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Abstract
David Walker’s ‘Anxious Nation’ had had its greatest influence on scholars working on Australian encounters with Asia. But the book’s most significant achievement was to identify the central importance occupied by Asia – or, more precisely, the spectre of Asia – in Australian history. It diagnosed Australia’s desperate search for security, its defensive posturing as a ‘White Man’s Country’, and the longstanding search for ‘engagement’ as part of the same malady: a hyperawareness of Asia’s proximity and power, and the sense that it would determine Australia’s future. This was less a book about Asia than it was about Australia. Until it is recognised as such, and fully drawn into mainstream Australian histories and survey courses, the task of understanding Australia’s national character in light of its neuroses remains incomplete. A quarter century after its publication, historians of Australia still have a lot to learn about their anxious nation.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.
Notes
1 Rupert Lockwood, Black Armada: Australia and the Struggle for Indonesian Independence, 1942–49 (Sydney: Australasian Book Society, 1975).
2 Neville Meaney, Australia’s Changing Perception of Asia (Sydney: Japan Cultural Centre, 1997); Neville Meaney, Towards a New Vision: Australia and Japan through 100 Years (Roseville, NSW: Kangaroo Press, 1999).
3 See Arthur Stockwin and Keiko Tamura, eds., Bridging Australia and Japan: The Writings of David Sissons, Historian and Political Scientist, 2 vols. (Acton: ANU Press, 2016 and 2020).
4 See, for example, Neville Meaney, ‘The Yellow Peril: Invasion Scare Novels and Australian Political Culture’, in The 1890s: Australian Literature and Literary Culture, ed. Ken Stewart (St Lucia: University of Queensland Press, 1996), 228–63.
5 Keith Scott, ‘Keating Strikes back at Hawke’, Canberra Times, 24 June 1994.
6 Paul Keating, House of Representatives Parliamentary Debates (Hansard), 27 February 1992.
7 Pauline Hanson, House of Representatives Parliamentary Debates (Hansard), 10 September 1996.
8 David Walker, Dream and Disillusion: A Search for Australian National Identity (Canberra: ANU Press, 1976).
9 David Walker, Anxious Nation: Australia and the Rise of Asia, 1850–1939 (St Lucia: University of Queensland Press, 1999), 101.
10 David Walker, Not Dark Yet: A Personal History (Artarmon: Giramondo, 2011).
11 David Walker, Julia Horne, and Adrian Vickers, eds., Australian Perceptions of Asia, Australian Cultural History no. 9 (Kensington, NSW: University of New South Wales,1990).
12 Alison Broinowski, The Yellow Lady: Australian Impressions of Asia (Melbourne: Oxford University Press, 1992).
13 Lachlan Strahan, Australia’s China: Changing Perceptions From the 1930s to the 1990s (Melbourne: Cambridge University Press, 1996).
14 J.A.C. Mackie in Broinowski, The Yellow Lady, v.
15 David Walker and Agnieszka Sobocinska, ‘Introduction: Australia’s Asia’, in Australia’s Asia: From Yellow Peril to Asian Century, ed. David Walker and Agnieszka Sobocinska (Crawley: UWA Press, 2012).
16 Walker, Anxious Nation, 13–25.
17 See, for example, Russell McGregor, ‘“Breed Out the Colour” or The Importance of Being White’, Australian Historical Studies 33, no. 120 (2002): 286–302.
18 See for example: Marilyn Lake, ‘Colonial Australia and the Asia–Pacific Region’ and Tomoko Akami and Anthony Milner, ‘Australia in the Asia–Pacific Region’, in Cambridge History of Australia, ed. Alison Bashford and Stuart Macintyre, 2 vols. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013); Stuart Macintyre, A Concise History of Australia, 5th ed. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2020); Mark Peel and Christina Twomey, A History of Australia (London: Macmillan, 2018).
19 Marilyn Lake and Henry Reynolds, Drawing the Global Colour Line: White Men’s Countries and the Question of Racial Equality (Carlton: Melbourne University Press, 2008).
20 Benjamin Mountford, Britain, China and Colonial Australia (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016).
21 Samia Khatun, Australianama: The South Asian Odyssey in Australia (London: Hurst & Co., 2018).
22 Kama Maclean, British India, White Australia: Overseas Indians, Intercolonial Relations and the Empire (Sydney: UNSW Press, 2020).
23 Heather Goodall, Beyond Borders: Indians, Australians and the Indonesian Revolution, 1939 to 1950 (Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2019).
24 John Fitzgerald, Big White Lie: Chinese Australians in White Australia (Sydney: UNSW Press, 2007), viii.
25 Henry Yu, The Rise and Fall of the Cantonese Pacific (Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2019); John Fitzgerald and Hon-ming Yip, Chinese Diaspora Charity and the Cantonese Pacific, 1850–1949 (Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 2020).
26 For a good overview, see Kate Bagnall and Sophie Couchman, eds., Chinese Australians: Politics, Engagement and Resistance (Leiden: Brill, 2015).
27 Mei-fen Kuo and Judith Brett, Unlocking the History of the Australasian Kuo Min Tang, 1911–2013 (North Melbourne: Australian Scholarly Publishing, 2013); Mei-fen Kuo, Making Chinese Australia: Urban Elites, Newspapers and the Formation of Chinese–Australian Identity, 1892–1912 (Clayton: Monash University Publishing, 2013).
28 Sophie Loy-Wilson, ‘“Liberating” Asia: Strikes and Protest in Sydney and Shanghai, 1920–1939’, History Workshop 72, no. 1 (2011): 74–102; Sophie Loy-Wilson, Australians in Shanghai: Race, Rights and Nation in Treaty Port China (New York: Routledge, 2017).
29 Sophie Couchman, John Fitzgerald, and Paul Macgregor, eds., After the Rush: Regulation, Participation and Chinese Communities in Australia, 1860–1940 (Kingsbury, VIC: Otherland, 2004); Sophie Couchman, ‘Telling Chinese–Australian Stories’, Historic Environment 4, no 1 (2012): 8–16.
30 Kate Bagnall and Julia Martinez, Locating Chinese Women: Historical Mobility between China and Australia (Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 2019).
31 David Walker and Li Yao, with Karen Walker, Happy Together: Bridging the Australia–China Divide (Carlton: Melbourne University Press, 2022).
32 Christina Twomey, Australia’s Forgotten Prisoners: Civilians Interned by the Japanese in World War Two (Melbourne: Cambridge University Press, 2007); Christine de Matos, Imposing Peace & Prosperity: Australia, Social Justice and Labour Reform in Occupied Japan (North Melbourne: Australian Scholarly Publishing, 2008); Robin Gerster, Travels in Atomic Sunshine: Australia and the Occupation of Japan (Carlton North: Scribe Publications, 2008); Dean Aszkielowicz, The Australian Pursuit of Japanese War Criminals, 1943–1957: From Foe to Friend (Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 2017).
33 Julia Martinez and Adrian Vickers, The Pearl Frontier: Indonesian Labor and Indigenous Encounters in Australia’s Northern Trading Network (Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 2014).
34 Lynette Russell’s ‘Global Encounters & First Nations Peoples’ Laureate project promises to expand this historiography, https://www.monash.edu/arts/monash-indigenous-studies/global-encounters-and-first-nations-peoples.
35 Vannessa Hearman, ‘Australian News Photography and Contested Images of Famine in Indonesian-Occupied East Timor’, Australian Historical Studies 54, no. 3 (2023): 530–53. See also Agnieszka Sobocinska, Saving the World? Western Volunteers and the Rise of the Humanitarian–Development Complex (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2021).
36 Prue Torney-Parlicki, Somewhere in Asia: War, Journalism and Australia’s Neighbours, 1941–75 (Sydney: UNSW Press, 2000); David Oakman, Facing Asia: A History of the Colombo Plan (Canberra: ANU Press, 2004).
37 Agnieszka Sobocinska, Visiting the Neighbours: Australians in Asia (Sydney: UNSW Press, 2014).
38 Suvendrini Perera, Australia and the Insular Imagination: Beaches, Borders, Boats, and Bodies (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009); Nikos Papastergiadis, The Invasion Complex: Deep Historical Fears and Wide Open Anxieties (Malmö: Malmö University Press, 2005); Catriona Elder, Being Australian: Narratives of National Identity (Abingdon, UK: Routledge, 2000.
39 Chengxin Pan, Knowledge, Desire and Power in Global Politics: Western Representations of China’s Rise (Cheltenham, UK: Edward Elgar, 2015).
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Agnieszka Sobocinska
Dr. Agnieszka Sobocinska is Reader in International History and Historical Geography and Director of the Menzies Australia Institute at King’s College London. She is a historian of international development, North-South contacts and Australia-Asia relations. Her books include Saving the World? Western Volunteers and the Rise of the Humanitarian-Development Complex (Cambridge University Press, 2021) and Visiting the Neighbours: Australians in Asia (UNSW Press, 2014). Her current research explores historical challenges to foreign aid intervention across the Global South.