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Ma`afu, prince of Tonga, chief of Fiji »
The life and times of Fiji’s first Tui Lau
Authored by: John Spurway
Publication date: February 2015
Enele Ma`afu, son of Aleamotu`a, Tu`i Kanokupolu, grew up during a time of unprecedented social and political change in Tonga following the advent of Christianity. Moving to Lau, Fiji, in 1847 when he was about 21, he skilfully exploited kinship links to establish a power base there and in eastern Cakaudrove. His achievements were recognised in 1853 when his cousin King Tupou I appointed Ma`afu as Governor of the Tongans in Fiji.
Acting as a putative champion of the lotu, Ma`afu undertook successful military campaigns elsewhere in Fiji and, after adding the Yasayasa Moala and the Exploring Isles to the nascent Lauan state, he was able to establish the Tovata ko Lau, a union of Lau, Cakaudrove and Bua, with himself as head. His power was formally recognised in 1869 when the Lauan chiefs appointed him as Tui Lau, a new title in the polity of Fiji. Ma`afu was now able to challenge Cakobau for the mastery of Fiji.
After serving as Viceroy during the farcical planter oligarchy known as the Kingdom of Fiji, Ma`afu underwent a severe humiliation when, in order to maintain his power in Lau, he was forced to accede to the wishes of Fiji’s other great chiefs in offering their islands to Great Britain. He would end his days as Roko Tui Lau, a ‘subordinate administrator’ in the Crown Colony of Fiji, presiding over a province characterised by corruption and maladministration but where the legacy of his earlier innovative land reforms has endured.
Aboriginal History Journal: Volume 38 »
Edited by: Shino Konishi
Publication date: January 2015
Volume 38 features a special section on Western Australian Aboriginal history. Clint Bracknell translates and contextualises nineteenth-century Noongar songs. Amanda Nettelbeck considers the role of magistrates and justices of the peace in the ‘frontier legal networks’ of the Pilbara and Kimberley regions. Anne Scrimgeour traces the changing approach to the administration of Aboriginal people in the twentieth-century north-west through the biography of Laurie O’Neill, a former mounted policeman and travelling inspector. Craig Muller studies the history of the Wongatha of the north-east part of the Goldfields. Muller finds that Elkin’s account of his brief 1930 visit to the region was used as evidence in the recent Wongatha native title case without sufficient historical contextualisation. Together, the papers draw on rich archival sources, complicate our understandings of the way in which Aboriginal lives were controlled in the past, and highlight Aboriginal voices and perspectives.
The other four articles exploring Aboriginal histories from other parts of Australia. Nicholas Brodie reconstructs the life of Dalrymple Briggs, a Vandemonian woman of mixed-descent. Noah Riseman examines the lives of three Aboriginal servicemen who all had media profiles as successful examples of assimilation. The other two articles examine different non-Indigenous accounts of Aboriginal people and culture. Marguerita Stephens critically examines discourses on Aboriginal infanticide in colonial Victoria. The history of tourist visits to Palm Island, an Aboriginal reserve in Queensland is the focus of Toby Martin’s article.
Aboriginal History Inc. is a publishing organisation based in the Australian Centre for Indigenous History, Research School of Social Sciences, The Australian National University, Canberra.
For more information on Aboriginal History Inc. please visit aboriginalhistory.org.au.
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Law and Democracy »
Contemporary Questions
Edited by: Glenn Patmore, Kim Rubenstein
Publication date: December 2014
Law and Democracy: Contemporary Questions provides a fresh understanding of law’s regulation of Australian democracy. The book enriches public law scholarship, deepening and challenging the current conceptions of law’s regulation of popular participation and legal representation. The book raises and addresses a number of contemporary questions about legal institutions, principles and practices:
How should the meaning of ‘the people’ in the Australian Constitution be defined by the High Court of Australia?
How do developing judicial conceptions of democracy define citizenship?
What is the legal right to participate in the political community?
Should political advisors to Ministers be subject to legal accountability mechanisms?
What challenges do applied law schemes pose to notions of responsible government and how can they be best addressed?
How can the study of the ritual of electoral politics in Australia and other common law countries supplement the standard account of democracy?
How might the ritual of the pledge of Australian citizenship limit or enhance democratic participation?
What is the conflict between legal restrictions of freedom of expression and democracy, and the role of social media?
Examining the regulation of democracy, this book scrutinises the assumptions and scope of constitutional democracy and enhances our understanding of the frontiers of accountability and responsible government. In addition, key issues of law, culture and democracy are revealed in their socio-legal context.
The book brings together emerging and established scholars and practitioners with expertise in public law. It will be of interest to those studying law, politics, cultural studies and contemporary history.
Diversity in Leadership »
Australian women, past and present
Edited by: Joy Damousi, Kim Rubenstein, Mary Tomsic
Publication date: November 2014
While leadership is an over-used term today, how it is defined for women and the contexts in which it emerges remains elusive. Moreover, women are exhorted to exercise leadership, but occupying leadership positions has its challenges. Issues of access, acceptable behaviour and the development of skills to be successful leaders are just some of them.
Diversity in Leadership: Australian women, past and present provides a new understanding of the historical and contemporary aspects of Indigenous and non-Indigenous women’s leadership in a range of local, national and international contexts. It brings interdisciplinary expertise to the topic from leading scholars in a range of fields and diverse backgrounds. The aims of the essays in the collection document the extent and diverse nature of women’s social and political leadership across various pursuits and endeavours within democratic political structures.
Fiji: A Place Called Home »
Authored by: Daryl Tarte
Publication date: November 2014
Few people have been in the unique position of being able to observe and record the dramatic changes that have taken place in the islands of Fiji over the past 80 years than fourth-generation citizen, Daryl Tarte. He writes emotively, in great detail, about his personal experience of growing up on a remote island during the colonial era, when races were segregated, and white people lived an elite existence.
Following independence, he has been personally involved with many of the key economic, political and social activities that have evolved and enabled the nation to progress during the 20th century. These include the sugar industry, tourism, commerce and industry, religion, the media, women and of course, the coups.
His observations into the complexities of leadership in these areas of national development are fascinating and perceptive. Much of the story is told through the eyes of the many people of all races with whom he has interacted.
Fiji is made up of over 300 unique islands. Tarte has been to many of them, and in a final chapter he gives an insightful commentary of how different they all are.
In the Eye of the Beholder »
What Six Nineteenth-century Women Tell Us About Indigenous Authority and Identity
Authored by: Barbara Dawson
Publication date: November 2014
This book offers a fresh perspective in the debate on settler perceptions of Indigenous Australians. It draws together a suite of little known colonial women (apart from Eliza Fraser) and investigates their writings for what they reveal about their attitudes to, views on and beliefs about Aboriginal people, as presented in their published works. The way that reader expectations and publishers’ requirements slanted their representations forms part of this analysis.
All six women write of their first-hand experiences on Australian frontiers of settlement. The division into ‘adventurers’ (Eliza Fraser, Eliza Davies and Emily Cowl) and longer-term ‘settlers’ (Katherine Kirkland, Mary McConnel and Rose Scott Cowen) allows interrogation into the differing representations between those with a transitory knowledge of Indigenous people and those who had a close and more permanent relationship with Indigenous women, even encompassing individual friendship. More pertinently, the book strives to reveal the aspects, largely overlooked in colonial narratives, of Indigenous agency, authority and individuality.
For more information on Aboriginal History Inc. please visit aboriginalhistory.org.au.
A Political Memoir of the Anglo-French Condominium of the New Hebrides »
Authored by: Keith Woodward
Publication date: October 2014
Keith Woodward has produced an inside account of the intricacies of official politics in the latter stages of the history of the Anglo-French Condominium of the New Hebrides, which will be essential reading for anyone interested in the colonial period of Vanuatu. Woodward spent 25 years in the New Hebrides (1953 to 1978) based in the British Residency and it is his long service which makes his memoir so informative and important. Following a fascinating and insightful description of Port Vila and the New Hebrides when he arrived in the 1950s, Woodward focuses the rest of his memoir on issues relating to the difficulties the British faced in convincing the French that the two powers should come to an agreement on decolonisation of the New Hebrides—that is, to establish a process of constitutional advancement leading ultimately to independence.
— Howard Van Trease, Honorary Research Fellow, Emalus Campus, University of the South Pacific, Port Vila
This is a highly original, evocative and engaging memoir which offers an insightful firsthand account of colonial administration, bilateral French and British relations, political change and decolonisation in Vanuatu. It addresses some lacunae in the historiography of Vanuatu and dispels a number of assumptions about French intentions there. It will be of great benefit to people interested in Vanuatu, and more broadly in political change in the Pacific, constitutional arrangements, decolonisation, French-British relations, and particularly the divergent colonial policies of France and the United Kingdom.
— Gregory Rawlings, Anthropology, University of Otago
Caretaker Conventions in Australasia »
Minding the shop for government
Authored by: Jennifer Menzies, Anne Tiernan
Publication date: October 2014
In the second revised edition of this monograph, Jennifer Menzies and Anne Tiernan capably chart the often hazardous terrain of the ‘caretaker period’ that ensues from the time an election is called until a new government is formed. This is a landscape fraught with political and administrative dangers – particularly for public servants who are required to ‘mind the shop’ and keep the basically machinery of government going.
The conventions represent an historical accretion of custom, practice and rules, often leavened with uncertainty. In tackling their subject, Menzies and Tiernan draw upon their shared past experiences as public servants and ministerial ‘staffers’ as well as the highest standards of academic scholarship – this is a ‘must read’ for politicians, public servants and students of government. The second edition expands on the first edition by documenting recent controversies and trends which have had an impact on caretaker conventions.
The analysis of the contemporary application of caretaker conventions has been updated and new case studies included – particularly from the last federal election. Also included is additional material about lengthy government formation after election day and the management of caretaker conventions during that time. The New Zealand material has been revised and updated.
The caretaker conventions
Australia (PDF, 127KB)
Australian Capital Territory (PDF, 187KB)
New South Wales (PDF, 234 KB)
Northern Territory (PDF, 175KB)
Queensland (PDF, 94KB)
South Australia (PDF, 224KB)
Tasmania (PDF, 232KB)
Victoria (PDF, 178KB)
Western Australia (PDF, 430KB)
New Zealand (PDF, 280KB)
Divine Domesticities »
Christian Paradoxes in Asia and the Pacific
Edited by: Hyaeweol Choi, Margaret Jolly
Publication date: October 2014
Divine Domesticities: Christian Paradoxes in Asia and the Pacific fills a huge lacuna in the scholarly literature on missionaries in Asia/Pacific and is transnational history at its finest. Co-edited by two eminent scholars, this multidisciplinary volume, an outgrowth of several conferences/seminars, critically examines various encounters between western missionaries and indigenous women in the Pacific/Asia … Taken as a whole, this is a thought-provoking and an indispensable reference, not only for students of colonialism/imperialism but also for those of us who have an interest in transnational and gender history in general. The chapters are very clearly written, engaging, and remarkably accessible; the stories are compelling and the research is thorough. The illustrations are equally riveting and the bibliography is extremely useful.
—Theodore Jun Yoo, History Department, University of Hawai’i
The editors of this collection of papers have done an excellent job of creating a coherent set of case studies that address the diverse impacts of missionaries and Christianity on ‘domesticity’, and therefore on the women and children who were assumed to be the rightful inhabitants of that sphere … The introduction to the volume is beautifully written and sets up the rest of the volume in a comprehensive way. It explains the book’s aim to advance theoretical and methodological issues by exploring the role of missionary encounters in the development of modern domesticities; showing the agency of indigenous women in negotiating both change and continuity; and providing a wide range of case studies to show ‘breadth and complexity’ and the local and national specificities of engagements with both missionaries and modernity. My view is that all three aims are well and truly fulfilled.
—Helen Lee, Head, Sociology and Anthropology, La Trobe University, Melbourne
Studies in Australian Political Rhetoric »
Edited by: John Uhr, Ryan Walter
Publication date: September 2014
This edited collection includes eleven major case studies and one general review of rhetorical contest in Australian politics. The volume showcases the variety of methods available for studying political speech, including historical, theoretical, institutional, and linguistic analyses, and demonstrates the centrality of language use to democratic politics. The chapters reveal errors in rhetorical strategy, the multiple and unstable standards for public speech in Australia, and the links between rhetoric and action. The length of Australian political speech is traversed, from pre-Federation to the Gillard minority government (2010–13), and the topics similarly range from Alfred Deakin’s nation-building to Kevin Rudd’s Apology to the Stolen Generations. This fresh collection is intended to stimulate and advance the study of political rhetoric in Australia.