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A History of Australia #4
A History of Australia, IV: The Earth Abideth for Ever, 1851–1888
The late Manning Clark aims to bring to attention the foibles and strengths in every person, traits forced to the fore in the hardship and trauma that occured during the establishment and develpment of white settlement in Australia. Clark sets out to use the tragedies and successes of national heroes such as explorerers and generals, and those of the average person such as soldiers at Gallipoli and farmer's wives, to create a memorable tableau.
427 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 1978
29 people want to read
About the author
Manning Clark
71 books13 followersBorn to a working-class Anglican priest and a mother from a well-off background, Charles Manning Hope Clark was a quiet, academically minded child who went to school in Melbourne, and excelled at literature, Greek, and Latin (as well as exhibiting a great love of cricket). Clark earned a scholarship to Oxford, where he studied from 1938, but returned to Australia in 1940 (he was exempt from serving in WWII due to mild epilepsy) and took up life as a highschool history teacher.
Growing up in a time of war, Clark flirted with a variety of political views, ultimately settling into moderate socialism - although always with a healthy separation from anything serious (he was seen by some as conservative, but tended to have more ties to left-wing historians and thinkers). During his middle years, Clark would be a subject of surveillance from Australia's intelligence forces, like many other intellectuals, for his perceived destabilising thoughts and writings. After the war, Clark - now married to the historian Dymphna Clark and gradually fathering six children - established himself as a lecturer in history at Melbourne University, moving to their Canberra branch which gradually became the separate Australian National University, where he would live most of his professional life.
Clark's first significant publication was "Select Documents in Australian History" (2 volumes, 1950-55) which provided a significant examination of primary sources of the birth and development of modern Australia. In 1956, he began serious research on a lengthy History of Australia, which rapidly expanded from his concept of a two-volume work to a series of six. Published between 1962 and 1987, the History is his major work, spanning Australia's early history through to its colonisation by the British in 1788, to the 1930s, where his story comes to an end. Throughout, Clark explores the relationships of Catholics, Protestants, and Enlightenment thinkers, the delicate balance of European values and the world of the Australian continent, and the tragedy of Australia's Indigenous population. The earned its acolytes and its detractors, for reasons both political and literary, and remains controversial in the 21st century.
In 1974, Clark formally retired from lecturing at the ANU, and retained the title of Emeritus Professor until his death. In his later years, Clark's disdain for the upper and upper middle classes of Anglo-Australia (which had caused a fractious relationship with his mother all his life) became more evident, particularly in his campaigning for Prime Minister Gough Whitlam, and his outrage when Whitlam was dismissed by the Queen's representative, the Governor-General of Australia, in 1975.
Manning Clark was awarded the Australian Literature Society Gold Medal in 1970, and was appointed a Companion of the Order of Australia in 1975. He was named Australian of the Year in 1980 and, in Australia's bicentenary year of 1988, his History of Australia was adapted by others (including Prime Minister Paul Keating's future speechwriter Don Watson) as a musical, which ran for a short period in Melbourne.
In his last years, Clark was seen as something of an Australian icon, with a recognisable image (a classic Aussie bush hat, a goatee, and a walking stick), and was routinely published in journals and newspapers around the country. His last volumes were not highly regarded by contemporary historians, especially in the patriotic years of the 1980s, both because he was seen as left-wing and because he was seen as an old man whose pessimism and repetition had overwhelmed his natural gifts. Others regarded Clark as an iconic figure who urged Australians to question and reconsider some of the longstanding myths of Anglo-Australian culture, a debate which would escalate rapidly in the decades after the Australian bicentenary and the author's death. In 1989 and 1990, Clark published two volumes of autobiography. H
Growing up in a time of war, Clark flirted with a variety of political views, ultimately settling into moderate socialism - although always with a healthy separation from anything serious (he was seen by some as conservative, but tended to have more ties to left-wing historians and thinkers). During his middle years, Clark would be a subject of surveillance from Australia's intelligence forces, like many other intellectuals, for his perceived destabilising thoughts and writings. After the war, Clark - now married to the historian Dymphna Clark and gradually fathering six children - established himself as a lecturer in history at Melbourne University, moving to their Canberra branch which gradually became the separate Australian National University, where he would live most of his professional life.
Clark's first significant publication was "Select Documents in Australian History" (2 volumes, 1950-55) which provided a significant examination of primary sources of the birth and development of modern Australia. In 1956, he began serious research on a lengthy History of Australia, which rapidly expanded from his concept of a two-volume work to a series of six. Published between 1962 and 1987, the History is his major work, spanning Australia's early history through to its colonisation by the British in 1788, to the 1930s, where his story comes to an end. Throughout, Clark explores the relationships of Catholics, Protestants, and Enlightenment thinkers, the delicate balance of European values and the world of the Australian continent, and the tragedy of Australia's Indigenous population. The earned its acolytes and its detractors, for reasons both political and literary, and remains controversial in the 21st century.
In 1974, Clark formally retired from lecturing at the ANU, and retained the title of Emeritus Professor until his death. In his later years, Clark's disdain for the upper and upper middle classes of Anglo-Australia (which had caused a fractious relationship with his mother all his life) became more evident, particularly in his campaigning for Prime Minister Gough Whitlam, and his outrage when Whitlam was dismissed by the Queen's representative, the Governor-General of Australia, in 1975.
Manning Clark was awarded the Australian Literature Society Gold Medal in 1970, and was appointed a Companion of the Order of Australia in 1975. He was named Australian of the Year in 1980 and, in Australia's bicentenary year of 1988, his History of Australia was adapted by others (including Prime Minister Paul Keating's future speechwriter Don Watson) as a musical, which ran for a short period in Melbourne.
In his last years, Clark was seen as something of an Australian icon, with a recognisable image (a classic Aussie bush hat, a goatee, and a walking stick), and was routinely published in journals and newspapers around the country. His last volumes were not highly regarded by contemporary historians, especially in the patriotic years of the 1980s, both because he was seen as left-wing and because he was seen as an old man whose pessimism and repetition had overwhelmed his natural gifts. Others regarded Clark as an iconic figure who urged Australians to question and reconsider some of the longstanding myths of Anglo-Australian culture, a debate which would escalate rapidly in the decades after the Australian bicentenary and the author's death. In 1989 and 1990, Clark published two volumes of autobiography. H
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
June 14, 2023
Manning Clark was a true Australian great, although I'll be honest and say the 4-stars could easily have slipped down to a 3. This is the volume that Geoffrey Dutton (contemporaneously with this history's publication in 1980) called the masterpiece of the set in his wonderful
The Australian Collection: Australia's Greatest Books
. I think, if nothing else, it's certainly emblematic of the set.
Clark details Australia's history from the days of the gold rush and Eureka Stockade in the 1850s, to the celebrations for the country's centenary in 1888. It is a period in which Australians are beginning to argue about whether to federate the states, are beginning to move away from the Catholic/Protestant divide, and in which the typical white enemies like the Irish and the English face their first threats from non-Anglo migration. It is, of course, the high watermark of the British Empire under Queen Victoria, but also a time of much crisis in Europe and the USA.
Clark - an alarmingly skilled historian - had spent his later life combing the archives of Australia to find the stories of individuals from all levels of life. He is criticised by conservative historians for his focus on the negative, for his vision of Australia as a struggle for power in which those without get trampled in the dirt, be they the Irish, women, Aboriginals, Chinese immigrants, the poor, or the convicts. I can hardly profess to being impartial when I say that I dispute their argument. It has always been clear that power resides in the hands of the few, and even now at the end of the 2010s we watch as many of the same battles play out in new (but strikingly similar) arenas.
That is not to clear Clark of accusations of bias, of course not. He was - especially later in life - a victim of his world view, and determined to present it. This is a rambling history (polite people would say 'sprawling') filled with his love of lengthy sentences and the desire to quote - and footnote - everyone from Aeschylus to Dickens. (I haven't read the abridged one-volume version of Clark, but I can see its appeal!) Nevertheless for me, the literary nature of this history is part of its glory. It can't replace those that attempt to be impartial, or those that provide worthy if conservative viewpoints (Clark's great frenemy Geoffrey Blainey being the obvious example). Or even, I suppose, other great progressive historians such as Robert Hughes. But it is an important, pressing, beautifully outraged addition to the canon. Clark asks us - most importantly - to remember that no tradition is there because it is so. No. Traditions, cultures, aristocracies: they all emerge from the power struggle and that seemingly eternal desire of those who have made it in the door to close it rapidly behind them.
As an example, my 2019 self was struck by this passage, written in the late 1970s, referring to the transition in the 1850s from solo gold prospectors (most of whom never made a cent, or pissed away small winnings on a night's drinking) to corporate, industrial mining:
"In the eyes of the digger, companies, capital and machinery in their colossal proportions, threatened the 'whole cherished vocation of individual mining', and his freedom of action. Those who continued to wield the pick and the shovel became like men who had been superseded by the march of human progress. They became lost, bewildered and frightened men who were just as wild in their fears as they had been previously in their hopes... Henceforth they looked for a scapegoat on which to explode that anger of men who had asked for bread and been offered a stone. At the same time as they feared the loss of their economic freedom, they became afraid that those men in high places were plotting to deprive them of another freedom - their freedom as men."
No wonder, when Patrick White was reading these books, he remarked: "Interesting to see how we have remained the same pack of snarling mongrel dogs."
Clark details Australia's history from the days of the gold rush and Eureka Stockade in the 1850s, to the celebrations for the country's centenary in 1888. It is a period in which Australians are beginning to argue about whether to federate the states, are beginning to move away from the Catholic/Protestant divide, and in which the typical white enemies like the Irish and the English face their first threats from non-Anglo migration. It is, of course, the high watermark of the British Empire under Queen Victoria, but also a time of much crisis in Europe and the USA.
Clark - an alarmingly skilled historian - had spent his later life combing the archives of Australia to find the stories of individuals from all levels of life. He is criticised by conservative historians for his focus on the negative, for his vision of Australia as a struggle for power in which those without get trampled in the dirt, be they the Irish, women, Aboriginals, Chinese immigrants, the poor, or the convicts. I can hardly profess to being impartial when I say that I dispute their argument. It has always been clear that power resides in the hands of the few, and even now at the end of the 2010s we watch as many of the same battles play out in new (but strikingly similar) arenas.
That is not to clear Clark of accusations of bias, of course not. He was - especially later in life - a victim of his world view, and determined to present it. This is a rambling history (polite people would say 'sprawling') filled with his love of lengthy sentences and the desire to quote - and footnote - everyone from Aeschylus to Dickens. (I haven't read the abridged one-volume version of Clark, but I can see its appeal!) Nevertheless for me, the literary nature of this history is part of its glory. It can't replace those that attempt to be impartial, or those that provide worthy if conservative viewpoints (Clark's great frenemy Geoffrey Blainey being the obvious example). Or even, I suppose, other great progressive historians such as Robert Hughes. But it is an important, pressing, beautifully outraged addition to the canon. Clark asks us - most importantly - to remember that no tradition is there because it is so. No. Traditions, cultures, aristocracies: they all emerge from the power struggle and that seemingly eternal desire of those who have made it in the door to close it rapidly behind them.
As an example, my 2019 self was struck by this passage, written in the late 1970s, referring to the transition in the 1850s from solo gold prospectors (most of whom never made a cent, or pissed away small winnings on a night's drinking) to corporate, industrial mining:
"In the eyes of the digger, companies, capital and machinery in their colossal proportions, threatened the 'whole cherished vocation of individual mining', and his freedom of action. Those who continued to wield the pick and the shovel became like men who had been superseded by the march of human progress. They became lost, bewildered and frightened men who were just as wild in their fears as they had been previously in their hopes... Henceforth they looked for a scapegoat on which to explode that anger of men who had asked for bread and been offered a stone. At the same time as they feared the loss of their economic freedom, they became afraid that those men in high places were plotting to deprive them of another freedom - their freedom as men."
No wonder, when Patrick White was reading these books, he remarked: "Interesting to see how we have remained the same pack of snarling mongrel dogs."
April 6, 2024
So far (read 1 through 4) this is my favourite
June 25, 2019
Slowing down - this is heavy going. But I want to finish my Bicentennial Project of reading this history, flaws and all.
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews