‘Drawing up a balance sheet’: accounting for history in Australia

Abstract

This essay undertakes a historiographical analysis of Australia’s ‘History Wars’. It relates these polemical debates over the politics of Australian history to concurrent disputes amongst historians concerning the motives behind Britain’s settlement of the Australian mainland. In debating whether settlement was prompted by Britain’s proliferating convict population or by a desire for imperial expansion, historians on both ends of the political spectrum rely on a model of historical accountability which is itself the product of innovations in economic thought made during the British Enlightenment. Without sufficient acknowledgement of or attention to the epistemological context of Australia’s ‘founding moment’, Australian historical discourse is reproduced via conceptual models which mask its derivation from the very ‘history’ in question.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. At the time of writing this self-descriptive quote appeared on Quadrant magazine’s website (http://www.quadrant.org.au). It has since been replaced with a quote from former (Liberal) Prime Minister John Howard: ‘In the realm of ideas there has been no better publication in Australia over the last 50 years than Quadrant magazine’ (accessed February 2, 2015).

2. For a good introduction see Macintyre and Clark, The History Wars (2004).

3. See Macintyre and Clark, The History Wars (2004, 79). Another important contribution to this debate is Martin (ed.), The Founding of Australia: the argument about Australia’s origins (1981). This volume collects various arguments for and against the priority of Britain’s interest in cultivating a new source of raw materials necessary for the needs of further naval exploration and military defence.

4. In 1796 Dalrymple published A Plan for Extending the Commerce of this Kingdom and of the East India Company. His previous writings argued strenuously for the existence of a vast southern continent and are generally considered to have been vital to the maintenance of an official interest in pursuing exploration in the Pacific (Shaw and Clark 1966, 276).

5. The Endeavour voyage (1769–1771) was commissioned with a dual purpose: to provide vital information for the advancement of navigational technique by observing the transit of Venus from Tahiti; and to investigate the reputed existence of a vast southern continent in the Pacific. The south-eastern coast of Australia was first sighted by British eyes from the decks of the Endeavour in April, 1770.

6. James Matra wa1s an American loyalist and diplomat. He wrote his Proposal in collaboration with the botanist Joseph Banks. Matra accompanied Banks and Captain James Cook on the Endeavour voyage (1769–1771).

7. The exact date of the meeting is not known and the date of the supplement is not given in the Historical Records of New South Wales. In ‘Botany Bay: An Imperial Venture of the 1780’s’, however, Alan Frost provides a citation giving the date of the supplement as 6 April 1784 (310; n.1).

8. ‘By the plan which I have now proposed a necessity to continue in the place of his destination and to be industrious is imposed on the criminal. The expense to the nation is absolutely imperceptible, comparatively, with what criminals have hitherto cost Government; and thus two objects of most desirable and beautiful union will be perfectly blended – economy to the publick, and humanity to the individual.’ (Historical Records of New South Wales, 1892, vol. 1, part 2 [7–8]).

9. A useful theoretical framework by which to extend the critique of historical agency here implied might be found in ‘actor-network theory’, principally associated with the work of Bruno Latour. In its insistence on the agency expressed by networks comprised of both human and non-human interests, this theory enables one to speak of ‘real, human, and semiotic entities in the same breath’ (Latour 1996, 369). It might thus offer a developed analytic posture from which to succinctly describe the tensions which play out between ‘act’ and ‘decision’ in the discourse surrounding the question of settlement.

10. King was instrumental in organizing a re-enactment of the First Fleet voyage as part of the bicentenary celebrations. Quadrant described the re-enactment as a ‘brilliant and challenging idea’. Government minister John Dawkins called it ‘a tasteless an insensitive farce’. After initial political and bureaucratic resistance ‘the second First Fleet departed England in April 1977 to a royal farewell and Aboriginal objections’ (As quoted in Macintyre and Clark 2004, 105, 105 and 107 respectively).