Editing History of Australia (section)

==Historiography==
{{Main article|Historiography of Australia}}
The first Australian histories, such as those by [[William Wentworth]] and [[James Macarthur (politician)|James Macarthur]], were written to influence public opinion and British policy in the colony. After the Australian colonies became self-governing in the 1850s, colonial governments commissioned histories aimed at promoting migration and investment from Britain. The beginning of professional academic history in Australian universities from 1891 saw the dominance of an Imperial framework for interpreting Australian history, in which Australia emerged from the successful transfer of people, institutions, and culture from Britain. Typical of the imperial school of Australian history was the Australian volume of the ''Cambridge History of the British Empire'' published in 1933.<ref>{{Cite book|last1=MacIntyre|first1=Stuart|title=The History Wars|last2=Clark|first2=Anna|publisher=Melbourne University Press|year=2004|isbn=0522851282|edition=2nd|location=Melbourne|pages=31–35}}</ref><ref>Stuart McIntyre, "Australia and the Empire," in Robin Winks, ed., ''The Oxford History of the British Empire: Historiography'' (1999) 5:163–81</ref>

Military history received government support after the First World War, most prominently with [[Charles Bean|Charles Bean's]] 12 volume ''[[Official History of Australia in the War of 1914–1918|History of Australia in the War of 1914–1918]]'' (1921–42). Bean's earlier work as Australia's official war correspondent had helped establish the Anzac legend which, according to McKenna: "immediately supplanted all other narratives of nationhood – the march of the explorers, the advance of settlement, Eureka, Federation and Australia's record of progressive democratic legislation."<ref>McKenna, Mark (2013). "The history anxiety". ''The Cambridge History of Australia, Volume 2''. p. 564-7</ref>

Radical nationalist interpretations of Australian history became more prominent from the 1930s. [[Brian Fitzpatrick (Australian author)|Brian Fitzpatrick]] published a series of histories from 1939 to 1941 which sought to demonstrate the exploitative nature of Britain's economic relationship with Australia and the role of the labour movement in a struggle for social justice and economic independence. [[Russel Ward|Russel Ward's]] ''The Australian Legend'' (1958) which sought to trace the origins of a distinctive democratic national ethos from the experiences of the convicts, bushrangers, gold-diggers, drovers and shearers. In the 1960s, Marxist historians such as [[Robin Gollan|Bob Gollan]] and [[Ian Turner (Australian political activist)|Ian Turner]] explored the relationship of the labour movement to radical nationalist politics.<ref>MacIntyre, Stuart; Clark, Anna (2004). pp 38–39</ref>

[[File:The Lucky Country.jpg|thumb|[[Donald Horne]]'s ''[[The Lucky Country]]'' (1964) is a critique of a "dull and provincial" Australia that gets by on its abundance of natural resources.<ref name="China and the Tyranny of Proximity">{{cite web|title=China and the Tyranny of Proximity|work=[[Quadrant (magazine)|Quadrant]]|date=28 October 2020|access-date=20 January 2023|url=https://quadrant.org.au/magazine/2020/10/china-and-the-tyranny-of-proximity/}}</ref> The book's title has been constantly misinterpreted since the book was published.<ref>{{cite web|title=Forever misquoted, Donald Horne dies|work=[[The Sydney Morning Herald]]|date=9 September 2005|url=https://www.smh.com.au/entertainment/books/forever-misquoted-donald-horne-dies-20050909-gdm1b1.html}}</ref>]]

In the first two volumes of his ''History of Australia'' (1962, 1968) [[Manning Clark]] developed an idiosyncratic interpretation of Australian history telling the story of "epic tragedy" in which "the explorers, Governors, improvers, and perturbators vainly endeavoured to impose their received schemes of redemption on an alien, intractable setting".<ref>{{cite book|author=Macintyre|first=Stuart|title=The Oxford History of the British Empire: Volume V: Historiography|publisher=Oxford University Press|year=1999|isbn=9780191542411|editor-last=Winks|editor-first=Robin|page=175|chapter=Australia and the Empire|doi=10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198205661.003.0009|chapter-url=https://books.google.com/books?id=u2G63IrFXpgC&pg=PA175}}</ref> [[Donald Horne|Donald Horne's]] ''[[The Lucky Country]]'' (1964) was scathing in its observations of a complacent, dull, anti-intellectual and provincial Australia, with a swollen suburbia and absence of innovation. [[Geoffrey Blainey]]'s ''[[The Tyranny of Distance: How Distance Shaped Australia's History|The Tyranny of Distance]]'' (1966) argued that Australia's distance from Britain had shaped its history and identity.<ref>MacIntyre, Stuart; Clark, Anna (2004). pp 39–40</ref><ref>{{Cite book|last=McKenna|first=Mark|title=The Cambridge History of Australia, Volume 2|year=2013|pages=573|chapter=The history anxiety}}</ref>

[[Humphrey McQueen]] in ''A New Britannia'' (1970) attacked radical nationalist historical narratives from a Marxist New Left perspective. [[Anne Summers]] in ''Damned Whores and God's Police'' (1975) and [[Miriam Dixson]] in ''The Real Matilda'' (1976) analysed the role of women in Australian history. Others explored the history of those marginalised because of their sexuality or ethnicity.<ref>MacIntyre, Stuart; Clark, Anna (2004). pp 41–2</ref> Oral histories, such as [[Wendy Lowenstein]]'s ''Weevils in the Flour'' (1978) became more prominent.<ref>{{Cite book|last=Thomson|first=Alistair|title=Australian History Now|publisher=NewSouth Publishing|year=2013|isbn=9781742233710|editor-last=Clark|editor-first=Anna|location=Sydney|pages=75|chapter=Oral history|editor-last2=Ashton|editor-first2=Paul}}</ref>

From the 1970s, histories of the Aboriginal{{Endash}}settler relationship became prominent. [[Charles Rowley (academic)|Charles Rowley]]'s ''The Destruction of Aboriginal Society'' (1970), [[Henry Reynolds (historian)|Henry Reynolds]]' ''[[The Other Side of the Frontier]]'' (1981) and Peter Reid's work on the "[[Stolen Generations|stolen generations]]" of Aboriginal children are notable.<ref>MacIntyre, Stuart; Clark, Anna (2004). pp 43–45</ref><ref>Read, Peter (2013). "Making Aboriginal History". ''Australian History Now''.  p. 38-39</ref>

Post-structuralist ideas on the relationship between language and meaning were influential in the 1980s and 1990s, for example, in [[Greg Dening]]'s ''Mr Bligh's Bad Language'' (1992)''.''<ref>Boucher, Leigh (2013). "New cultural history and Australia's colonial past". ''Australian History Now''. pp. 288–294</ref> Memory studies and [[Pierre Nora]]'s ideas on the relationship between memory and history influenced work in a number of fields including military history, ethnographic history, oral history and historical work in Australian museums.<ref>Clark, Anna; Ashton, Paul (eds.) (2013). ''Australian History Now''. pp. 81–82, 101, 114–15, 143–44.</ref> Interdisciplinary histories drawing on the insights of fields such as sociology, anthropology, cultural studies and environmental studies have become more common since the 1980s.<ref>Clark, Anna; Ashton, Paul (2013). ''Australian History Now''. p. 19</ref> Transnational approaches which analyse Australian history in a global and regional context have also flourished in recent decades.<ref>Lake, Marilyn (2013). "Histories across borders". ''Australian History Now''. pp. 270–73.</ref>

In the 21st century, most historical works are not created by academic historians, and public conceptions of Australia's history are more likely to be shaped by popular histories, historical fiction and drama, the media, the internet, museums and public institutions. Popular histories by amateur historians regularly outsell work by academic historians. Local histories and family histories have proliferated in recent decades.<ref>McKenna, Mark (2013). "The history anxiety". ''The Cambridge History of Australia, Volume 2''. pp. 579–80.</ref><ref>MacIntyre, Stuart; Clark, Anna (2004). ''The History Wars''. pp. 20–23.</ref>