The Rest is ClassifiedEpisode 101: Putin’s Secret Army: Wagner’s Control of Africa (Episode 4) As the French withdrew from the Central African Republic, Yevgeny Prigozhin and the infamous Wagner Group saw an opportunity to make themselves useful to the Kremlin by globalizing his model and applying it to new conflicts. After all, the East Indian Company had used this privatized company model of colonization way back in the 18th century. In the end, is there a difference between mercenaries and a government contractor? For quite some time, Prigozhin denied any involvement in Africa, adopting some fairly risible disguises when flying in for meetings. He made a deal with Sudan in exchange for gold; he took advantage of the Civil War in Libya after Gaddafi; in Mozambique different countries were pitching for deals. In exchange for his security and information warfare, he received mining concessions. Ever the publicist, he was heavily into branding, and started making his own publicity films in Africa, starring his own troops. But by January 2022 he came into conflict with the Russian Ministry of the Defence who, he felt, were locking him out.
The Rest is HistoryEpisode 637 Revolution in Iran: The Rise of the Ayatollah Part 2. The Iranian Revolution, despite being characterized in the west as ‘medieval’, is a classic 20th century revolution, with the involvement of the petite-bourgeousie, young unemployed working class men and students but also with the addition of clerics and religious students. The Shah neither repressed nor appeased the protestors, and U.S. President Jimmy Carter was completely out of his depth. He appointed the dovish Cyrus Vance as Secretary of State (of course, Tom points out the irony of having a man called Cyrus being appointed to Iranian (Persian) affairs given the historical Cyrus the Great) as well as the hawkish, anti-Russian Zbigniew Brzezinski as National Security Advisor. Needless to say, the two men did not get on. In October 1978 the Sunni, Arab, Baathist Saddam Hussein expelled Khomeini from Iraq, and he went to Paris where he made himself very available to the world press, who were happy to report his anti-colonial, anti-imperialist views. He did express to the international press his radical view that the mullahs should run the state, but he was quite open about it in his taped lectures which were sent home to Iran and circulated widely. On New Years Eve he issued a call for nine days of protests, and by 19 January 1979 the Shah had agreed to leave, wanting to go to California, which led to more conflict between Vance and Brzezinski over US’ responsibility to the Shah. On 1 February 1979 Khomeini returned after fifteen years’ exile and was greeted by crowds. Brzezinki was urging a coup, but the US Ambassador to Iran, Sullivan, rejected this plan, arguing that there were fears for US businessmen and that oil prices would skyrocket. Meanwhile, back in America, evangelical Jimmy Carter was convinced that US was gripped by a spiritual crisis, exemplified by what came to be known as his televised ‘malaise’ speech, calling for people to use less oil- not the sort of message Americans are accustomed to hearing from their President. Khomeini announced the export of Sharia Law, and the increasingly ill Shah was stuck in the Middle East.
Journey Through TimeEpisode 63 The Spanish Civil War: Fighting Fascism With Hemingway and Orwell (Episode 2) Despite their governments’ squeamishness about getting involved in the Spanish Civil War, combatants from more than 53 countries came to support the Republicans under Comintern. In fact, the Lincoln Battalion, a force of volunteers from the United States who served on the Republican side in the Spanish Civil War from January 1937 until November 1938, was the first racially integrated US military force. Despite the Republican fighters’ enthusiasm, they were amateurs: some came to Spain intentionally, others just happened to be in Barcelona for the 1936 Peoples Olympiad, set up in opposition to Hitler’s Olympics, which ended up being cancelled anyway because of the outbreak of the Civil War. The Republican effort was working class, but its public image has been largely shaped by the writers and photographers who attended, who had the contacts with publishers to get their work out. Women were involved too, defending the feminism in Republican Spain compared with the sexual violence amongst the Nationalists, who were not beyond using systematic rape. The Republican military training was more ideological than practical. Because of Spain’s neutrality during WWI, the Nationalist troops were not particularly experienced either, and the battle-hardened leaders from the foreign legions took control in Franco’s army. Nonetheless, the battle for Madrid was hard fought on both sides.
Late Night Live Barry Jones on a life of public service and the state of politics today Barry Jones might be 93 years old, and in frail health, but his feats of memory are amazing. Obviously interviewer David Marr was apprehensive that Jones might ramble on and kept him on a fairly tight leash, even ringing an imaginary bell when Jones went on for too long. I couldn’t believe how easily Jones could bring to mind names and acronyms in a wide-ranging conversation: none of the -oh-it’s-on-the-tip-of-my-tongue lapses of people half his age. I loved his discussion of the ‘numinous’.
In his book, Killing for Country David Marr relates his frustration when trying to find indigenous voices while researching the history of the frontier wars. An Indigenous colleague told him: “You mob wrote down the colonial records, the diaries and newspapers. You do the work. You tell that story. It’s your story.” (p. 409)
In the raw wake of the Referendum result, I felt as if I just wanted to curl up and have it all go away, and I can’t begin to imagine how First Peoples felt. Surely if people knew, there would have been a different result, wouldn’t there? (Would there?) I thought back to the sessions I attended in the local Aboriginal meeting place where we set out timelines and participated in activities- but how every single person there was already committed to ‘yes’. But this is our work: making the dispossession, massacres and injustice part of our (i.e. non-Indigenous) history. Our history generally- not just for the already committed but the sceptical and cynical and antagonistic as well. I don’t know how you do that- a public information campaign perhaps? The first step is right here with this official publication, in writing, with the authority of First Peoples themselves, to be put alongside with the Convicts-Squatters-Gold-Anzac trope of the textbooks and curriculums we grew up with.
In our post-truth zeitgeist, where we all have our own ‘truths’, it seems incongruous that when it comes to ourselves personally, as individuals, we want ‘the’ truth. It seems to draw on a long-buried childhood urgency to assert that you are right, and the other person is wrong. In insurance claims, in relationship breakdowns, in autopsies, we want someone to take our side, we want to know what really happened, and we want ‘them’ (a parent, a counsellor, the media, a court) to take our side. While I was reading this report, I listened to an interview with William Dalrymple on Global Roaming. He pointed out that two opposing facts can both be true: for example, Israel was formed in 1948 and was a haven for post-Holocaust Jews AND hundreds of thousands Palestinians were rendered stateless in the Nakba that followed the establishment of Israel. The Yoorrook Report is the definitive attempt to put the Aboriginal truth on the record so that it stands alongside and is interwoven with the convicts-squatters-gold-ANZAC arc. As the First Peoples’ Assembly stated in establishing Yoorrook:
The Yoorrook Justice Commission was not established to find the truth: the truth was never lost. It was established so the state might finally learn to hear what had long been spoken among First Peoples. It was established to gather the stories that had been scattered by centuries of violence and denial and to give them shape, force, direction—and, crucially, an equal place in the historical record (p.140)…Our peoples will no longer have to carry the pain of these stories alone—this history and these truths become everyone’s history and truths. (p144)
The report is long: far longer than I expected because I didn’t realize that each PDF page actually contained two pages. It starts with a preamble and introduction by both former premier Steve Bracks, and chairperson of the Yoorrook commission, Professor Eleanor Bourke, and then has a lengthy timeline of colonization in Victoria.
Part I ‘The Jagged Line’ is about 100 pages in length, and is divided into chronological chapters:
Sovereigns, squatters and settlers
Massacres and the dawn of injustice
Gold Diggers and the ‘Aboriginal Problem’
Letters, petitions and deputations
Protection, assimilation and the Stolen Generations
Thinking Black, fighting back
The Edge of Something New and Ancient.
There was little here that was new to me, although I hadn’t seen the Gold Rush and the establishment of missions linked like this. It was the Gold Rush that brought in the money that financed the creation of the State Library and Museum and the University of Melbourne, which in turn played their part in scientific racism and the ‘collection’ of artefacts. The missions, which were established in the 1860s, were deliberately placed far from the main gold field sites. The text is supplemented by a map which shows the rapid alienation of traditional lands through surveying and appropriation as Crown land for sale or lease. The section on letters and deputations highlighted the importance of Victoria in particular as the site for protest and organization, and I did raise an eyebrow at the explicit acknowledgement of the Communist Party as allies in this fight.
Part II The Silence and the Telling is a 40 page explanation of the establishment of the Commission in the context of previous commissions, and the explicit actions undertaken to ensure the embedding of Indigenous Data Sovereignty into the testimony. Some of these stories had been told previously, but others not. Truth Receivers were appointed to make contact with 9000 First Peoples, and evidence was received from 1500 people. More than 200 witnesses appeared as part of the four year enquiry. The Enquiry itself faced its own problems: firstly finding somewhere appropriate to hold it (they settled on Charcoal Lane in Collingwood- a site that has resonance amongst Koories in Melbourne), and then gaining the cooperation of government agencies in getting information to the commission in a timely manner. It is striking how much care was taken in ensuring that it was not another white-fella commission of enquiry. There is a series of photographs showing various encounters and bestowal of gifts on various dignitaries, reflecting both the generosity of the First Peoples and also the need to have relationships enshrined in ceremony and ritual.
Section III is the longest part, where selected witnesses tell their stories. Some of the names are familiar: actor Jack Charles, or Paul Briggs, but others will only be familiar to people in contact with the Koorie community in Victoria and who will recognize the leadership role that many of these witnesses play in different organizations, denoted by the title ‘Uncle’ and ‘Aunty’. There are non-Indigenous witnesses too, including the Premier, the Minister for Education, The Chief Commissioner of Police, the Anglican bishop of Gippsland. Suzannah Henty, descendant of the Henty family who appropriated lands at Portland also appeared. Again and again the same themes arise: the heartlessness and pettiness of bureaucracy, the pain of the Stolen Generation and a sense of betrayal.
The report closes with the key findings and a long list of recommendations compiled from the different reports issued throughout the life of the commission. Will they just gather dust, as was feared? Well, the recommendation of Treaty was taken up with alacrity (reflective perhaps of the fear of electoral defeat of the Labor Party next year?) but already is mired in party politics with the Victorian Liberals vowing to scrap it should it win power.
I’m really pleased that I read this report, and I hope that more Victorians do so as well. In places it is beautifully, lyrically written and underpinning it is a quiet, determined insistence and persistence.
The Rest is ClassifiedEpisode 100 Putin’s Secret Army: Fighting with Assad in Syria (Episode 3) Prigozhin met with Dmitry Utkin, a Nazi-leaning ex-soldier with the GRU Military Intelligence Unit. His favourite composer was Wagner, which is not unexpected amongst neo-Nazis, and this became his call sign, and later the name of the group he founded with Prigozhin. The hosts of the podcast, former CIA analyst turned spy novelist, David McCloskey, and veteran security correspondent, Gordon Corera, note that in all ages and all countries have their own mercenaries, not just Russia. There was restlessness in the Crimea and Ukraine, and with his contacts and supply lines of food to the military, Prigozhin could make himself “useful”. He arranged for 200 mercenaries (the ‘little green men’) in Crimea and Ukraine before their takeover by Russia, and it was proRussian groups who shot down Malaysian airlines MH17. Using his PR skills, Prigozhin was able to muddy the waters over the whole affair. The Wagner group fought a dirty war and by 2011 they had committed 1000 men, but the 2015 Minsk theoretically brought the fighting to a close (theoretically). By Sept 2015 the Wagner group was involved in Syria, where Russia had many interests and wanted to project its power. Russia was a big arms supply to Assad, and by 2016, 2500 mercenaries had been equipped by Russia. Soon there were very violent videos circulating on the internet showing beheadings etc. which all helped to build the mythology of the Wagner mercenaries. Prigozhin’s men were involved in fighting IS in Palmyra, and he soon started taking his cut from the infrastructure he ‘liberated’. But when the Wagner group attacked a US base, the Russians denied all knowledge of him and the attack, and suggested that he was freelancing (which he may very well have been doing). Prigozhin was furious with the Russian Ministry of Defence for not backing him up. In 2018 he was indicted by the US for interference in the 2016 election, and he shifted his attention to Africa.
The Global Story. The whole world was talking about Mark Carney’s talk at DAVOS, and I just felt relief that someone was FINALLY standing up to the Orange Bully. In Is Canada leading the global resistance against Trump? we hear a familiar voice, Lyse Doucet, the BBC’s chief international correspondent who I certainly would never have picked as Canadian.
Journey Through TimeEpisode 62 Spanish Civil War: A Nation in Flames (Episode 1) Ah good- I’m looking forward to this. As they start off by commenting, the Spanish Civil War is better known for its cultural effects, especially in terms of the writers and artists it attracted. But why did it matter so much to people outside? 1936 the Spanish army staged a coup, but it neither succeeded nor failed- it just stalled, and the country split with the east coast and urban areas in favour of the Republicans, and the rural areas especially in the South for the Nationalist/Falangists and as they were known even then, the Fascists. The Nationalists were supported by Germany and Italy; the Republicans by Russia . The UK and France decided to abstain, and people in other countries, feeling that their countries had dropped the ball, arrived to fight themselves. In fact, they draw parallels between Spain then and Ukraine today. When the Republic was formed in 1931 it was faced immediately with the Depression. The coup actually began overseas, and Europe was already on edge. Hitler sent the Condor legion, and made Spain the testbed for international intervention, to see what he could get away with. Hitler felt that a Nationalist Spain would threaten France, and would block access to the Suez Canal, as well as distract attention from what he was doing in Europe. Meanwhile, Baldwin was occupied with the abdication crisis, and he gave oversight to Anthony Eden, who was on Franco’s side. The non-intervention pact was signed by France, UK, Germany, Italy and the Soviet Union and the latter three promptly ignored it. The League of Nations failed to act, and the US signed the Neutrality Act, which ostensibly meant that there would be no arms sales, no loans etc. However, that didn’t stop US companies from ignoring sanctions and giving support to the Fascists. Meanwhile, Stalin gave support to the Republican goverment in exchange for gold reserves. The International Brigades were organized through Comintern and soon began attracting participants including Orwell, Hemingway, Gellhorn and Kim Philby no less.
The Rest is HistoryEpisode 636 Revolution in Iran: Fall of the Shah (Part 1) Very topical, eh. This episode starts with an absolutely dreadful impersonation of Jimmy Carter toasting the Shah, just before the Revolution began. Dom and Tom make the rather big claim that the Islamic Revolution is comparable to the French and Russian Revolutions. I need to think about that. They point out that Iran (formerly Persia, and meaning ‘Land of the Aryans’) is neither Arab nor Sunni, and their monarchy stretches back to Darius and Cyrus, before Islam. Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi (the father of the man who is in the US agitating to lead the current protests) was the rather timid son and heir to an overbearing bully, and he was sent to a Swiss boarding school, where he became quite the connoisseur and Francophile. His father, who was supported during WW2 to prevent the Germans from taking over, was forced by the British to abdicate after the war in favour of his son. As a result, the Shah has long been seen as a foreign puppet. In 1953 the Prime Minister of Iran Mohammad Mosaddegh threatened to nationalize BP (formerly the Anglo-Persian Oil Company) so the CIA organized a coup. The Shah did nothing. In the mid 1950s the Shah began modernizing, and began believing his own publicity that he was a celebrity. In 1967 he organized a second coronation and renamed Persia to Iran as part of the 2500 year anniversary (quite amazing really, that any nation could have a 2500 year anniversary!) Corruption was rife, with the CIA training the Savak, the Iranian secret police, and big US arms sales going to Iran, even though the other Middle East countries tried to warn America. Then along comes Jimmy Carter- Christian, Southern Democrat, inexperienced in international affairs, populist outsider and micromanager. He appointed William Sullivan as Ambassador, but the US embassy was largely oblivious to the unrest that rising under Khomeni. Khomeni himself was born in 1900 to a middle class family, he was clever, serious and revered as a Shi’ite ayotollah. It is this Iranian Shi’ite identity that distinguishes Iran from the Arab Sunnis. Local mullahs are very important, and there was always tension between the clerics and the Shah. Khomeni entered politics in 1960, drawing on anti-Zionist, anti-imperialist rhetoric. Revolution was brewing with inflation, unemployment and the bombing of the Cinema Rex, probably by Islamic militants. Strikes shut down the oil fields but the US government, under the unlikely President Jimmy Carter, was slow to realize what was happening until finally William Sullivan, the US ambassador began warning that perhaps the US should distance itself from the Shah, because change was afoot.
The twentieth anniversary republishing of this book has come and gone, it having first appeared in Dutch in 1995. I had heard of it, and knew that it dealt with Nazism, and assumed at first that it would be set during World War II. It came as a surprise, then, that it was set in the present day (in 1995) with themes that are probably even more resonant and urgent today than they were in 1995. My copy, collected no doubt from my local little library, had obviously been a school set-text, and the book won many Young Adult awards on its publication.
Lucas has accompanied his mother to Montourin, a small Belgian provincial town, to clean out his late grandfather’s house. The book opens with Lucas standing by the side of the road as his friend Caitlin is brought back from hospital after an accident that occurred three weeks earlier. The narrative then spirals back to explain who Lucas and Caitlin are, how she was injured, and Lucas’ part in that injury. It is written in first person, from Lucas’ viewpoint, thus aligning us as readers with his perspective of events in the weeks leading up to Caitlin’s injury.
On arriving at Montourin, he finds that there is an unspoken edge of hostility towards him and his family, exemplified by Soeur, an old nun in the nearby convent in which American-born Caitlin is staying. He does not understand why, and as he sees his mother sorting through and destroying his grandfather’s documents and belongings, he knows that something is being kept from him. He gradually learns that, after the death of one of his children during the hungry days of WW2 occupation, his grandfather denounced fifteen Jewish children and the nuns who were hiding him in the neighbouring convent, out of grief and resentment that these Jewish children were taking food rations that could have saved his daughter. Some in present-day Montourin shunned his grandfather for this action; others supported it.
Their support was generally unspoken, but outright admiration was voiced by Benoit, a young man older than Lucas, who combines menace, charisma and manipulation in his neo-Nazi outlook. Lucas is drawn into Benoit’s sphere and becomes involved, with varying degrees of culpability, in Benoit’s terrorist plans against the Moroccan refugees who have moved into the town. At the same time, he is attracted to the inscrutable Caitlin who fluctuates between flirt, friend and heartbreaker as she, too, seems to be becoming friendly with Benoit. But when Caitlin is involved in a single-car accident- the reasons for which are unclear- Lucas acts decisively, if precipitously, in a way that will change the rest of Caitlin’s life. I’m not really quite sure about the ending of the book, which is deliberately left obscure, but which struck me as a little melodramatic.
Since 1995 the presence of African refugees in Europe has only increased, as has the prominence and apparent electoral acceptability of neo-Nazi parties. This book is a warning against the slow slide towards fascism, especially for young men with no responsibilities who yearn acceptance from other young men. I can see why it would be chosen as an upper-school text, especially given its urgent relevance today. I’m not sure how it would be received by high school students though- it moves fairly slowly, and I wasn’t particularly satisfied by the ending.
Short History of…Mount Rushmore. I’m almost certain that Donald Trump will try to get his face onto Mount Rushmore. The carvings of George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln and Theodore Roosevelt were commenced in 1927 and took 14 years to complete on a mountain that was regarded as sacred by the Sioux. Known as the ‘Six Grandfathers’ for the six large granite outcrops which it contains, it was supposed to be Native American land under the 1868 Treaty of Ford Lararmie, but that got torn up when the Black Hills were seized for mining. In the 1920s there was a boom of motor tourism to beauty spots, and Doane Robinson, the state historian of South Dakota, wanted a “Big” thing that people could travel to see. At first he suggested that six American west heroes should be carved into the mountain (Lewis and Clark, their expedition guide Sacagawea, Lakota chief Red Cloud,Buffalo Bill Cody, and Oglala Lakota chief Crazy Horse). But they brought in sculptor Gutzon Borglum, who suggested the four presidents instead to give it a national focus. Borglum was a passionate but pugilistic man, who had previously been engaged on a Confederate carving on Stone Mountain, Georgia, funded by the KKK, until he was sacked and the work he had already done on the carving was blasted away. There was lobbying to have $460,000 put aside for the work on Mt Rushmore, but Borglum decided to just have $250,00 from the government with the rest from private donations. He made 1:12 scale models in his studio, but the plans had to be redrafted because of the geology of the mountain and because there was a black vein running through the rock. He planned to add torsos to the bodies, but with the financial restrains of WW2, they went for just the heads. Gutzon Borglum died in 1941 and his son Lincoln took over. The sculpture ended up costing $990,000 and it opened in 1941. In 1971 the site was occupied by Native American protesters, and in 1981 a court ruled that the Sioux were owed compensation. However, they refused to take it, wanting the land instead. Fortunately it seems that the geology precludes adding any more heads, but I’m sure that that wouldn’t deter Trump.
In the Shadows of Utopia Season 2 Episode 18 A Cambodian Coup! The “Red Prince” falls Time Period Covered 1969 – 1970. In 1969, Pol Pot and his wife, and a number of CPK delegates walked to Hanoi. They wanted to continue the struggle against Sihanouk, but the Communist Party of Vietnam wanted them to give up, because Sihanouk was too useful to them. Meanwhile, there were increasing numbers of North Vietnamese troops in Cambodia attracting increased US bombing, with Sihanouk’s tacit approval. As Sihanouk headed overseas, by this time Lon Nol was head of the government and Sirik Matat, Sihanouk’s cousin, was in charge of the economy. There was increasing restlessness about the North Vietnamese presence in Cambodia. So in Sihanouk’s absence the 5000 real note was devalued, which had a large effect because 5000 reals was the denomination that the Viet Kong used to buy rice from the Cambodian farmers. Bombing of the north east region was ordered, and false protests were staged at the North Vietnamese embassy. On 11 March 1970 Sihanouk announced that he was returning to Cambodia, and Lon Nol announced that the North Vietnamese and Communist troops had to leave within 3 days. Sihanouk changed his mind and decided not to come back after all, and threatened to kill the cabinet who had been acting in his absence, accusing Sirik of bringing in the Vietnamese. A coup ensued. Lon Nol was forced to hand over control of the Army, and the Congress voted to overthrow Sihanouk. Meanwhile Sihanouk was in Moscow, and both Russia and China asked if Sihanouk would continue his support of the Communist cause. China was worried about Soviet influence and they suggested an uprising, using the Communist Party of Kampuchea as the resistance, with Vietnamese military training and arms, and Sihanouk as its ‘face’. Sihanouk was fuelled with a desire for revenge against his enemies, blaming traitors in the assembly and their US imperial masters and he called for a guerilla uprising. Pol Pot, who all of a sudden found himself in demand, accepted the offer under the names of the ‘Three Ghosts’ Khieu Samphan, Hu Nim and Hou Youn, nationalists who had been disappeared and supposedly (but not) executed by Sihanouk. Pol Pot himself stayed in the background. Was there CIA involvement? Probably the US was happy enough with Sihanouk, but they probably had contact with all sorts of people.
We don’t go into the city together much because Steve finds walking difficult, but the milder weather was such a relief today that I really wanted to do something ‘in town’. So off we went….
First stop was the Royal Historical Society of Victoria to see their current exhibition ‘The Burying of Melbourne’
In the mid-1850s some areas of the Melbourne CBD were buried under a layer of clay at the direction of Melbourne City Council, a rather extraordinary event that until recently had been largely forgotten. It is only in recent years that archaeologists carrying out the excavations required prior to developments in the city have uncovered evidence of the clay layer.
A study commissioned by the Heritage Council of Victoria found that the burying was part of efforts by the City Council to control flooding, caused largely by the original laying out of Melbourne’s street grid without due consideration of the flow of water over the underlying topography.
The depositing of the clay layer, metres thick in some places, had a significant effect on the lives and circumstances of those affected but did result in the sealing off of a layer of archaeology stemming from the earliest days of European settlement.
This exhibition, The Burying of Melbourne, describes events leading up to the burial and looks at some of the archaeology discovered beneath the clay.
The problem was that people started building their houses before the roads were built, which meant that when the roads finally did come through, the houses were much lower than the road. As a result, the houses flooded in heavy rain. The council ordered that the properties had to be filled up to road level with clay. In some cases, particularly where the houses were not owned by the occupants, the house was in effect entombed by the clay, with new houses built on top of them. The layer of clay was located when a compulsory archaelogical inspection was made for a new development near the Wesleyan church in Lonsdale Street. Comparisons were made between the contour maps pre-filling and after-filling to identify the sites where the clay was likely to have been spread. Six terrace houses dating from the 1840s were found in Jones Lane.
This exhibition is not high-tech: indeed, it is mainly maps and photographs of the archaeological dig. There are a few of the objects on display that were located on the site, most particularly the level under the clay. But I find the idea of a whole layer sealed off by clay for 170 years quite fascinating.
Then back onto the train and down to the Swanston Street tram for a quick trip up to the NGV International in St Kilda Rd. I wasn’t interested in the $40 Westwood/ Kawakubo exhibition (when did these exhibitions become so expensive?) and just stuck to the freebies. Somehow or other we ended up in the British and European Collection 13-16 Century, which you can see in a 3D version here if it doesn’t induce too much nausea for you. Actually you can see it online better than you can in real life because at least they turned the lights on to film it: probably because of the age of the artwork, it is very dimly lit. Their signage of the objects themselves is appalling- white print of about 12 pt font on grey behind glass. I just couldn’t read it at all. However, given that I’m not likely to visit Europe again, it was a little bit like being in a grand European cathedral close up.
What I really intended to see was a display of the National Gallery of Victoria Travelling Scholarship. This is a tiny exhibition, tucked away on the first floor near the escalators. The NGV established its Travelling Scholarship in 1887, just 25 years after the Gallery opened. Awarded every three years, the three-year scholarship granted a stipend to study at art epicentres across Europe. Scholarship-holders were required to provide to the Gallery a replica of an Old Master painting, a nude study, and an original composition. A cheap way of increasing the size of the collection, I suppose. The exhibition is mainly just a projection on a wall, showing biographical details of several recipients (nicely balanced between male and female artists) with a few glass cases containing objects belonging to Constance Stokes (nee Parkin) trip that she received as part of her scholarship in 1929. Just a slight young girl, you get a sense of how exciting it must have been to travel over to London to study at the Royal Academy of Arts, with her passport, photographs and ball invitations.
It’s appropriate that I should be writing this review on January 26, Australia Day. Here’s a recommendation: if you’re going to read a survey history of Australia, then read this one.
There’s lots of survey or short histories written by eminent historians to choose from, many of which appear in several editions as they were updated to encompass later events: Keith Hancock’s Australia first written in 1930; Gordon Greenwood’sAustralia A Social and Political History (1955) Manning Clark’s A Short History of Australia (1963) ; John Rickard’s Australia: A Cultural History (1988); Creating a Nation (1994) by Pat Grimshaw, Marilyn Lake, Ann McGrath and Marian Quartly; David Day’s Claiming a Continent (1997) and Stuart Macintyre’s A Concise History of Australia (2000). There’s even Alex McDermott’s Australian History for Dummies (2011). One could quite justifiably ask “Does the world need another short history of Australia?” And I would answer: yes, and it should be this one.
In 1968 New Zealand historian Keith Sinclair wrote an article for Historical Studies called ‘On Writing Shist’ (that second ‘s’ is very important!) He pointed out that shist (i.e. short history) is not a summary of what is known in order to be memorized, but a summary interpretation of a topic, intended to make it understandable. It should be aimed at the educated non-specialist, and the author cannot assume more than the most vague background knowledge. Facts are illustrative and form a “very thin, hard skeleton”, and the overwhelming problem is what to leave out, rather than put in. The heart of the task is to shape the overall pattern of ideas, facts and prose, interwoven into a pattern of thought and story. It is meant to be read, rather than consulted, utilizing the novelists’ tools of suspense and pace, driven by the author’s sense of commitment to his subject.
McKenna addresses the issue of the need for “new ways of thinking about the nation’s history” right in his first chapter. He writes:
Most national histories are ‘rise and rise’ narratives. They narrate the nation’s formation and walk chronologically through familiar milestones. In Australia’s case, there’s a chapter on Indigenous Australia before 1788, before moving onto the main story: penal colony to gold rushes and responsible government, then to Federation, the First World War and the Anzac legend, the Depression, the Second World War, postwar reconstruction and the Cold War; before waves of non-British migration, the new social movements of the 1960s and 1970s and the end of White Australia usher in the emergence of a more open, global economy and culturally diverse society. Or words to that effect. The history of the nation-state- from one formative event to the next. (p. 7)
So how is he proposing to avoid this straightjacket? His fundamental strategy is to see Australia as a continent rather than a nation, to turn both Edward Barton’s declaration “a nation for a continent and a continent for a nation” on its head. He foregrounds place, both the climate, ecologies and histories of different regions of Australia, and the Indigenous understanding of history which can never be divorced from place. And rather than that awkward, dangling introductory chapter of “The Aborigines”, he integrates Indigenous perspectives and actions throughout the whole book, from start to finish. Nor does he follow a well-ploughed chronological trench: indeed, Captain Cook and Botany Bay don’t appear in detail until Chapter 9, more than half-way through the book, in a chapter titled ‘Facing North’.
He starts right up front in Chapter 1 ‘The Founding Lie’, with a reflection on the Sydney Opera House, its design and construction, then considers its site – Bennelong Point. In Chapter 2 ‘From Ubirr’ he joins hundreds of visitors at Ubirr, in the Kakadu National Park looking north to the Arafura Sea at dawn- again, starting at a place- to emphasize the great migration from Asia into northern Australia, and the influence of trade with the north. Chapter 3 ‘The Island Dilemma’ looks at the sense of geography and the ‘island’ perspective that encouraged isolation as both a negative and positive force. He takes us to Christmas Island, both its now-deserted CI Club for administrators and Europeans, then its use as a detention centre for asylum seekers. Ch.4 ‘Taking the Land’ (and there, again is that ‘place’ emphasis) starts with John Howard at the Longreach Stockman’s Hall of Fame in 1997, promising that government legislation would ensure pastoralists’ rights after the Wik decision. He traverses land policy from Cook’s act of possession to the spread of ‘settlement’ and Aboriginal resistance, especially in Queensland. He notes that Australia has silenced not only the evidence of frontier warfare, but also the many efforts at reconciliation that were made between British settlers and First Nations Australians (p. 75).
Chapter 5 ‘War and Memory’ takes us to Australia’s “most storied beach”, 15,000 kms away. In a desperate craving to be connected to European history through blood sacrifice:
Over time, the birthplace of their nation was conveniently displaced 15,000 kilometres offshore to Anzac Cove. Australia thus became the only modern nation-state to create an origin myth not located on its own soil p.90
He points out that, two decades before the outbreak of the Great War, and for at least a decade after the war ended, in areas like Wave Hill and Victoria River of the Northern Territory and the Pilbara and Kimblerley regions of Western Australia, frontier violence was still occurring. War memorials to the First World War stand in villages, towns and cities throughout Australia, but the Australian War Memorial resists calls to recognize the loss of life in frontier wars.
Chapter 6 ‘Fire and Water’ takes us to Red Bluff, Kalbarri in Western Australia way back on 25 January 1697, and the desperate search for water by the men and officers from the Dutch East India Company who anchored three ships in Gantheaume Bay and rowed towards the coast. Drought, fire and flood are “a cycle as ancient as the country itself”, and while non-Indigenous Australians have long been familiar with bushfires and floods, the memory of one is swiftly erased by the arrival of the other, as if we’re fighting the same battles with the country (p. 111). Here are the plans for irrigation using the Murray-Darling, the Snowy River scheme and the fires at Mallacoota in December 2019. In Chapter 7 ‘Fault Lines’ we go to Waverley cemetery in Sydney, and the grave of Louisa and Henry Lawson, before embarking on a really good analysis of Catholic/Protestant sectarianism, touching on Ned Kelly, Billy Hughes and conscription. Chapter 8 ‘Fault Lines’ starts with Dorothy Napangardi, one of Australia’s most acclaimed artists, and the gradual recognition and appreciation of Indigenous ways of belonging to Country in the late twentieth century. For many non-Indigenous Australians, works of First Nation artists are a reminder that, as recently arrived migrants in a country, we do not have the same keys to Country. Modern Australia has always been a migrant society, and McKenna returns 19th century migration, especially from Ireland, and the Chinese migrants lured by the prospect of wealth on the goldfields. He goes through the conversion from a white, British enclave to a diverse multicultural nation, while noting that it was driven by self-interest and economic necessity. He reminds us of the memories of discrimination and prejudice through the story of William Yang, born in 1943 on a tobacco farm on the Atherton Tablelands. In Chapter 9 ‘Facing North’ (there’s that sense of place and geography again) we finally meet Captain Cook face to face. To illustrate the short-term economic mentality of resource extraction he turns not to gold, but to pearls, and the pearling industry not just for its importation of divers from Asia, but its mix of voluntary and forced Aboriginal labour (I didn’t know about this). He then moves on to New Guinea, and Australia’s WW2 in the Pacific.
I’d like to look at Chapter 10 ‘The Big Picture’ in more detail as an example of the diffuse way in which McKenna writes, his integration of stories of individual people into broader historical events, and the sweep of a theme across time. He starts with Charles Doudiet’s sketches of Eureka, which were only discovered in 1996 through a Canadian family which found them in their attic. These sketches verified for the first time the location of the Eureka Rebellion and the use of the Eureka flag, and they are the springboard for McKenna to discuss Australian democracy and its evolution from Eureka and the anti-transportation movement, through to self-government of the colonies in the mid 19th century. Then he moves to a second picture, Tom Roberts’ ‘Opening of the First Parliament of the Australian Commonwealth 9 May 1901′ and federation as a political compromise that combined elements of the US federal constitution and the Westminster system. The opening of Parliament House in Canberra in 1927 had many guests, but two uninvited guests were Jimmy Clements and John Noble, two Wiradjuri elders who walked 150 kilometres from Brungle Aboriginal station near Tumut in NSW to attend the opening. Here McKenna turns to Indigenous agitation for their rights in the 1920s and 1930s, set against Queen Elizabeth’s tour of 1954, the first reigning British monarch to set foot on Australian soil. He returns to Indigenous activism and the 1967 referendum, and the myths that surround it, before moving on to Whitlam and his deliberate cultivation of what Whitlam called “a vigorous national spirit” and ending the era of assimilation in favour of land rights and self-determination. This was encapsulated by the photograph of Whitlam pouring a handful of red earth into the hands of land rights leader Vincent Lingiari in 1975. However, the most seismic shift was the High Court Decision in the Mabo case, and he returns to Eddie Mabo’s sketch of his ancestral land on Mer which hangs not far from Tom Roberts’ ‘Big Picture’ in Parliament House. McKenna finishes the chapter with another painting of the people on Mer executed by Tom Roberts on his way to London in 1903. Twenty years after his arrival in London, Roberts presented the painting to the British Museum, and there it stayed undiscovered until found in 2009 by a curator from the National Museum of Australia.
He closes his book with an Epilogue titled ‘Modernity and Antiquity’ which starts with suburbia and the humble Sydney houses of both John Howard and Paul Keating. He notes that in the half-century since the dismissal of the Keating government, the old verities have vanished: Australia is now one of the world’s most diverse, multicultural and liberal democracies. The Indigenous cultures that White Australia tried to eradicate are now fundamental to the nation’s identity. From a protectionist economic policy, we are now an open, free-trade economy; the alliance with the US remains the linch-pin of its defence; the population has doubled since the mid 1970s and there is a distinctive rise of environmental consciousness, with the Tasmanian Greens the first Green party in the world. He notes that the closer we come to the present, the harder it is to discern which reforms will be of lasting significance. He returns to the “Big Lie” with which he started his book, and the question that continues to gnaw at Australia’s soul is how to tell the truth about the nation’s history and what Noel Pearson called “a rightful place” for First Nations Australians. Here are the apologies, the Uluru statement and the referendum campaign. He closes as he started with a place: this time Lake Mungo National Park (the most spiritual, life-changing place that I have visited in Australia) and the potential for Mungo to be “for all Australians, black and white. It can embrace us all in its spirituality, and draw us closer to the land.” (p. 266)
This is a beautifully written, really carefully crafted and highly original book. Although part of the ‘Shortest History’ series that ranges across the whole world, I feel that it is far more directed at an Australian audience than an international one, but both readers could take much from the book. Indeed, the word ‘shortest’ obscures the deep-time and Indigenous emphasis of the book. By eschewing completely the chronological approach, he prioritizes understanding of a theme illustrated through many kaleidoscopic prisms. In the author’s note at the end of the book, he says that he decided to “say more about some things rather than a little about many things”. He has certainly succeeded in this. His prose is beautiful, drawing your interest from vignettes based on people, with a pace that doesn’t get bogged down in details. It’s excellent. Read it.
My rating: 10/10
Sourced from: Review copy from Black Inc. but that hasn’t influenced my rating!
Big Ideas (ABC) This talk, recorded at the University of Technology Sydney’s Vice Chancellor’s Democracy Forum on 14 May 2025 features Sarah Churchwell, who is one of the presenters of the Journey Through Time podcasts that I’m enjoying. She is the author of The Many Lives of Marilyn Monroe, Careless People: Murder, Mayhem and The Invention of The Great Gatsby, Behold, America: A History of America First and the American Dream, and The Wrath to Come: Gone with the Wind and the Lies America Tells. From the ABC website it says: Sarah Churchwell takes you on a gripping and confronting journey into America’s recent past to explain its extraordinary present, starting with dark story at the heart of that American classic Gone with the Wind. Knowledge lies at the heart of a healthy democracy, and its many custodians include libraries, universities, cultural institutions, and a free and independent media. So what happens when these institutions are intimidated, dismantled or destroyed, as is happening in America right now, under the government of President Donald Trump? I really enjoyed it.
The Birth Keepers- the Guardian. The Birth Keepers This year-long investigation by Sirin Kale and Lucy Osborne looks at Emilee Saldaya and Yolande Norris-Clark, two influencers who made millions selling a radical version of free birth where women would birth ‘wild’ with no medical intervention whatsoever through their Free Birth Society. I was appalled by the length of time that some of these women laboured after their waters had broken, and the hands-off attitude of a baby ‘choosing’ to take a breath. Despite having no formal medical training, these two doulas created courses that have ensured that the Free Birth movement has moved world-wide, while netting them a fortune. There are six episodes.
Short History Of.. Having seen the film Nuremberg, I decided I’d listen to Short History’s take on The Nuremberg Trial. I was far more impressed with this podcast than I expected, fearing a couple of kids giggling, but it was very professional and the narrator has a lovely voice. At the Moscow Conference of 1943 it was decided that Germany would be held criminally responsible for the atrocities committed during the war, but this was uncharted territory. Churchill wanted the death penalty, without trial; Stalin wanted a judicial trial but with the outcome already decided, America wanted the Germans treated as any other judicial process. One of the problems was that the Germans’ actions were not crimes when they were committed. In the end the prosecutors settled on four charges (i) conspiracy to wage aggressive war, which encompassed the crimes before the war began (ii) crimes against peace (iii) war crimes (iv) crimes against humanity. It was decided that the trials needed to take place in Germany in front of the German people. They would try 24 people, comprising a cross-section of high ranking officials across all sectors, although in the end there were only 21 defendants. It was not difficult to find defence lawyers, because many lawyers craved the spotlight in an exotic social environment. They did not use witnesses, but documents. In the second week they showed film of the concentration camps, which had a seismic impact. Hermann Göring was the ringleader of the defendants: he and Speer were the most forceful, the rest were rather pathetic. 12 were sentenced to death, 7 others were imprisoned and there were 3 acquittals. Within 10 days all appeals were rejected. The hanging equipment arrived on 13 October, but on 15 October Göring suicided before his execution which was scheduled that night. The International Military Tribunal packed up at the conclusion of the first trial. There were twelve other Nuremberg trials, but the first one was the only truly international trial.
When my son said that this was his favourite book of 2025, I took notice. When I told him that I had borrowed it from the library, he hedged a bit, saying that he didn’t know if I’d like it. He’s wrong: I loved it. I could barely put it down over the three days that I read it: sand, beach and grandchildren notwithstanding.
I’m not a particularly science-y person, but this book is far more than ‘just’ science. Like a Mark Kurlansky book (think Salt, Cod etc.) it combines science, history and travel, but it also packs quite a bit of political analysis as well. I’m writing this on 5 January 2025 as the reality of Trump’s bombing of Venezuela and imposition of US oil interests is sinking in, and Conway’s comments about autarky (i.e. the policy of being self-sufficient that underlies Trump’s ‘America First’ policy) seem particular apposite right now. Ed Conway is the economics and data editor of Sky News and a columnist for The Times (London), which are right-wing connections that do not engender my trust. However these contexts are not particularly apparent in Conway’s book, except perhaps for the ultimately optimistic viewpoint with which he ends the book. Quite apart from his politics, his journalist background equips him with the eagle eye for a good anecdote and the ability to bring the narrative back onto more general-reader territory when it threatens to wade into technologically and scientific details.
In the introduction he identifies himself as a denizen of what he calls ‘the ethereal world’:
…a rather lovely place, a world of ideas. In the ethereal world we sell services and management and administration; we build apps and websites; we transfer money from one column to another; we trade mostly in thoughts and advice, in haircuts and food delivery (p.13)
He distinguishes this from ‘The Material World’, which undergirds our everyday lives by actually making things work, often through companies whose names are unknown to us, but which are more important than the brands that use their output:
…operating stuff in the Material World….you have to dig and extract stuff and turn it into physical products…a difficult, dangerous and dirty business (p.14)
He chooses six raw materials – sand, salt, iron, copper, oil and lithium- which are not only important substances in the world, but are the primary building blocks of our world and have fuelled the prosperity of empires in the past. They are the very hardest to replace. These six materials form the basis of products several steps up the chain: sand, for instance, is the basis of silica which underpins optical fibre and the concrete and cement that makes modern high-rise cities possible. In analysing these materials, he traces back their ‘discovery’ to ancient civilizations, often by accident or through observation, before being intentionally created with processes that often form the basis of present methods. Concrete, for example, was ‘discovered’ three times: there is evidence of cement use in Neolithic ruins in Turkey that date back more than 10,000 years; the Bedouins created concrete-like structures in 6500BCE, and the Roman used a form of concrete in many of their buildings before the recipe was lost for hundreds of years following the fall of the Roman Empire. The discovery of On Architecture by Roman architect Vitruvius, and its translation into French and English, triggered the 18th and 19th century quest for new concoctions to replicate or surpass the Roman recipe (p. 75). Perhaps because he is a British journalist, he highlights deposits in the British Isles rather more than we would think of today, and both German and British ingenuity are highlighted, as well as American. Thomas Edison makes several appearances, but the complete absence of any women at all highlights the male-dominated nature of science and invention.
The structure of the book has a sense of symmetry that I find appealing: six raw materials examined in six parts, each with three chapters, an introduction to the book and a conclusion. I can’t vouch for the reliability of his information, but each time I exclaimed “Hey, did you know…?” to my much more scientifically-oriented husband, he already did know and what he knew aligned with the information in the book.
Unlike many in the media companies and publications he works for, Conrad does not deny the reality of climate change and the environmental degradation that occurs as part of the mining and extraction of his six materials. However, as he points out, the production of an environmentally harmful material was often prompted by the desire to replace an earlier, even more harmful energy source which would have brought about an even more devastating environmental impact. e.g. coal replacing wood, kerosene replacing whale oil, or polyethylene replacing gutta-percha from the rapidly disappearing Malaysian guttapercha tree. It is this pattern that contributes to his optimism about our ability to mitigate climate change in the long term, if we can overcome the short-termism of the political cycle and make financial and lifestyle sacrifices for an unborn generation- actions for which there is equivocal evidence so far.
However, he is not completely Panglossian. Australia, and Rio Tinto in particular come in for trenchant criticism over the destruction of the Juukan Gorge for the extraction of iron ore. As he points out, part of the luxury of living in the ‘Ethereal World’ is that we can shunt the environmental impacts of our lifestyle into the ‘Material World’ which often happens to be a third world country. Wealthier countries, like Chile and Australia to a lesser extent are starting to question the environmental costs when the extraction occurs in their country instead of someone else’s.
Despite the shift towards autarky promoted by Trump in particular, and turbo-charged by the world’s realization of the precariousness of supply chains during COVID, the story of these six materials is also the story of globalization. Here in Australia we see the shipping out of raw materials (especially to China), but the circulation is much broader than this, with the finished product integrating multiple processing steps from right across the globe. Such processes make the world more inter-connected than America/Australia/China first politicians might desire.
The Material World is – well, material- but it has political implications. While the rest of the world panics about China’s dominance of the battery supply chain, China panics about its reliance on the rest of the world for its raw materials- hence China’s Belt and Road strategy. Particularly in relation to the production of advanced silicon chips, security is uppermost in the attempt to prevent industrial espionage and to make sure that China does not gain this ability. Ironically, China is unlikely to develop the hyper-pure silicon from which the silicon chip ‘wafers’ are made because the crucibles to melt it are available (so far) only from a single site at Spruce Pine, in North Carolina, operated by only two companies, Sibelco (Belgium) and the Quartz Corp (Norway). This raises the unsettling question of the effects of a landslide on the road that winds to Spruce Pine, or the malicious spraying of the mines with a particular chemical. But this single source is unusual: there is usually another source or another product to take the place of a threatened material. His six materials highlight the international reach of companies based in one country, and the diversification of such companies into new processes as part of the evolution of products and materials.
This evolution of products and materials lies at the heart of the optimism of the book. We have worked out how to turn complex products into commonplace and increasingly cheap items (for example solar panels and semiconductors). Although he has chosen six materials for his analysis, they are intertwined: batteries are just as reliant on copper as they are on the lithium inside them; steel inside concrete is a better building product than either alone. Even though we need to keep extracting materials to make the very ambitious transition to net zero, with solutions like hydrogen and wind turbines requiring huge amounts of energy, there is one major difference. In the past we used fossil fuels to burn, but now we are using them to build.
For years, people assumed that it would be impossible to make iron and steel at the scale we can today. Rediscovering the recipe for concrete seemed like a pipe dream. Scientists doubted that we would ever be able to tame extreme ultraviolet light, let alone use it to mass produce silicon chips. Will we look back in a decade or two and wonder why we ever fretted about producing enough hydrogen to back up the world’s energy grids, or why we struggled to generate copious power from the hot rocks deep beneath the earth?…If there is one lesson you should take from our trip through the Material World, it is that with enough time, effort and collaboration, these things usually happen….Humankind has, since its very first days, left a visible imprint on the earth. There is no point pretending otherwise. It is part of our story. It has allowed us to live longer, more comfortable lives than ever before. It has enabled us to fill the planet with more individuals than anyone could have imagines, with 8 billion brains and 8 billion sets of hopes and dreams. We are also capable of living far more sustainable, cleaner lives, diminishing our destruction and contamination and living in closer harmony with the planet. We will do so not by eschewing or dismissing the Material World, but by embracing it and understanding it. (p. 443)
The Global Story (BBC)The Death of Reading This episode was based on a recent essay by James Marriott ‘The Dawn of the Post-Literate Society’ which can be found on his Substack here. Both the essay and this discussion go back to the mid- 1700s when the spread of reading beyond the elites meant that power no longer had to be performed visually, but could be disseminated and reinforced by the written word. Marriott draws on Neil Postmans work ‘Amusing Ourselves to Death’, and argues that beyond the concern about the decline of reading in the 1990s, the spread of the smart phone from 2010 onward has led to a steep drop in educational standards. With the rise of TikTok and Instagram, we are returning to the primacy of visual display – a sort of counter-revolution in thinking and perception.
Journey Through Time Episode 48: The Paris Commune: Can the City of Light Govern Itself? After the uprising over the cannons on Montmatre, the radicals took over, but with no leader, they split almost immediately. Auguste Blanqui would have been the leader, but he was in prison (as indeed he was for whole decades of his life). Supplies were allowed in, but Paris was still lunder siege. Napoleon III’s column was pulled down, although it was later re-erected. Elections were held with 4 days to give the leaders legitimacy with the result that there was an anti-nationalist government but otherwise, the movement splintered. The new government started issuing executive orders (and don’t we know about THEM!) to separate church and state, provide rent relief and soldier pensions, provide free secular and compulsory co-education, cap salaries, and give workshops to co-ops. So far, all normal socialist fare, but also they imposed decimal time (10 day weeks, 10 hour days etc), banned night baking as a labour market reform for bakers, and banned croissants (can’t remember why). They treated legitimate and illegitimate children equally and had same and equal pay for teachers. The army was a citizen’s militia, and army discipline broke down almost immediately. 150,000 people per day fled Paris, where there was constant violence but no terror as such (in Revolutionary terms). From afar, Marx was interested but because he didn’t support the French International, he waited a while before writing about it. Women were influential in organizing, but they were not inspired by feminist or suffragist ideals. To get Auguste Blanqui released from prison, they took hostages which backfired on them. There were small mini-communes in the rural towns, but essentially Paris was on its own.
The Resident Judge of Port Phillip 