The Pursuit of Power. Europe 1815–1914: To Hell and Back. Europe 1914–1949

The Pursuit of Power. Europe 1815–1914 . By Richard J. Evans (London: Allen Lane, 2016), pp.xxiv + 819, maps and colour plates, £25.00 (hb). To Hell and Back. Europe 1914–1949 . By Ian Kershaw (London: Allen Lane, 2015), pp.xx + 593, maps and colour and b/w plates. £30.00 (hb).     

J.B. Chifley and the Indonesian Revolution, 1945–1949

This article traces the role of the Prime Minister, Joseph Benedict Chifley, in Australia's response to the Dutch‐Indonesian colonial conflict. It argues for Chifley's centrality to the formation of Australia's eventual policy to support Indonesian nationalist aspirations, a policy often in antithesis to the views of H.V. Evatt. This is significant because a focus on Evatt has distracted historians from ascertaining the causes of Australia's policy. Examining Chifley's attitude and role reveals that Australia's response to revolutionary Indonesia stemmed from an application to the Southeast Asian colonial question of a labourist and post‐war reconstructionist ethos, an idea of sweeping reform to rectify deep economic and social grievances.     

Difficult Partners: Indo‐Australian Relations at the Height of the Cold War, 1949–1964

This article aims to make a long overdue re‐examination of Indo‐Australian relations in the early Cold War years. By drawing on available secondary sources, it reassesses the existing literature on Australian engagement with Asia. In so doing, it seeks to understand the reasons why the Menzies government found it so difficult to forge a close partnership with India. Canberra's rather frosty relations with New Delhi during the Menzies‐Nehru years had little to do with Menzies' alleged condescension towards the Asians or his personal antipathy towards Nehru. Rather, it had to do with the two leaders' different readings of Cold War politics as well as their responses to the structural changes taking place at the international level following the end of the Second World War.     

Renationalization in Argentina, 2005–2013

Since 2002, government nationalizations and contractual breaches in general around the world have surged. South America has witnessed a wave of nationalizations of private enterprises, mostly foreign. Some analysts contend that this trend is shaped by the left‐wing ideological orientation of the governments, whereas others argue that a more robust explanation is the combination of economic pressure and constraint factors. This article contributes to the debate by using a nuanced institutional analytical framework based on the concept of company versus government opportunism, applied to the recent nationalization of previously privatized companies. It examines Argentina, a country that in the last two decades has seen radical policy reversals, from sweeping privatization of state‐owned enterprises in the 1990s to a renationalization effort with some of the same companies in the early 2000s.     

The “Morpeth Mind” and Australian Politics 1927–1934

The publication of the Morpeth Review between 1927 and 1934 was a milestone in the evolution of an authentic public sphere for Australian political intellectuals. The Review covered several areas of political and philosophical concern, ranging ideologically from Christian socialism and idealist liberalism, through market economics, to reactionary anti‐Bolshevism, within the editorial context of a strongly idealist liberalism inspired by the Oxford liberals of the early twentieth century, and both evangelical and sacramentalist Anglican Protestantism. Ernest H. Burgmann and Roy Lee used the magazine to develop a unique form of Anglican social and political activism and other members of an identifiable group of radical clergy also contributed. A.p. Elkin's writings on Indigenous politics are of particular interest as they can be viewed simultaneously as a turning toward the novel idea of Aboriginal citizenship, and at the same time as a restatement of Darwinist biological determinism and racialism, both lit by genuine compassion and affection for Aboriginal Australians.     

Saving Private Hegel — Australian Liberalism and the 1914–1918 War

In this essay I explore the pamphlet literature and related sources, in order to assess the effects of the 1914–1918 War on liberal political ideas in Australia. The main focus of the study is the WEA intellectuals in Sydney and Brisbane, and the core group of Deakinite liberals in Melbourne as represented by the overlapping membership of the Boobooks Club and the Round Table. Themes of compulsion, Progressivism, industrial relations, citizenship, and internationalism are examined. In particular the tension which wartime experiences produced within the high idealism of Kantian and Hegelian new liberal political philosophy is investigated. The bitterness caused by the war and the doubts raised about German philosophy help us to understand the decline of statist and idealist elements within liberal thought in Australia. It seems impossible, during the present war, to write any book or to deliver a sermon or an address which does not in some way refer to the war. H.B. Higgins, Socrates, the State and War, p.7