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The History Wars
The nation's history has probably never been more politicised than it is today. Politicians, journalists, columnists, academics and Australians from all walks of life argue passionately—and often, ideologically—about the significance of the national story: the cherished ideal of the 'fair go', the much contested facts of Indigenous dispossession, the Anzac legend, and the nation's strategic alliance with the United States. Historians have become both combatants and casualties in this war of words.
In The History Wars, Stuart Macintyre and Anna Clark explore how this intense public debate has polarised the nation and paralysed history departments. This edition includes a new afterword by Stuart Macintyre which recounts, with rueful irony, the outbreak of controversy that followed the book's original publication, and the further light it shed on the uses and abuses of Australian history.
In The History Wars, Stuart Macintyre and Anna Clark explore how this intense public debate has polarised the nation and paralysed history departments. This edition includes a new afterword by Stuart Macintyre which recounts, with rueful irony, the outbreak of controversy that followed the book's original publication, and the further light it shed on the uses and abuses of Australian history.
300 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2003
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About the author
Stuart Macintyre
53 books9 followersStuart Macintyre was Emeritus Laureate Professor of the University of Melbourne and a Professorial Fellow of the School of Historical and Philosophical Studies. He was president of the Academy of the Social Sciences in Australia from 2007 to 2009 and a life member of the Academy of the Social Sciences in Australia. With Alison Bashford, he edited the Cambridge History of Australia (2013). His last book, published posthumously, is The Party: The Communist Party of Australia from heyday to reckoning (2022), the second volume in his history of the Communist Party of Australia.
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Displaying 1 - 15 of 15 reviews
January 27, 2025
In the late nineteenth century, Leopold von Ranke asserted that a historians task is to interrogate the facts and narrate "the past as it actually occurred." History was considered a natural science, where, with careful study, objective truth could be formulated. The Rankean traditionalist view of history dominated the discipline for decades before it was challenged by E. H. Carr, who postulated that "history is an unending dialogue between the past and the present." In other words, history is influenced by contemporary standards and perspectives. Historiography matters; it influences how we see the past and how the past shapes the present.
Stuart Macintyre favours Carr's worldview when examining the eponymous History Wars of the 1990s and early-2000s. Conservatives accused progressives of maintaining a "black armband view of history," suggesting that the latter were ashamed of Australia's history. Australia was inexorably the "lucky country." However, beginning in the 1960s, revisionist historians challenged this rosy story. Australia, like all nations, has a heterogeneous history marked by hardship and oppression alongside progress and triumph. First Nations Australians had it worst of all. Paul Keating reminded the nation that "settlers smashed the traditional way of life." This obvious truth was intolerable to conservatives.
With the conservatives coming to power in 1996, Keith Windschuttle became their historical doyen. Windschuttle claimed First Nations history, characterised by dispossession and genocide, was "fabricated." He claimed to be representing the past as it actually occurred. Rankean historiography may be chimerical, yet at least Ranke's methodology was rigorous and attempted to sideline individual subjectivity. Windschuttle conversely prejudicially distorts the facts. Macintyre is more restrained in his analysis of this period, but a polemic might have been more apt. Then again, he is an actual historian who respects the discipline, unlike some of his conservative counterparts.
Stuart Macintyre favours Carr's worldview when examining the eponymous History Wars of the 1990s and early-2000s. Conservatives accused progressives of maintaining a "black armband view of history," suggesting that the latter were ashamed of Australia's history. Australia was inexorably the "lucky country." However, beginning in the 1960s, revisionist historians challenged this rosy story. Australia, like all nations, has a heterogeneous history marked by hardship and oppression alongside progress and triumph. First Nations Australians had it worst of all. Paul Keating reminded the nation that "settlers smashed the traditional way of life." This obvious truth was intolerable to conservatives.
With the conservatives coming to power in 1996, Keith Windschuttle became their historical doyen. Windschuttle claimed First Nations history, characterised by dispossession and genocide, was "fabricated." He claimed to be representing the past as it actually occurred. Rankean historiography may be chimerical, yet at least Ranke's methodology was rigorous and attempted to sideline individual subjectivity. Windschuttle conversely prejudicially distorts the facts. Macintyre is more restrained in his analysis of this period, but a polemic might have been more apt. Then again, he is an actual historian who respects the discipline, unlike some of his conservative counterparts.
September 1, 2014
If I was able to talk in terms of good and evil (if those words hadn’t been forever sullied in justifying endless wars directed at the innocent and defenceless) then as good an example of evil from recent Australian history would Prime Minister John Howard’s refusal to allow parliament to apologise for the stolen generations. Not only did this act of bastardy show the true colours of both Howard and too many of his parliamentary colleagues, but it shamed our entire nation and did much to diminish our apology when it finally (and inevitably) did come as the first act of the new government. As if it were not bad enough that the horror of the state actively and forcibly stealing children from indigenous families could have occurred in Australia – but that our government could then say, of something that was still occurring in the 1970s, that it was impossible to apologise for these actions as they belonged to a different time and circumstance must surely count as evil.
How different that attitude is to the one presented by our immediate previous Prime Minister in his Redfern Park Speech in 1992. Keating’s speech, in simple, active sentences, also proved to be so much better than Rudd’s Sorry Day speech in 2008. It is, to my nations great shame, almost inconceivable that such a speech could be given by any Prime Minister today of either major party. I will quote only the most striking paragraphs of the whole, short speech, which is available in full here http://australianpolitics.com/executi...
“And, as I say, the starting point might be to recognise that the problem starts with us non-Aboriginal Australians.
“It begins, I think, with the act of recognition. Recognition that it was we who did the dispossessing. We took the traditional lands and smashed the traditional way of life. We brought the disasters. The alcohol. We committed the murders. We took the children from their mothers. We practised discrimination and exclusion.
“It was our ignorance and our prejudice. And our failure to imagine these things being done to us. With some noble exceptions, we failed to make the most basic human response and enter into their hearts and minds. We failed to ask - how would I feel if this were done to me?”
And that simple, human question makes Howard’s later inaction all the more shameful. It is not only that he did nothing to address this blight on Australia’s past – but worse, that his government actively supported those who would seek to cover and to hide, to excuse and to diminish the hurt and damage we white Australians committed against our indigenous fellows.
In part this book traces that particular skirmish of the history wars – the one between two Prime Ministers and their competing views of Australian history, a battle that will probably always be remembered by Blainey’s distinction between those calling for three cheers and those wearing black armbands.
This book brings together the story of a resurgent rightwing and its efforts to retake and to rewrite Australian history in its own image. It documents the filthy acts, like the attack on Australia’s best known historian – Manning Clerk – for him supposedly receiving an Order of Lenin (although the fact that this was ‘reported’ in a Murdoch owned newspaper and that not even other Murdoch owned newspapers would accept the story says about all that needs to be said. How rare it is for those particular curs not return to and lap up whatever dog vomit was spewed out by one of their pack).
This book traces the history wars from Blainey’s increasingly anti-Asian stance, through the Bicentennial flag-waving that was tempered for some of us by the all too obvious fact we were celebrating 200 years of invasion, then onto the whitewashing of Windschuttle’s denials of massacres and then to the attempt to turn our history curricula and national museums into places devoid of controversy, interpretation or interest.
The irony is that those who wish for a triumphant Australian history, one that focuses only on the great achievements of Australia, actually do more to diminish us as a nation and as a people. No nation rises above the crimes of its past by pretending they never happened. That the Prime Minister who demanded schools fly the Australian flag could also have said that symbols aren’t important when it came to saying sorry to Aboriginal Australians does much to show how wilfully blind we humans can be when we choose to be.
This is an important book about Australia’s recent past, a book that shows those who cry the loudest about our past being rewritten were those doing the rewriting and where those accusing others of falsifying were in fact the falsifiers. If you are Australian you should read this book – it is important to remember why you need to be angry with those who did so much to deny us the gift of reconciliation.
How different that attitude is to the one presented by our immediate previous Prime Minister in his Redfern Park Speech in 1992. Keating’s speech, in simple, active sentences, also proved to be so much better than Rudd’s Sorry Day speech in 2008. It is, to my nations great shame, almost inconceivable that such a speech could be given by any Prime Minister today of either major party. I will quote only the most striking paragraphs of the whole, short speech, which is available in full here http://australianpolitics.com/executi...
“And, as I say, the starting point might be to recognise that the problem starts with us non-Aboriginal Australians.
“It begins, I think, with the act of recognition. Recognition that it was we who did the dispossessing. We took the traditional lands and smashed the traditional way of life. We brought the disasters. The alcohol. We committed the murders. We took the children from their mothers. We practised discrimination and exclusion.
“It was our ignorance and our prejudice. And our failure to imagine these things being done to us. With some noble exceptions, we failed to make the most basic human response and enter into their hearts and minds. We failed to ask - how would I feel if this were done to me?”
And that simple, human question makes Howard’s later inaction all the more shameful. It is not only that he did nothing to address this blight on Australia’s past – but worse, that his government actively supported those who would seek to cover and to hide, to excuse and to diminish the hurt and damage we white Australians committed against our indigenous fellows.
In part this book traces that particular skirmish of the history wars – the one between two Prime Ministers and their competing views of Australian history, a battle that will probably always be remembered by Blainey’s distinction between those calling for three cheers and those wearing black armbands.
This book brings together the story of a resurgent rightwing and its efforts to retake and to rewrite Australian history in its own image. It documents the filthy acts, like the attack on Australia’s best known historian – Manning Clerk – for him supposedly receiving an Order of Lenin (although the fact that this was ‘reported’ in a Murdoch owned newspaper and that not even other Murdoch owned newspapers would accept the story says about all that needs to be said. How rare it is for those particular curs not return to and lap up whatever dog vomit was spewed out by one of their pack).
This book traces the history wars from Blainey’s increasingly anti-Asian stance, through the Bicentennial flag-waving that was tempered for some of us by the all too obvious fact we were celebrating 200 years of invasion, then onto the whitewashing of Windschuttle’s denials of massacres and then to the attempt to turn our history curricula and national museums into places devoid of controversy, interpretation or interest.
The irony is that those who wish for a triumphant Australian history, one that focuses only on the great achievements of Australia, actually do more to diminish us as a nation and as a people. No nation rises above the crimes of its past by pretending they never happened. That the Prime Minister who demanded schools fly the Australian flag could also have said that symbols aren’t important when it came to saying sorry to Aboriginal Australians does much to show how wilfully blind we humans can be when we choose to be.
This is an important book about Australia’s recent past, a book that shows those who cry the loudest about our past being rewritten were those doing the rewriting and where those accusing others of falsifying were in fact the falsifiers. If you are Australian you should read this book – it is important to remember why you need to be angry with those who did so much to deny us the gift of reconciliation.
October 14, 2025
Read this after beginning Josephine Flood’s ‘The First Australians’ and finding its neutral, defensive tone bizarre and eventually unreadable. I had to put it down and would not recommend it for anyone looking to read First Nations history. I was struck by the fact that Flood seemed to be fighting intellectual battles about certain events, facts and figures which I had no real knowledge of. Macintyre and Clark’s The History Wars does a terrific job of clarifying the stakes. This is a penetrating book about the uses of history. It makes clear that as practised by politicians and the public, history is not so much a method of truth-telling as it is a moral justification for one’s own political program. My main take-away was that a true ethics/morality cannot be predicated on history, for history is always malleable and slippery. Also that John Howard is an unfeeling man.
October 2, 2017
An excellent read for any history buff!
Basically, this text is about how Australia's history has been defined by 'The History Wars' where the view of our country's history continually shifts from one of "Australia has always been great" to "Australia's history is full of mourning". It was fascinating learning about the extent Australian historians went to in order to preserve an orthodox view of our history and then seeing what happened when the orthodox view was challenged. In my opinion, there should be a balance between the two extreme views because negatives of one's history should be stepping stones for future progress and positives should be motivation to continue moving a nation forward.
Learning about Manning Clark and Geoffrey Blainey where the most interesting parts of this text, as well as the commentary on the nature of history. Of course, John Howard and Paul Keating were featured prominently as well.
This was also very easy to read and was structured in a digestible manner. This is also a relevant read due to the political climate today.
Basically, this text is about how Australia's history has been defined by 'The History Wars' where the view of our country's history continually shifts from one of "Australia has always been great" to "Australia's history is full of mourning". It was fascinating learning about the extent Australian historians went to in order to preserve an orthodox view of our history and then seeing what happened when the orthodox view was challenged. In my opinion, there should be a balance between the two extreme views because negatives of one's history should be stepping stones for future progress and positives should be motivation to continue moving a nation forward.
Learning about Manning Clark and Geoffrey Blainey where the most interesting parts of this text, as well as the commentary on the nature of history. Of course, John Howard and Paul Keating were featured prominently as well.
This was also very easy to read and was structured in a digestible manner. This is also a relevant read due to the political climate today.
June 29, 2022
Two bureaucrats are on a quest to scam you into thinking ”Big Brother needs more power”. They compare the good old times when there was only one way: the Prime Minister way, as there was no highway. These two are disgusted of the idea of people having a choice, simply because there can be only one choice: you work and pay taxes so they get their increase in pension, or how else could they hire into academia all those nieces and nephews?
February 5, 2021
Brilliant! Not only did this book help me to understand the white bind fold and black armband saga of Australian history. I was drawn into a greater understanding Australia's political history (and enjoyed it!). It makes me want to revisit Canberra's War Memorial just so I can reflect on why we present history the way we do and who is responsible for the representations!
July 12, 2025
A fascinating look at how Australia has grappled with its complicated past, perhaps more so and more publicly than I had previously understood. The book sometimes veered into being too historiographic or too polemic in equal parts, but overall I thoroughly enjoyed having a new lens with which to see Australia.
August 1, 2022
Amazing, wonderful, awesome
April 16, 2015
Interesting to read that historians and Murdock newspapers do not get along especially when it involves Australian history and attacking the people who do the research. It is silly when the only attack people can come up with is by calling someone a communist even if they were in the party, but telling people to be afraid of them. History is always changing and I enjoyed the book
May 22, 2016
I used this text for an assignment on The Secret River and Macintyre explains the History Wars in Australia so eloquently I read it cover to cover even though the whole book was not relevant to my essay topic. It is heavy, and if you do not have any knowledge of Australian history going into it you will probably get lost, but it is a very good source of information.
April 24, 2011
Australian history can possibly be fun? I remain unconvinced, but I must say that this book tries much harder to convince me than all those god awful australian history courses I was subject to at school.
March 22, 2013
It was a hard read with bits of the book quite interesting and some bits just "historians" bitching on other historians. I wish there was more to the book as great part of it was about personalities...
However, some of it I did find insightful
Want to read
May 1, 2009O look! Something interesting in Australian history!
September 3, 2011
An awesome guide to the fierce, heavy, rhetoric-driven politicisation of Australian history and the Australian story/experience/narrative. Very much recommended.
Displaying 1 - 15 of 15 reviews