Let's Not Forget Albion. "The Enlightenment and the Origins of European Australia", by John Gascoigne. [review]

Abstract

Australian historiography, in the 1970s and 1980s, was dominated by a nativist reaction against Anglocentricity and the dreaded ‘cultural cringe’. Its more extreme manifestations rejected any comparative perspective that might blur an exclusive focus on Australia’s historical distinctiveness. But time, and academic fashion, moved on. Now John Gascoigne directs his formidably learned gaze to the social history of ideas in Australia from 1788 to 1850. The result is an engaging, lucid and wide-ranging overview, which triumphantly re-emphasises the intellectual benefits of integrating the study of Australia’s colonial past more closely with that of imperial Britain.