streets, publicly demanding social justice and an end to what they regarded as the unwarranted and imperial ventures of the western world. In Adelaide, authorities noted what they saw as the use of a ‘Paris-style’ charge at demonstrations, with participants marching ten abreast with linked arms. At Flinders University, students threatened to burn a dog to death as part of an anti-Vietnam War demonstration. In Adelaide, the man who more than any other personified the Moratorium movement was Flinders University philosopher Brian Medlin, who advocated for a peaceful end to Australia’s involvement in the Vietnam War. As his former student John Schumann has pointed out, an enduring image of that time is of Brian Medlin, ‘the long-haired professor of philosophy, spread-eagled between two policemen, being dragged from the front of the anti-war march in the September of 1970’.Item Her Exiled Children in America: Irish American Identity and the Civil War(Flinders University, 2015) Nugent, Brodie AlyceIrish Americans fought for both the Union and the Confederacy during the American Civil War of 1861-1865. This article explores the motivating factors behind Irish American decisions during the Civil War Era. Drawing on the work of Susannah Ural, this article argues that the varying economic, social and political factors influencing Irish Americans were interdependent, forming a unique set of interests which reflected the dual identity of the Irish in America. The article argues that this set of distinctly Irish American interests was able to be manipulated in support of the antagonistic Union and Confederate causes, and that the experiences of Irish Americans, North and South, were largely parallel throughout the Civil War Era. The article explores the various decisions taken by Irish Americans in both the Union and the Confederacy throughout the conflict, and demonstrates that the particular interests produced by the duality of Irish American identity provided the ultimate context for decision-making throughout the period. Finally, it argues that, rather than creating a ‘melting pot’ in which Irish migrants were assimilated into a cohesive American national identity, the Civil War in fact acted as a catalyst for the consolidation of a distinctly Irish American collective identity.Item The ‘Near North’: Issues of Empire, Emerging Independence and Regionalism in Australian Foreign and Defence Policy, 1921-1937(Flinders University, 2015) Cuffe, Honae HThe interwar period represents an era of emerging growth and maturity in Australian foreign and defence relations, with a distinct focus shift from Imperial to regional matters. However, this expression of independent policy has been largely overlooked in the existing literature. Rather, Australian policy makers of this era have been framed as disinterested in policy making, lacking direction and preferring ‘to deal with the world one step removed through Whitehall’. Such interpretations have overlooked significant policy changes throughout this period, painting Australia as a timid and naïve nation, content to follow Britain’s every policy and demand. This article will challenge such views, drawing upon a recent growth in literature that supports the notion of growing assertiveness in Australian foreign and defence policy throughout the 1920s and 1930s. In doing so, this article will seek to redefine the interwar image of Australia. This will be achieved through an examination of Australia’s response to the increasingly doubtful diplomatic and security assurances it received from Britain throughout the 1920s and 1930s. The uncertainty that this created forced Australian policy makers to assess their previously unchallenged commitment to the British Empire and to consider the growing significance of Australia’s direct region in policy making, ultimately finding that the pursuit of a new policy direction was necessary. This article will examine this new assertiveness in policy making within the context of appeasement and rearmament, explicitly in its relation towards the potential regional aggressor Japan.Item The Privatisation of Government-Owned Enterprises in Australia: The Case of New South Wales(Flinders University, 2014) Abbott, MalcolmThe purpose of this paper is to discuss the organisation of the state industrial undertakings carried out in Australia by the state government of New South Wales, and to analyse the reasons behind their privatisation in the 1920s and 1930s. The privatisation of government-owned enterprises has occurred in a number of countries in recent years (including Australia) and a number of alternative explanations have been given for this occurring. The privatisations of the New South Wales Government in the 1920s and 1930s were driven mainly by budgetary concerns and therefore look similar in character (if not in scale) to some of those undertaken in Australia during the 1990s and 2000s.Item In Defence of Paul Ham: History as Its Own Worst Enemy(Flinders University, 2014) Ashton, Bodie AItem Editorial(Flinders University, 2014)Item Front matter(Flinders University, 2014)