This book provides an arresting interpretation of the history of Australia, New Zealand and the Pacific from the earliest settlements to the present. Usually viewed in isolation, these societies are covered here in a single account, in which the authors show how the peoples of the region constructed their own identities and influenced those of their neighbours. By broadening the focus to the regional level, this volume develops analyses - of economic, social and political history - which transcend national boundaries. The result is a compelling work which both describes the aspirations of European settlers and reveals how the dispossessed and marginalized indigenous peoples negotiated their own lives as best they could. The authors demonstrate that these stories are not separate but rather strands of a single history.

Manning Clark's History of Australia.

A Military History of Australia provides a detailed chronological narrative of Australia's wars across more than two hundred years, set in the contexts of defence and strategic policy, the development of society and the impact of war and military service on Australia and Australians. It discusses the development of the armed forces as institutions and examines the relationship between governments and military policy. This book is a revised and updated edition of one of the most acclaimed overviews of Australian military history available. It is the only comprehensive, single-volume treatment of the role and development of Australia's military and their involvement in war and peace across the span of Australia's modern history. It concludes with consideration of Australian involvement in its region and more widely since the terrorist attacks of September 11 and the waging of the global war on terror.

Australia is the last continent to be settled by Europeans, but it also sustains a people and a culture tens of thousands years old. For much of the past 200 years the newcomers have sought to replace the old with the new. This book tells how they imposed themselves on the land, and brought technology, institutions and ideas to make it their own. It relates the advance from penal colony to a prosperous free nation and illustrates how, as a nation created by waves of newcomers, the search for binding traditions was long frustrated by the feeling of rootlessness, until it came to terms with its origins. The third edition of this acclaimed book recounts the key factors - social, economic and political - that have shaped modern-day Australia. It covers the rise and fall of the Howard government, the 2007 election and the apology to the stolen generation. More than ever before, Australians draw on the past to understand their future.

A History of Australia: From Earliest Times to 1838, deals with the pre-white settlement era and the earliest years of European colonisation through to the establishment of an increasingly settled society and the expeditions of the great inland explorers. This is not a general Australian history—it does not attempt to cover all aspects—and it is not a definitive or quantitative analysis. It is a work of art, a living and breathing account of the remaking of a primitive continent, history come alive.

A Traveller's History of New Zealand and the South Pacific Islands gives the curious tourist not only a modern day portrait of New Zealand and the far flung islands, their political systems and economic diversity, but also looks at the early settling of this massive area which covers about a fifth of the whole surface of the earth. When European navigators first sailed into the region, they were astonished at the exotic shared culture and language of the natives, separated in many cases by terrifying stretches of open ocean. The story of the peopling of the South Pacific Islands and New Zealand is one of the world's great epics. The book also has practical information for visitors, an Historical Gazetteer, and is illustrated with relevant maps plus a Chronology of Events. Special topics covered include Firewalking in Fiji, the Musket Wars, the Haka, Polynesian Tattooing and the Jon Frum Cargo Cult of Vanuatu. Book jacket.