Manning Clark (1915–1991)
Autore di A Short History of Australia
Sull'Autore
Fonte dell'immagine: manningclark.org.au
Serie
Opere di Manning Clark
A History of Australia, Vol. 3: The Beginning of an Australian Civilization 1824-1851 (1973) 55 copie
A History of Australia, Vol. 6: The Old Dead Tree and the Young Tree Green, 1916-1935 with an Epilogue (1987) 53 copie
Dear Kathleen, dear Manning : the correspondence of Manning Clark and Kathleen Fitzpatrick 1949-1990 (1996) 8 copie
Manning Clark on Gallipoli (Melbourne University Press Masterworks) (Melbourne University Press Masterworks) (2005) 6 copie
Essays on his Place in History 1 copia
Meeting Soviet man 1 copia
Opere correlate
Etichette
Informazioni generali
- Nome legale
- Clark, Charles Manning Hope
- Altri nomi
- Clark, C. M. H.
- Data di nascita
- 1915-03-03
- Data di morte
- 1991-05-23
- Sesso
- male
- Nazionalità
- Australia (birth)
- Luogo di nascita
- Sydney, New South Wales, Australia
- Luogo di morte
- Canberra, Australian Capital Territory, Australia
- Luogo di residenza
- Melbourne, Victoria, Australia
Oxford, Oxfordshire, England, UK - Istruzione
- University of Melbourne
University of Oxford (Balliol College) - Attività lavorative
- historian
academic - Organizzazioni
- Australian National University
- Premi e riconoscimenti
- ALS Gold Medal (1970)
Order of Australia (Companion, 1975)
Australian of the Year (1980)
Utenti
Recensioni
Liste
Premi e riconoscimenti
Potrebbero anche piacerti
Autori correlati
Statistiche
- Opere
- 38
- Opere correlate
- 3
- Utenti
- 1,405
- Popolarità
- #18,285
- Voto
- 3.8
- Recensioni
- 16
- ISBN
- 92
- Lingue
- 3
- Preferito da
- 1
Here, Clark explores the first fifty years after Captain Cook stumbled across Australia, with a worthy prologue examining other passing exchanges between Europeans and the Great Southern Continent, and thoughts on why the landmass had not previously been conquered by the warring Asian and Muslim nations and groups who had fought on the other side of the Torres Strait.
Clark's history is often angry, astounded even by the utterly cruel treatment of convicts, the Indigenous, and those who dared to be different or to advocate for equality rather than aristocracy. (Within mere years of Europeans colonising a small part of Australia, there is a growing self-declared nobility who want to make sure few others have access to what they have.) Conservatives live to point out areas where Clark becomes more of a novelist than an historian, or where he lets his own bugbears get the better of him. But that is part of why I enjoy Clark. He is pinning history to a narrative to create an understanding of how we got to where we were in 1788, and from there to the present day. Clark's history should by no means be taken as the definitive source text on Australia, but then neither should Geoffrey Blainey's admired History which - for all its merits - seeks to excuse earlier behaviour on the grounds that "people back then thought a certain way", while Clark seeks to explain it... and also perhaps ask the thornier question: if there were people (including women and Indigenous Australians) who thought a different way, can we fully excuse those who didn't listen? (The same question touches us when we talk about the early Anglo-Americans and their slave ownership, or for that matter modern Australians who argue harsh penalties for refugees fleeing war and terror. If others are making vocal cases in support of these dispossessed groups, how much can we excuse the ignorance of those who make the opposite case? How will history judge them?)
Clark has three great strengths. First, his extensive research. The historian was known for his in-depth analysis of source texts of Australia's first century under European rule, and here he has immaculately combed the archives to present a more well-rounded picture of the early Australia than most novelists or pop historians can hope to offer. Second, his sharp, bitter irony. Clark prefers not to use quotation marks, instead to immerse us in the ways of thinking of his protagonists. This can occasionally be confronting to the casual reader I'm sure (to hear descriptions of "savages" and the like, not to mention those dastardly Catholics!) but creates a world in which, as we come to understand why early settlers - especially white Protestant men - acted the way they did, we also grasp how their world, like any world, was a mostly closed system of thought, indoctrinating a way of thinking that most could not escape from no matter what evidence was presented. (We are all like that, whether redneck or hipster, and let's not forget it.) Clark's conservative enemies like to seize upon this irony as bias, but it should be noted that the historian treats everyone with the same barbed brush. No-one escapes his ravenlike abilities of observation and dissection.
And, thirdly, Manning Clark's strength is in his description. This book, with its appendices of populations and landholders, positively reeks of late 18th century Australia. One comes away with a deep appreciation of what life was like in the Colony of New South Wales between 1788 and 1830, the people, the determination, the bustle, the smell, the fervour, the plotting, and the uncertainties, cultural and otherwise.
A vital history of a young country that is still discovering what our future is supposed to be, and how we can reckon with a past that threatens to overwhelm our present.… (altro)