Geoffrey Blainey

A good but not great volume. The magnificent voyage of James Cook and Joseph Banks is worth chronicling, and luckily there are now several modern volumes on the subject. Cook was a brilliant navigator, his task was of the kind so daunting as to be almost impossible for us to imagine now (aside from space travel), and its implications - for both science and geopolitics - endlessly reverberating. Blainey is one of our most eminent historians (in spite of some rather notable lapses in terms of his publicly-proclaimed views over the last 40 years) and is a good fit for such a tale. This book is actually a rewriting of a volume from a few years ago which focused more strongly on comparing the voyage of the Endeavour with that of the French vessel St Jean Baptiste which came in the other direction at the same time, narrowly missing Australia in an almost comical, but understandable, set of circumstances.

This is a well-told tale with a sound bibliography and a sense of excitement for how the journey must have felt to those onboard. If I may be bold, it occasionally betrays the challenges of an elderly writer (Blainey turned 90 the year this was published) and an editorial team who perhaps weren't inclined to push against the wishes of a local luminary. Sentences occasionally read a bit boorishly; there are adjectives repeated ad nauseum, for example the word "retarded" (in its original sense), which is fine although one begins to wonder when it is used so many times!; and not infrequently one ponders a particular word choice, as with the book's subtitle: "The strange quest for a missing continent". I see how "strange" is not inaccurate, but it doesn't seem especially apposite either.

These are minor complaints, although the book never reaches the grandeur and depth that made Blainey's classic works so vital to our understanding of Australian history. Nevertheless, a useful overview of a pivotal moment in time.… (plus d'informations)

Blainey is often at his best when writing about Indigenous Australians, and this book is no exception. This is actually a combined rewrite of two of his great classics from many decades ago, Triumph of the Nomads and A Land Half Won, adding much from the last half-century of scholarship. I must admit I still find the original books more charming and readable, partly because, if we're honest, Blainey is a very old man now. There does seem to be a simplicity to his writing style these days, a greater tendency to anticipate what's to come in the following pages, and sometimes a repetitive manner as if Blainey wanted each sentence to stand alone in case it were used for a review.

But that's rather simplistic. This is a clear-headed and fascinating volume, helping to understand the complexities and nuances of Aboriginal life and the great tragedy of their downfall, without being needlessly romantic or unacademic, as certain other popular authors have been in the last decade.… (plus d'informations)

Absolutely fantastic. Still highly informative reading on the great variety, strengths, and intricacies of Indigenous Australian culture before white people came. In the 2020s, we live in an era of a) reactionary right-wing types, who still reiterate the pallid, naive ideas, which Blainey disproved almost five decades ago, in which the existence of Australia's many Indigenous nations were static, often desperate, and lacking in complexity, and b) ideological left-wing types who - not unreasonably or unsympathetically - seek out narratives of power and woe in their fight against lingering discrimination and the rose-tinted view of the past which successive governments seem desperate to write into the history books, but who aren't so interested in using science or reason to hammer things out. Instead, by using those very tools, Blainey examines the many ways in which nomadic life was equal - or superior - to that of Europeans and Asians, as well as exploring the versatility, developments, and depth of life on the continent prior to 1788. It is a nuanced portrayal that, of course, lacks something for being old now, but - adjusted for inflation, as it were - is richly rewarding. There were several times that I was able to reposition my mind, on items I had been pondering for some time. (For example, as Blainey discusses in the final chapter, the possibility that one of the reasons why farming and domestication didn't make it across from some of the islands of New Guinea and the Torres Strait - almost within sight of Australia and within trading networks for northern Indigenous people - was to do with their inconsistency with nomadic life. Soil in the areas which regularly traded - those in the north - was not welcoming to farming; the most popular domesticated animal (the pig) would be an encumbrance on even a partly-nomadic life; it did not reflect in the cultural and religious values which also tied northern Australians to their central and southern brethren; and in fact Indigenous people often made a better life being nomadic: it was - in good times - fewer hours' work than domesticated life and was strengthened by the movement throughout the seasons which of course isn't possible on a smaller island. Additionally, the islands of New Guinea provided fewer but more abundant foodstuffs in smaller locations, supporting the additional growth of, say, taro. Domestication made sense when it arrived. By contrast, even with some pigs or some sweet potatoes, Indigenous tribes would still have needed to traverse a wider area of land for the incredibly wide but less populous range of items that made up their diet, and thus it would have been an active liability. The more you know.)

Pivotal reading for anyone interested in Australian history.… (plus d'informations)

The Tyranny of Distance is one of the quintessential texts for anyone attempting to understand Australia. It is creeping up to its 50th birthday, so we shouldn't assume Blainey's analysis is infallible now, but his view of how isolation impacted the first colonial settlers, how it helped conjure up the conservatism, the complicated relationship with the motherland, the social values, and the relationship with the land beneath our feet (or, often, out of sight beyond the edge of a city), remains deeply insightful. Every Australian historian must live in his shadow, perhaps alongside that more socially passionate troika of Manning Clark, Inga Clendinnen, and Robert Hughes.

It should be said that this is not a "history of Australia" in any traditional sense. Sturt and Eyre do not appear in the index, nor do Barton or Deakin; Arthur Phillip and Matthew Flinders receive only a couple of pages; while Aboriginal Australians receive only passing references. (These subjects would be dealt with in the other two books in Blainey's unofficial "trilogy": [b:A Land Half Won|2470548|A Land Half Won|Geoffrey Blainey|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1634615640l/2470548._SY75_.jpg|2477745] and [b:Triumph of the Nomads: A History of Aboriginal Australia|545260|Triumph of the Nomads A History of Aboriginal Australia|Geoffrey Blainey|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1387742432l/545260._SY75_.jpg|532540] respectively.) The book has a broad scope, from mining and international trade to the rise of the railway, but it is filtered through Blainey's hypothesis: that the continent's isolation from its Western allies in the 19th and early 20th centuries, combined with its sheer size, played crucial roles in forming the development of the country, its industries, and its people's mindset.

For readers of my generation, we are apt to view Blainey in light of his perceived failures as a man rather than as an historian. Although he remained a potent force throughout the 20th century (and even into the 21st), he occasionally nailed his colours to less-than-savoury masts. His public concern about levels of Asian immigration is - strangely enough - at odds with the final chapters of the revised edition of this very book, in which he notes the regional importance of our ties to Asia. Ah, humankind! But, as Lawrence Durrell once said, if things were always what they seem, how impoverished would be the lives of man.

But with my rational book reviewer hat on, I don't think that can justify ignoring this key volume. It remains a crucial text in the teaching of Australian history, although - in line with its academic origins - a few chapters can get a touch dry. Extensive lessons on the manufacture and resourcing of flax, for example, would drive even a student of accounting to start eating the book just to be rid of it.

In a way, we have all absorbed Blainey's teachings already, so you probably don't need to read this book. Still, without him, we would know ourselves less well, and that would surely be a shame.… (plus d'informations)