The Oxford history of Australia set, Volumes 3 – 5 (Second hand)

Second Hand bookset

Volume 3 by Beverley Kingston focuses on late nineteenth-century Australia which claimed one of the world’s highest standards of living and was seen as one of the most successful examples of the transplantation of British culture. Yet beneath the surface prosperity, there lay a great deal of uncertainty and conflict, including clashes among churches, the crash of the 1890s, pressure for federation, and the challenging of traditional views of education, women’s roles, and the family. This volume takes a sceptical look at many of the common perceptions of Australia in the Victorian era, concentrating on human values rather than on the rhetoric of national achievement.

Hardcover, 368p.p., 1988

Volume 4 by Stuart Macintyre surveys the forty years following the establishment of the Commonwealth in 1901. It was a time of great change on the continent: institutions were fashioned to meet the needs of a nation; markets were extended; industries were enlarged; and Australians pursued plans for material and social progress through war and economic crisis. Yet as Australia yearned for autonomous nationhood and industrial self-sufficiency, it remained bound to Britain by ties of trade, culture, and sentiment. This narrative history explores the shifting patterns of class conflict and compromise that shaped the course of events and traces the links between the social, economic, and political processes of a nation in transition.

Hardcover, 399p.p.,1986

Volume 5 by Geoffrey Bolton,  ‘The Middle Way’ covers the sweep of Australian history from the Fall of Singapore in 1942 to the Bicentennial celebrations of 1988. It tells the story of a middle-sized nation poised in the Southwest Pacific where the ambitions of three superpowers met: those of Britain, Japan and the United States. When kind of national identity developed under those pressures? During those years Anglo-Celtic dominance gave way to a mixed community of European and Asian Migrants in pursuit of the migrant dream of modest prosperity and fair opportunities. Governments seeking to satisfy these aims grappled with a changing world economy.

Hard cover, 334p.p.1990

$45.00

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