A History of South Australia investigates South Australia's history from before the arrival of the first European maritime explorers to the present day, and examines its distinctive origins as a 'free' settlement. In this compelling and nuanced history, Paul Sendziuk and Robert Foster consider the imprint of people on the land - and vice versa - and offer fresh insights into relations between Indigenous people and the European colonisers. They chart South Australia's economic, political and social development, including the advance and retreat of an interventionist government, the establishment of the state's distinctive socio-political formations, and its relationship to the rest of Australia and the world. The first comprehensive, single-volume history of the state to be published in over fifty years, A History of South Australia is an essential and engaging contribution to our understanding of South Australia's past.

History of South Australia, from settlement in 1836 to the time of Australia's Federation in 1901.

Its capital is named after German-born Queen Adelaide, its main street after her English husband, King William IV, so it is not surprising that little is known about South Australia's Irish background. However, the first European to discover Adelaide's River Torrens in 1836 was Cork-born and educated George Kingston, who was deputy surveyor to Colonel Light; the river was named in turn for Derryman Colonel Torrens, Chairman of the South Australian Colonisation Commission. Adelaide's first judge and first police commissioner were immigrants from Kerry and Limerick. Irish South Australia charts Irish settlement from as far north as Pekina, to the state's south-east and Mount Gambier. It follows the diverse fortunes of the Irish-born elite such as George Kingston and Charles Harvey Bagot, as well as doctors, farmers, lawyers, orphans, parliamentarians, pastoralists and publicans who made South Australia their home, with various shades of political and religious beliefs: Anglicans, Catholics, Dissenters, Federationalists, Freemasons, Home Rulers, nationalists, and Orangemen. Irish markers can be found in South Australian archaeology, architecture, geography and history. Some of these are visible in the hundreds of Irish place names that dot the South Australian landscape, such as Clare, Donnybrook, Dublin, Kilkenny, Navan, Rostrevor, Tipperary, and Tralee (as Tarlee). The book's editors are twentieth-century Irish immigrants from Dublin (Dymphna Lonergan), Portadown (Fidelma Breen), Trim (Susan Arthure), and by descent from eight Irish-born (Stephanie James).

A history of Aboriginal South Australia in a collection of essays by both indigenous and white writers and historians.

A comprehensive collection of papers on prehistory, contact history, immigration, sport, religion, health and welfare, education, family patterns, women, race relations and class; papers by G.L. Pretty, R. Foster and T.J. Gara and J. Summers separately annotated.