Handbook

Controversies regularly erupt in Australia over issues where identity and justice intersect: who should be granted asylum? how can the rights of Indigenous peoples be fully respected? how should Australia relate to Asia? In this course you will explore how these issues were fostered by the major themes of Australia’s 19th century history: the settler revolution, Indigenous dispossession and resistance, and the rise of scientific racism on the one hand; movements towards democracy, universal education and better living standards on the other. Tensions arising from these themes are common to all settler societies but Australia’s location at the edge of Asia means they were played out here with a distinctive sense of urgency whose reverberations persist.