This book explores the inculcation of an Australian national identity through a deconstruction of the content of the required reading curriculum for children in schools in the state of Victoria during the first two decades after Federation in 1901.

This book explores the inculcation of an Australian national identity through a deconstruction of the content of the required reading curriculum for children in schools in the state of Victoria during the first two decades after Federation in 1901.

This book explores the evolution of Canadian and Australian national identities in the era of decolonization by evaluating educational policies in Ontario, Canada, and Victoria, Australia. Drawing on sources such as textbooks and curricula, the book argues that Britishness, a sense of imperial citizenship connecting white Anglo-Saxons across the British Empire, continued to be a crucial marker of national identity in both Australia and Canada until the late 1960s and early 1970s, when educators in Ontario and Victoria abandoned Britishness in favor of multiculturalism. Chapters explore how textbooks portrayed imperialism, the close relationship between religious education and Britishness, and efforts to end assimilationist Anglocentrism and promote equality in education. The book contributes to British World scholarship by demonstrating how decolonization precipitated a massive search for identity in Ontario and Victoria that continues to challenge educators and policy-makers today.

This book explores the profound social, cultural, and political changes that affected the way in which Canadians and Australians defined themselves as a «people» from the late nineteenth century to the 1970s. Taking as its central theme the way each country responded to the introduction of new migrants, the book asks a key historical question: why and how did multiculturalism replace Britishness as the defining idea of community for English-speaking Canada and Australia, and what does this say about their respective experiences of nationalism in the twentieth century? The book begins from a simple premise - namely, that the path towards the adoption of multiculturalism as the orthodox way of defining national community in English-speaking Canada and Australia in the latter half of the twentieth century was both uncertain and unsteady. It followed a period in which both nations had looked first and foremost to Britain to define their national self-image. In both nations, however, following the breakdown of their more formal and institutional ties to the 'mother-country' in the post-war period there was a crisis of national meaning, and policy makers and politicians moved quickly to fill the void with a new idea of the nation, one that was the very antithesis to the White, monolithic idea of Britishness. This book will be useful for both history and politics courses in Australia and Canada, as well as internationally.

What do people think when they imagine themselves as part of a nation? Nation and Commemoration answers this question in an exploration of the creation and recreation of national identities through commemorative activities. Extending recent work in cultural sociology and history, Lyn Spillman compares centennial and bicentennial celebrations in the United States and Australia to show how national identities can emerge from processes of 'cultural production'. She systematically analyses the symbols and meanings of national identity in these two 'new nations', identifying changes and continuities, similarities and differences in how visions of history, place in the world, politics, land, and diversity have been used to express nationhood. The result is a deeper understanding, not only of American and Australian national identities, but also of the global process of nation-formation.

Transforming History examines the profound transformation of historical thought and practice of writing history from the late Qing through the midtwentieth century. The authors devote extensive analysis to the common set of intellectual and political forces that shaped the study of history, from the ideas of evolution, positivism, nationalism, historicism, and Marxism, to political processes such as revolution, imperialism, and modernization. Also discussed are the impact and problems associated with the nationstate as the subject of history, the linear model of historical time, and the spatial system of nationstates. The result is a convincing study that illustrates how history has transformed into a modern academic discipline in China.

'White sets himself a most ambitious task, and he goes remarkably far to achieving his goals. Very few books tell so much about Australia, with elegance and concision, as does his' - Professor Michael Roe 'Stimulating and informative. an antidote to the cultural cringe' - Canberra Times 'To be Australian': what can that mean? Inventing Australia sets out to find the answers by tracing the images we have used to describe our land and our people - the convict hell, the workingman's paradise, the Bush legend, the 'typical' Australian from the shearer to the Bondi lifesaver, the land of opportunity, the small rich industrial country, the multicultural society. The book argues that these images, rather than describing an especially Australian reality, grow out of assumptions about nature, race, class, democracy, sex and empire, and are 'invented' to serve the interests of particular groups. There have been many books about Australia's national identity; this is the first to place the discussion within an historical context to explain how Australians' views of themselves change and why these views change in the way they do.