A History of Queensland is a well written, broad take on the history of the Australian State of Queensland from pre-historic to 2005 written by Queensland academic Raymond Evans. It is aimed squarely at general readers and eschews academic overtones (like footnotes, or academic terminology), although it does include an extensive bibliography for further reading.

The book divides Queensland's history between nine chapters devoted to pre-British settlement, the initial convict settlements (1820 - 1840), the first free settlers as part of New South Wales (1841 - 1859), development as an independent colony (1860 - 1879) and later state (1880 - 1905), the tumultuous period of WWI and the Great Depression (1906 - 1939), WWII and the sixties (1940 - 1967), the era of Bjelke-Petersen (a notorious Premier of Queensland; 1968 - 1989), and the years following to 2005. Across these chapters several themes are discernible: the dispossession of the Aboriginal inhabits of Queensland, the race relations in general in Queensland, the tense relationship to richer more industrialised "South", the history of heavy-handed authoritarian tactics by Queensland governments since colonial times, and the effect of climate and geography on the character of non-Aboriginal Queensland. Also apparent is how far back many "contemporary" political divides go.

Your reviewer, "born and bred" in Queensland, found the coverage from free settler to World War II particularly interesting. My memory is that "social studies" (history) at primary school in the 1980s jumped fairly quickly from convicts to modern day sucesses of the Bjelke-Petersen, with some lashings of explorers and sheep breaders in between. Outside school, parents and grandparents handed down some knowledge of the labour movement and past politicians but that was about it.

In particular there was no discussion in school of what happened to the Aboriginal peoples as "the settlers" pushed out across the land. It was as if after early encounters they had conveniently "disappeared". In Evans' history we see how there was an almost continual process of fighting between Aboriginals and settlers from the very beginning, only occasionally resisted by humanitarian elements in Queensland and the Colonial Office, and culminating in removal and concentration in various reserves around the state.

It would be easy to think that this happened "in the shadows" but quotes show that contemporaries were quite open in their opinion that Aboriginals were undesirable and doomed. This in turn seems to have come from a general belief in the supremacy of "the British race" above not just Aboriginals but other white European peoples. In a post Nazi world it is disturbing to read very similar eugenicist views among the founders of your state and country. Another related fact, which quite surprised me, was how ethnically diverse early Queensland was compared to other parts of Australia. I had always been under the impression that Queensland was and always had been the least multicultural of Australia's states. In fact in our early history there were large numbers of European, Japanese, Chinese, and Islanders. All of these groups seem to have suffered some discrimination which only got worse after Federation and the establishment of the White Australia policy. Ironically, post World War II,
Queensland did not receive the same surge of immigration as other states.

I found Evans did a good job of handling close-to-current events, and his final chapters are quite even handed. The only time I felt there was bias was in his dismissal of the Bjelke-Petersen era as being "entirely illusory": suggesting on the one hand that the gerrymander meant his government never enjoyed "majority support", and on the other that all of his supports were living in some sort of "dream state". I think this misses the point that it is "the economy stupid" -- many Australian governments of all stripes have done been rewarded when the economy has been going "well". To explain this away as "delusion" is too easy and ignores the fact that people like their "bread and circuses".

There is a lot more to this short book: how American GIs affected life in Brisbane and beyond, the travails of the labour movement; the many "versus" relations between city and country, town and gown, Catholic and Protestant, etc; and women. Evans writes even handedly, but clearly has affection for his State and succeeds in describing the good and the bad without "putting Queensland down" as many "Southern" writers from the Sydney or Melbourne are wont to do. A good read. ( )