First published in 1976, The Search for Security in the Pacific 1901-1914 is the first volume in a pioneering two-volume history of Australia's relations with the world, from the founding of the Commonwealth to the Great War and its immediate aftermath. This book is based on wide-ranging research in collections of personal and official papers in Australia, Britain, the United States and Canada and offers original insights into Australia's political culture. In taking the story up to the outbreak of the European conflict it shows the great impact that the looming presence of East Asia had on Australia's perception of the world and on the evolution of a distinctive defence and foreign policy. It tells the story of how in an age of race nationalism the fear of Asia led first to the making of the Commonwealth and the White Australia policy and then after Japan's defeat of Russia in 1905 to the potential prospect of a military invasion from the north. This sense of an 'Australian Crisis' pervaded the whole society and found expression in poetry, plays, novels, cartoons, at least one film, newspaper editorials as well as political speeches. To meet this threat Australian leaders, against all the advice from the British authorities, introduced compulsory military training and established a navy and a fledgling air force. The outbreak of the European war found the Australians resentful about the British betrayal and anxious to know what the Empire's involvement in that conflict might mean for the Pacific. This divergence of security concerns created tension between Australia's community of culture and its community of interest, between its British identity and its geopolitical circumstances.

Australia and the World celebrates the pioneering role of Neville Meaney in the formation and development of foreign relations history in Australia and his profound influence on its study, teaching and application. The contributors to the volume, historians, practitioners of foreign relations and political commentators, many of whom were taught by Meaney at the University of Sydney over the years, focus especially on the interaction between geopolitics, culture and ideology in shaping Australian and American approaches to the world. Individual chapters examine a number of major themes informing Neville Meaney's work, including the sources and nature of Australia's British identity; the hapless, if dedicated, efforts of Australian politicians, public servants and intellectuals to reconcile this intense cultural identity with Australia's strategic anxieties in the Asia-Pacific region; and the sense of trauma created when the myth of 'Britishness' collapsed under the weight of new historical circumstances in the 1960s. They survey relations between Australia and the United States in the years after World War Two. Finally, they assess the US perceptions of itself as an 'exceptional' nation with a mission to spread democracy and liberty to the wider world and the way in which this self-perception has influenced its behaviour in international affairs.

Since the 1960s Neville Meaney has been asking probing questions about social change and the rise of nationalism, especially as found in the making of Australia's self-image and its engagement with the world. His efforts to unravel what he once called 'the riddle of Australian nationalism' have raised important, and often unsettling, challenges for Australians. Bringing together the cultural, intellectual, political and diplomatic dimensions of the national experience, Meaney's work has been dominated by two overarching and interconnected questions: how Australians should resolve the tension between the 'community of culture' and the 'community of interest' and how they should reconcile their British heritage with their Asian moorings?

Current preoccupations with the 'rise of Asia' attest to the nascent contestation of the very idea of what the pattern of international politics should look like and how it should be practiced. In this respect, the growing reference to a 'shift to the East' in global politics has become a popular shorthand for the nascent 'power transition' in world affairs. This volume offers a detailed conceptual and empirical investigation of the dynamics of power transition in Asia and details the accommodation strategies and coping mechanisms of different small and middle powers in Asia and, importantly, China's responses to these approaches.

The preparation for a coming war and ultimately the commitment to that war was driven by White Australia's sense of vulnerability in the Pacific, by various nightmare scenarios in which Australia could be left to fend for itself, unaided by Britain, and by the determination to have racial purity at almost any cost. When the war came, finally, the strategy was simple enough: by promising total support the Australians hoped to secure Britain's unequivocal support in return, for a White Australia. They hoped they would not be forsaken. Dr. Peter Cochrane is a writer of non-fiction, fiction, opinion and travel. His works have won many awards including the Fellowship of Australian Writers' Award for Non-Fiction (1993) for Simpson and the Donkey. He also won the Age Book of the Year and the Prime Minister's Prize for Australian History in 2007 for Colonial Ambition. He lives in Sydney. ‘This careful, detailed account...establishes that an important motive for our participation [in World War I] was the preservation of white Australia from Asian contamination.’ Age ‘A great read, and an important contribution to making forgotten history more accessible—the kind of book that will seep into the national consciousness over time.’ Tim Watts, federal MP and co-author of Two Futures ‘The words “White Australia” and “Anzac" rarely keep company. In this brilliant and provocative reassessment, Peter Cochrane strips away the layers of myth to show that for Australian leaders World War I was a white racial struggle, with fear of Japan and distrust of Britain, as much as loathing of Germany, at its heart. After Best We Forget, Australia’s war should never look quite the same again.’ Frank Bongiorno, professor of history at the ANU and author of The Eighties ‘Revelatory history at its best. Every Australian politician, journalist and high-school student should read this fluent and compelling story that exhumes an unpalatable truth about our motives for going to war in 1914, and reflect on what it tells us about race fear and the value of history.’ Stephen FitzGerald, chairman of China Matters, former diplomat and author of Comrade Ambassador ‘Cochrane sweeps away the myth to expose the uncomfortable racial truth at the heart of Anzac.’ Paul Daley, award-winning journalist and author of Beersheba ‘Unsettling and revelatory...The primary purpose of Cochrane’s fascinating book is to alert readers to the racial dimension of Australia’s participation in World War I. It also addresses the key historiographical question of what is remembered and what is forgotten, and why...He has succeeded admirably in this illuminating book...Illuminating.’ Australian ‘Best We Forget is, quite simply, the most important book on Australia and the Great War to appear in the course of the war’s centenary...Cochrane has made the original and profound connection between Australian racial fears and its participation in the Great War. This is something that—amazingly—no one else has done...Cochrane’s is a most original and illuminating argument.’ Peter Stanley, Honest History

The prime ministership is indisputably the most closely observed and keenly contested office in Australia. How did it grow to become the pivot of national political power? Settling the Office chronicles the development of the prime ministership from its rudimentary early days following Federation through to the powerful, institutionalised prime-ministerial leadership of the postwar era.