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).     

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.     

Municipalisation in Australia: The Case of Launceston 1880–1914

This article expands upon the crucial role of the state in the provision of infrastructure in late‐nineteenth century Australia by examining the hitherto overlooked role of local government, and in particular, the provision of municipal services in Launceston, Tasmania's second largest city. From the 1890s, socialist groups across Europe actively sought to control councils, believing “good” local government the key to social reform. Municipalisation in Tasmania had more pragmatic origins. Colonial governments encouraged local‐level service provision to prevent the draining of their own finances. In Launceston an ideological element occasionally surfaced. But municipalisation was driven by resentment of a neglectful Tasmanian government, by the desire to modernise the town, by intent to secure new sources of revenue, and by the strong civic pride of businessmen.     

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.     

The Age of Catastrophe: A History of the West, 1914–1945

The Age of Catastrophe: A History of the West, 1914–1945. By Heinrich August Winkler, translated by Stewart Spencer (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2015), originally Geschichte des Westens: Die Zeit der Weltkriege (Munich: Beck Verlag, 2011), pp. xiii + 998. AU$114.00 (cloth), available in Australia through Footprint Books.     

Inflation and the Making of Australian Macroeconomic Policy, 1945–85

Inflation and the Making of Australian Macroeconomic Policy, 1945–85. By Michael Beggs (Basingstoke: Macmillan Palgrave, 2015), pp.xii + 325, £75.00 (hb).     

Parliamentary Experience in Australian Ministerial Careers 1996–2007

The study contributes the first detailed exploration of parliamentary experience in Australian ministerial careers. It examines how a dimension of parliamentary experience — holding the office of parliamentary committee chair — features in the careers of a single cohort of ministers and parliamentary secretaries appointed during the Coalition government 1996–2007. The study maps parliamentary experience on two dimensions and finds a typology of five different career paths, depending on positions held and the speed of movement between positions. Taking the analysis further, the second part of the study tracks the appointment of the five subgroups of ministers over time. This reveals patterns in the Prime Minister's ministry‐making over the life of the government. At different times particular types of ministers were selected, in response to varying political needs and the demands of career management that John Howard faced over the government's lifecycle. The study considers the argument that elite grooming processes, where aspiring leaders are tested and trained, are weakening in Australia. It does not find evidence for this proposition based on the patterns of parliamentary experience of ministers at this time.     

Protestantism and Social Liberalism in Imperial Germany: Gustav Adolf Deissmann (1866–1937) and Friedrich Naumann (1860–1919)*

Adolf Deissmann was an internationally prominent German theologian, celebrated primarily for his groundbreaking contributions in the widely divergent fields of post‐classical Greek philology, lexicography, the archaeological excavations of Ephesus, international conciliation and leading role in the nascent ecumenical movement. Less known — yet of considerable consequence — is his involvement with social liberal politics, especially his friendship with, and staunch backing of, Friedrich Naumann, a onetime Protestant pastor turned liberal career politician, pioneer of European integration and, ultimately, the first president of the German Democratic Party. This paper investigates to what degree these two men were intellectually indebted to each other in their mutual search to find a way forward to reconcile Germany's sharply divided class‐society through Protestant‐based social politics — and that in an era deeply troubled with seemingly insoluble conflicts over the form of the future German Reich.