The Invisible State is the first major book applying contemporary state theory to Australia. Professor Davidson takes a historical approach, tracing the development of the Australian citizen in the nineteenth century and examining the relationship of the citizen to the state. The book argues that giving the judiciary the last say about matters of state divests the people of ultimate authority and ends the supremacy of the legislature elected by the people.

Although this book concentrates on land settlement in Tasmania, such a focus encompasses a wide range of historical themes relevant to Australia's colonial history and prompts comparisons with other ex-colonial countries and frontier societies. Land status determined many other factors, so Land Settlement in Early Tasmania is able to investigate how white settlement affected the native Tasmanians and how they retaliated, as well as the early history of land alienation and environmental degradation in Van Dieman's Land, the island's social relations and the growth of primary industry from...

This book, written by a lawyer and unique for its perspective based in both legal and social history, illuminates the important role played by the concept of the rule of law in the transformation of New South Wales from a penal colony to a free society. The convicts had first-hand experience of criminal law, but all the settlers were part of a culture that emphasized the rule of law as the guarantee of its fundamental political value, British liberty. Dr. Neal outlines the interaction between law and politics in early New South Wales, where because there were no official political structures,...

This book provides background to the current debate on health policy by studying the political conflict over it in Australia from 1910 to 1960. It looks at both state and national levels to identify the main structures and forces that shaped the system of publicly-subsidized private practice, which is now most obvious in the fee-for-service scheme.

This book is the first systematic study of assisted emigration from Britain to Australia during the inter-war years. It looks at the British and Australian politicians and bureaucrats involved in the program and the half-million migrants who uprooted themselves. Both governments used migration to meet their different needs, with little regard for the migrants themselves. Not only is the book an important study of imperial relations in the 1920s and 1930s, it describes an important and overlooked aspect of Australian political and social history.

The 1890s in Australia were a time of social and industrial upheaval. They also nurtured a flourishing radical culture: anarchists, socialists, single taxers, feminists and republicans. This book, informed by feminist and cultural studies, recreates that political and social vision and shows the radicals' influence, and their resonances in the 1990s.

From the first white settlement clothing was of vast social significance to Australians. It was central to the ways class and status were negotiated and equally significant for marking out sexual differences. Dress was implicated in definitions of morality, in the relationship between Europeans and Aboriginal people, and between convict and free. This book reveals the broader historical and cultural implications of clothes in Australia for the first time.

This book examines the relationship of the Australian colonies with Britain and the Empire in the late nineteenth century, and looks at the beginnings of Australian nationalism. It is the first detailed study of the formative period 1880-1900. As the debate about an Australian Republic becomes more heated, this book is a timely reexamination of the colonial character of Australia's federation and Australia's incorporation into an imperial framework.

In this innovative mixture of labor history and cultural history, Diane Kirkby explores the central figure of the barmaid. Drawing on previously unexplored archives, new documentary sources and oral history, Barmaids traces the sexualization of the industry and the feminist and temperance debates about it. It covers women's demands for equal pay and drinking rights in the postwar period and concludes in the mid-1990s with changes in the labor market and drinking customs that saw the end of the old pub culture and the place of barmaids within it.

This imaginative and resonant book looks at the constitution as a cultural artifact. Irving looks beyond the well-known events, places and figures to locate federation and the constitution in the context of broader social, political and cultural changes. Despite its paradoxical construction, there is something uniquely Australian about the constitution, and it marked a utopian moment as the old century gave way to the new. Irving analyzes the background and outcomes of the recent Constitutional Convention and considers its significance for Australia's future. A new chapter covers the...