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Page 38
Table, but did not take the initiative in creating new networks. When the
150th anniversary of the founding of New South Wales was celebrated
in 1938, he does not seem to have reached out to the Aboriginal
counter-narrative of a day of invasion. Some of the most creative work
was achieved by women writers working outside the academy, most
of them identified with the fledgling Fellowship of Australian Writers.
Flora Eldershaw, with Marjorie Barnard, Miles Franklin (1879–1954)
and Dame Mary Gilmore (1865–1962) produced The Peaceful Army
(1938), which recovered much useful material about pioneer women in
New South Wales. Marjorie Barnard, with Flora Eldershaw, also wrote
Phillip of Australia (1938), an account of the first four years of settlement,
which was to find its counterpart three years later in Eleanor Dark’s
(1901–85) fictional reconstruction of the same period from an Aboriginal
perspective, The Timeless Land (1941). It is evident that women writers
moving across the borders of history and historical fiction experienced an
35 Kwan, ‘G.C. Henderson’, 44–6.
36 See Andrew Bonnell, ‘Stephen Roberts as a Commentator on Fascism and the Road to War in
Europe’, History Australia, 11:3 (2014), 9–30.
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enriching contact in Sydney in those years, though this was not always
appreciated by the men who had hitherto dominated the writing of early
colonial history such as C.H. Currey (1890–1970) and Malcolm Ellis
(1890–1969). Ellis directed a particularly nasty accusation of plagiarism
against Barnard when she published Macquarie’s World in 1941, and the
experience seems to have discouraged her for a time from major historical
research.37
At the University of Melbourne, Crawford’s arrival as professor in
succession to Scott in 1937 was a more distinct harbinger of change,
as he injected into his department’s honours courses ingredients in the
philosophy and theory of history that had not previously been prominent
in university teaching. But Crawford’s department also showed national
leadership, since it was responsible in 1940 for the establishment of the
journal Historical Studies: Australia and New Zealand, which under various
changes of name has survived to this day as a forum for the publication
of new research of a quality to meet international scholarly standards.38
Previously, the most accessible outlets for academic and amateur alike had
been the journals of the various state historical societies, of which probably
the most substantial was Sydney’s Journal of the Royal Australian Historical
Society, but the pages of all of them combined somewhat uneasily the
monographs of the scholar with the effusions of the enthusiastic amateur.
The onset of the Second World War thrust many historians into new and
often unexpected company. Probably the most bizarre experience of all fell
to Max Crawford when he found himself in a remote Russian provincial
city as first secretary in the new Australian embassy to the Soviet Union.
Robert Madgwick and Fred Alexander more predictably found service
in army education, which led to an expansion of their interest in adult
education nationally. The young political scientist and historian Fin Crisp
(1917–84) worked in the Department of Post-War Reconstruction, often
in cooperation with Paul Hasluck at the new Department of External
Affairs. Alf Conlon’s (1908–61) Directorate of Research and Civil Affairs,
with its emphasis on postwar colonial policy, included a number of
anthropologists such as Ian Hogbin (1904–89), Bill Stanner (1905–81)
37 Jill Roe, ‘Barnard, Marjorie Faith (Marjory) (1897–1987)’, ADB, adb.anu.edu.au/biography/
barnard-marjorie-faith-marjory-12176/text21821, published first in hardcopy 2007 (accessed 19 December 2015).
38 Fay Anderson, An Historian’s Life: Max Crawford and the Politics of Academic Freedom (Melbourne: Melbourne University Press, 2005), 68–72, 81–5; see also Stuart Macintyre and Peter McPhee, Max Crawford’s School of History (Melbourne: History Department, University of Melbourne, 2000).
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and Camilla Wedgwood (1901–55), but no historians, except for the
youthful John Legge (1921–2016), subsequently a leading authority on
the Pacific and Southeast Asia.39
It was only with the establishment of the Department of Post-War
Reconstruction, and the establishment in 1945 of the Universities
Commission and the Commonwealth Office of Education, that a renewed
potential for networking among historians became feasible, though none
could foresee the extent to which these instrumentalities might survive
and wield influence in the postwar years.40 Of greater consequence was
the decision to establish The Australian National University (ANU)
in Canberra as a research and postgraduate institution that might
coordinate initiatives in scholarship on a nationwide basis. Even though
unforeseen delays in the appointment of senior professors in the social
sciences meant that it was to be well into the 1950s before this promise
was fully implemented, nevertheless during that time at least two ANU
postgraduates, Russel Ward (1914–95) and Allan Martin (1926–2002),
produced work of national importance.41
With the arrival in 1957 of Sir Keith Hancock as professor of history and
director of the Research School of Social Sciences, the pace accelerated.
Hancock was conscious of ANU being The Australian National University,
encouraging cooperation and major research endeavours throughout
Australia. This sense of mission was evident not only in such ventures
as the wool seminar, bringing together a wide cross-disciplinary group
to consider Australia’s major primary industry, but also in a project of
continuing importance today: the Australian Dictionary of Biography.42
Building on the biographical data collections that Laurie Fitzhardinge
(1908–93) had put together, Hancock oversaw the development of
Australia’s largest scholarly network. Working parties were set up in each
39 There are essays on Conlon and his directorate colleagues in Geoffrey Gray, Doug Munro and Christine Winter, eds, Scholars at War: Australasian Social Scientists, 1939–1945 (Canberra: ANU E
Press, 2012).
40 Stuart Macintyre, Australia’s Boldest Experiment: War and Reconstruction in the 1940s (Sydney: NewSouth Publishing, 2015), 304–8.
41 Russel Ward, The Australian Legend (Melbourne: Oxford University Press, 1958). Martin published a number of important journal articles during the 1950s, culminating in Peter Loveday and A.W. Martin, Parliament Factions and Parties: The First Thirty Years of Responsible Government in New South Wales, 1856–1889 (Melbourne: Melbourne University Press, 1966).
42 D.A. Low, ed., Keith Hancock: The Legacies of an Historian (Melbourne: Melbourne University Press, 2001), including Geoffrey Bolton, ‘Rediscovering Australia: Hancock and the Wool Seminar’, 180–200, and Libby Robin, ‘Woolly Identities’, 201–12.
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Australian state and territory, connected on a federal basis with Canberra
and reinforced by regular meetings of a repr
esentative committee;
academic historians cooperated with hundreds of contributors from
many walks of life to produce articles that could be edited to a sterling
standard; new research questions were identified and materials discovered
that might not otherwise have received attention. It was a classic model
of networking to add value to existing scholarly resources. If Hancock’s
intention of involving historians from outside the universities led to
a long and stormy interaction with Malcolm Ellis, the diplomacy of the
first general editor, Douglas Pike (1908–74), ensured that the Australian
Dictionary of Biography would be quickly acknowledged as genuinely
nationwide and participatory.43
More generally, during the 1950s, networking among the state universities
tended to build on the lines laid down before the Second World War.
Perhaps the most surprising phenomenon was the persistence of the
Balliol College nexus at Melbourne, Adelaide and Western Australia,
probably through the influence of academic staff who had gone through
Balliol before the war. During the 1930s, the Australians who gravitated
to Balliol College included John La Nauze (1911–90), Fin Crisp and
Manning Clark (1915–93). I may digress here to comment on the later
idea that the anti-British sentiment sometimes evident in the six volumes
of Clark’s History was due to the coldness and lack of appreciation that
he met with at Oxford.44 In 1956, when he was embarking on the first
volume of this great project, he and his family spent their study leave
attached to Balliol College. Some of the dons, including the mediaevalist
Richard Southern (1912–2001), thought highly of him, and I experienced
proof of this. In the term before the Finals examination in history, it
was customary for the candidates to receive extra tuition and grooming
from the senior fellow at Balliol. This man unfortunately fell ill, and it
was to Manning Clark that the college entrusted the coaching of their
undergraduates. Their confidence was well placed. Almost immediately
he had them eating out of his hand. They long remembered the tutor
who, when challenged by an American undergraduate as to what he knew
43 Melanie Nolan and Christine Fernon, eds, The ADB ’s Story (Canberra: ANU E Press, 2013), esp.
Ann Moyal, ‘Sir Keith Hancock: Laying the Foundations’, 49–92; and John D. Calvert, ‘“Born to do this work”: Douglas Pike and the ADB, 1962–1973’, 101–19.
44 Manning Clark, A History of Australia (6 vols; Melbourne: Melbourne University Press, 1962–
1987). Clark recounts his treatment at Oxford in those terms – The Quest for Grace (Ringwood: Viking, 1991), ch. 3 – but as Mark McKenna (in this volume) points out, his diaries during this time present ‘very little if any evidence of these sentiments’.
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about baseball, replied that it was a game occasionally played as a warm-
up before minor Australian Rules games in Melbourne. Four of the 10
who sat the examination got first-class honours.
In the decade after 1945, the intake of Australian historians at Balliol
reached a peak. They included Hugh Stretton (1924–2015), Max
Hartwell (1921–2009), C.M. (Mick) Williams (1923–87), John Legge,
Frank Crowley (1924–2013), Peter Phillips (1920–2010), Bede Nairn
(1917–2006), and myself. My choice was no doubt affected by the fact
that the four teaching staff at the University of Western Australia – Fred
Alexander, ‘Josh’ Reynolds (1905–81), John Legge, and Frank Crowley –
were all Balliol products, though too much should not be read into that;
a senior don at Balliol once confessed to me sorrowfully that Crowley was
the only Australian for whom Oxford and Balliol seemed to have done
nothing. But the Balliol influence must have been pervasive. As late as
January 1966, when I took the chair of modern history at the University
of Western Australia, half of the 20 professors of history in Australia
had either read the undergraduate course or completed a doctoral thesis
at Balliol.
During the 1950s, the foremost school of history in Australia was probably
Melbourne, where two Balliol alumni, Max Crawford and John La Nauze,
each formal in suits, presided over dutiful departmental afternoon teas,
but managed to coexist with a lively radical and Marxist subculture
that included Alan McBriar (1918–2004) and Ian Turner (1922–78).
Moreover, the loudest barracker for Melbourne’s pre-eminence was the
Balliol man Manning Clark, nostalgic in exile at the Canberra University
College. When challenge came it was from two Balliol alumni, Stretton at
Adelaide and Legge at Monash. Stretton’s career at Balliol was remarkable.
Arriving as a Rhodes Scholar in 1946, he was appointed as a fellow two
years later, and this even before he graduated with first-class honours in
1948. At the age of 29, he became the college’s dean, an office usually
held by dons of much greater seniority. In 1954, at 30, he returned to
Adelaide to take the chair of history, and there, despite the interventions
of a reactionary vice-chancellor,45 built up an array of talent including
George Rudé (1910–93), the young Ken Inglis and Allan Martin. By the
early 1960s, Adelaide was arguably the most dynamic department in
45 Evidence of Vice-Chancellor A.P. Rowe’s antipathy towards Stretton can be found in Hugh Stretton, interviewed by Rob Linn, 14 November 2006, J.D. Somerville Oral History Collection, interview no.
760/4, State Library of South Australia, Adelaide (pages 12–13 of transcript).
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the country.46 At Monash, meanwhile, Legge managed not only to
entice Geoffrey Serle (1922–98) and Alan McBriar to join him as senior
members of staff, but also several of the brightest honours students from
Melbourne.47 The networks were expanding.
Sydney and Queensland remained largely immune to the Balliol network,
favouring if anything the London School of Economics. In 1948, Stephen
Roberts was promoted to the vice-chancellorship of the University of
Sydney, and the succession lay between two members of his departmental
staff, Gordon Greenwood (1913–86) and John Manning Ward (1919–
90). Both of their areas of research built upon Sydney’s established
interests in Asia and the Pacific. Greenwood was the senior of the two.
He had taken his doctorate at the London School of Economics in 1939,
whereas Ward had not seen overseas experience. In 1948, however, he
had published British Policy in the South Pacific (1786–1893), in which
his legal expertise enabled him to offer new interpretations about British
imperialism in the region. Once again, the selectors went for the younger
man and Ward, not yet 30, was appointed to the Challis chair.48
Greenwood took himself off to the McCaughey chair of history at the
University of Queensland, where for more than 30 years he was a baronial
presence. With him, he brought an entrepreneurial energy that during
the next decade resulted in a number of initiatives. He edited a history of
Australia, which became standard fare for high schools and universities
/>
until the 1970s. In 1955, he launched the Australian Journal of Politics and
History, the title of which indicated a different emphasis to Melbourne’s
Historical Studies.49 Using his contacts with the Australian Institute of
International Affairs, he launched a series of five-year surveys of Australia
in international relations, forming a partnership with Norman Harper,
and thus bringing the University of Queensland into a closer relationship
than hitherto with the University of Melbourne.
46 Stretton’s role as ‘architect builder’ and ‘pathfinder’ is stressed by several of the contributors to the recent history of the Adelaide history department. Prest, Pasts Present, 16, 46–7, 192, 210; see also Doug Munro, ‘The House that Hugh Built: The Adelaide History Department during the
Stretton Era, 1954–1966’, History of Education 46:5 (2017), 631–52, dx.doi.org/10.1080/004676
0X.2017.1318306.
47 John Thompson, The Patrician and the Bloke: Geoffrey Serle and the Making of Australian History (Canberra: Pandanus Books, 2006); Anderson, An Historian’s Life, 347.
48 B.H. Fletcher and D.M. Schreuder, ‘John Manning Ward’, in Caine et al., History at Sydney, 83–7.
49 John A. Moses, ‘Fifty Years of the Australian Journal of Politics and History’, Australian Journal of Politics and History, 50:2 (2004), 155–62, doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-8497.2004.00329.x.
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At Sydney, Ward tended to explore Australian history as the offshoot of
a wider British diaspora, adapting and modifying in response to a new
environment, but needing to maintain contact with the metropolitan
original. In this he was paralleling the approach of a section of the
Department of English at the same university, including Leonie Kramer,
but the approach could not satisfy the nationalist thrust embodied
in works such as Russel Ward’s Australian Legend or Manning Clark’s
History. If there was any risk that Sydney might find itself isolated
from the mainstream currents of Australian historical thought, this was
averted partly through Ward’s assiduous participation in such ventures
as the Australian Dictionary of Biography, and also through the part
played by Sydney academics in launching historical associations with
specialist interests. In 1956, the Business Archives Council of Australia