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A History of Australia #1
A History of Australia: Volume I: From the Earliest Times to the Age of Macquarie
The late Manning Clark aims to bring to attention the foibles and strengths in every person, traits forced to the fore in the hardship and trauma that occured during the establishment and development of white settlement in Australia. Clark uses the tragedies and successes of national heroes such as explorers and generals, and those of the average person such as soldiers at Gallipoli and farmers' wives, to create a memorable tableau.
422 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1962
About the author
Manning Clark
73 books13 followersBorn to a working-class Anglican priest and a mother from a well-off background, Charles Manning Hope Clark was a quiet, academically minded child who went to school in Melbourne, and excelled at literature, Greek, and Latin (as well as exhibiting a great love of cricket). Clark earned a scholarship to Oxford, where he studied from 1938, but returned to Australia in 1940 (he was exempt from serving in WWII due to mild epilepsy) and took up life as a highschool history teacher.
Growing up in a time of war, Clark flirted with a variety of political views, ultimately settling into moderate socialism - although always with a healthy separation from anything serious (he was seen by some as conservative, but tended to have more ties to left-wing historians and thinkers). During his middle years, Clark would be a subject of surveillance from Australia's intelligence forces, like many other intellectuals, for his perceived destabilising thoughts and writings. After the war, Clark - now married to the historian Dymphna Clark and gradually fathering six children - established himself as a lecturer in history at Melbourne University, moving to their Canberra branch which gradually became the separate Australian National University, where he would live most of his professional life.
Clark's first significant publication was "Select Documents in Australian History" (2 volumes, 1950-55) which provided a significant examination of primary sources of the birth and development of modern Australia. In 1956, he began serious research on a lengthy History of Australia, which rapidly expanded from his concept of a two-volume work to a series of six. Published between 1962 and 1987, the History is his major work, spanning Australia's early history through to its colonisation by the British in 1788, to the 1930s, where his story comes to an end. Throughout, Clark explores the relationships of Catholics, Protestants, and Enlightenment thinkers, the delicate balance of European values and the world of the Australian continent, and the tragedy of Australia's Indigenous population. The earned its acolytes and its detractors, for reasons both political and literary, and remains controversial in the 21st century.
In 1974, Clark formally retired from lecturing at the ANU, and retained the title of Emeritus Professor until his death. In his later years, Clark's disdain for the upper and upper middle classes of Anglo-Australia (which had caused a fractious relationship with his mother all his life) became more evident, particularly in his campaigning for Prime Minister Gough Whitlam, and his outrage when Whitlam was dismissed by the Queen's representative, the Governor-General of Australia, in 1975.
Manning Clark was awarded the Australian Literature Society Gold Medal in 1970, and was appointed a Companion of the Order of Australia in 1975. He was named Australian of the Year in 1980 and, in Australia's bicentenary year of 1988, his History of Australia was adapted by others (including Prime Minister Paul Keating's future speechwriter Don Watson) as a musical, which ran for a short period in Melbourne.
In his last years, Clark was seen as something of an Australian icon, with a recognisable image (a classic Aussie bush hat, a goatee, and a walking stick), and was routinely published in journals and newspapers around the country. His last volumes were not highly regarded by contemporary historians, especially in the patriotic years of the 1980s, both because he was seen as left-wing and because he was seen as an old man whose pessimism and repetition had overwhelmed his natural gifts. Others regarded Clark as an iconic figure who urged Australians to question and reconsider some of the longstanding myths of Anglo-Australian culture, a debate which would escalate rapidly in the decades after the Australian bicentenary and the author's death. In 1989 and 1990, Clark published two volumes of autobiography. H
Growing up in a time of war, Clark flirted with a variety of political views, ultimately settling into moderate socialism - although always with a healthy separation from anything serious (he was seen by some as conservative, but tended to have more ties to left-wing historians and thinkers). During his middle years, Clark would be a subject of surveillance from Australia's intelligence forces, like many other intellectuals, for his perceived destabilising thoughts and writings. After the war, Clark - now married to the historian Dymphna Clark and gradually fathering six children - established himself as a lecturer in history at Melbourne University, moving to their Canberra branch which gradually became the separate Australian National University, where he would live most of his professional life.
Clark's first significant publication was "Select Documents in Australian History" (2 volumes, 1950-55) which provided a significant examination of primary sources of the birth and development of modern Australia. In 1956, he began serious research on a lengthy History of Australia, which rapidly expanded from his concept of a two-volume work to a series of six. Published between 1962 and 1987, the History is his major work, spanning Australia's early history through to its colonisation by the British in 1788, to the 1930s, where his story comes to an end. Throughout, Clark explores the relationships of Catholics, Protestants, and Enlightenment thinkers, the delicate balance of European values and the world of the Australian continent, and the tragedy of Australia's Indigenous population. The earned its acolytes and its detractors, for reasons both political and literary, and remains controversial in the 21st century.
In 1974, Clark formally retired from lecturing at the ANU, and retained the title of Emeritus Professor until his death. In his later years, Clark's disdain for the upper and upper middle classes of Anglo-Australia (which had caused a fractious relationship with his mother all his life) became more evident, particularly in his campaigning for Prime Minister Gough Whitlam, and his outrage when Whitlam was dismissed by the Queen's representative, the Governor-General of Australia, in 1975.
Manning Clark was awarded the Australian Literature Society Gold Medal in 1970, and was appointed a Companion of the Order of Australia in 1975. He was named Australian of the Year in 1980 and, in Australia's bicentenary year of 1988, his History of Australia was adapted by others (including Prime Minister Paul Keating's future speechwriter Don Watson) as a musical, which ran for a short period in Melbourne.
In his last years, Clark was seen as something of an Australian icon, with a recognisable image (a classic Aussie bush hat, a goatee, and a walking stick), and was routinely published in journals and newspapers around the country. His last volumes were not highly regarded by contemporary historians, especially in the patriotic years of the 1980s, both because he was seen as left-wing and because he was seen as an old man whose pessimism and repetition had overwhelmed his natural gifts. Others regarded Clark as an iconic figure who urged Australians to question and reconsider some of the longstanding myths of Anglo-Australian culture, a debate which would escalate rapidly in the decades after the Australian bicentenary and the author's death. In 1989 and 1990, Clark published two volumes of autobiography. H
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Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews
October 15, 2018
I care a lot for Clark's six-volume History, which I'm reading seriously and completely for the first time since I was young. Clark is the original wordy, mothball-smelling professor, with so much knowledge and so many thoughts bursting out that he is not afraid of any tangent, or of potentially boring the passer-by. His style is distinctive, and not for everyone, and even then he's not especially interested in worrying about the reader wants so much as in what he thinks they need. And I love him for it.
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.
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.
July 11, 2021
An equally compelling and infuriating history. One that serves as a landmark of its time, but today also looks and feels somewhat like a relic.
The biggest problem with the first volume is the absence of serious discussion of Australia's First Nation's people. The Dutch and Chinese traders who bumped into Australian shores get more sustained attention than those who actually lived upon this continent for 60'000 years. And when they do pop up as bit players in the White Man's story (Clark at least does call it an invasion), it's in often unkind or dismissive ways. This not only misses one core of Australia's story, but also confuses and gets wrong the invaders history as well. Their sense of fear, the reason the military played such a large role in early Sydney town, the frontier wars and the Black War in Tasmania, all are largely ignored.
In McKenna's outstanding biography of Manning there is an acknowledgement by Clark from late in his life that he wished he had said more about Australia's indigenous people, but I was struck how stark the yawning absence of First Nation experience and contribution is in the book. I don't have a problem with historians saying they want to just focus on part of the story of Australia, but Clark wanted to tell the whole story and yet did not seriously attempt a central part.
On the positive side, there are some great insights into many of the settlers. Clark concentrates on the Governors (structuring most chapters around them) and gives a flavour of how each sought to build Sydney. Or perhaps Administer is a better term. It's remarkable how none of Australia's 'founding' leaders save perhaps Lachlan Macquarie have any dreams or ambitions for this new country. This downside is this intense focus on a small group of elites means the book can also drag. Clark is fond of the low politics of high people. Much of the Volume is about the gossip and factionalism of early Sydney town. Enjoyable, to an extent. But it was hard to get a sense of the town and society expanding around them beyond regular notes that Macquarie felt he did not get appropriate credit for the large building work.
I'm reading 'A History of Australia' not so much to learn about the history, but rather to get a sense of Manning Clark's big thematic story of Australia. There's traces of it here, but I want to reserve judgement until I get towards the end. So this can only be a partial review. It's volume 1 after all. And I reserve the right to change my current review (3/5 stars) once the whole 6 volumes are complete. I am however glad I read this one, and will dive into the next one shortly.
The biggest problem with the first volume is the absence of serious discussion of Australia's First Nation's people. The Dutch and Chinese traders who bumped into Australian shores get more sustained attention than those who actually lived upon this continent for 60'000 years. And when they do pop up as bit players in the White Man's story (Clark at least does call it an invasion), it's in often unkind or dismissive ways. This not only misses one core of Australia's story, but also confuses and gets wrong the invaders history as well. Their sense of fear, the reason the military played such a large role in early Sydney town, the frontier wars and the Black War in Tasmania, all are largely ignored.
In McKenna's outstanding biography of Manning there is an acknowledgement by Clark from late in his life that he wished he had said more about Australia's indigenous people, but I was struck how stark the yawning absence of First Nation experience and contribution is in the book. I don't have a problem with historians saying they want to just focus on part of the story of Australia, but Clark wanted to tell the whole story and yet did not seriously attempt a central part.
On the positive side, there are some great insights into many of the settlers. Clark concentrates on the Governors (structuring most chapters around them) and gives a flavour of how each sought to build Sydney. Or perhaps Administer is a better term. It's remarkable how none of Australia's 'founding' leaders save perhaps Lachlan Macquarie have any dreams or ambitions for this new country. This downside is this intense focus on a small group of elites means the book can also drag. Clark is fond of the low politics of high people. Much of the Volume is about the gossip and factionalism of early Sydney town. Enjoyable, to an extent. But it was hard to get a sense of the town and society expanding around them beyond regular notes that Macquarie felt he did not get appropriate credit for the large building work.
I'm reading 'A History of Australia' not so much to learn about the history, but rather to get a sense of Manning Clark's big thematic story of Australia. There's traces of it here, but I want to reserve judgement until I get towards the end. So this can only be a partial review. It's volume 1 after all. And I reserve the right to change my current review (3/5 stars) once the whole 6 volumes are complete. I am however glad I read this one, and will dive into the next one shortly.
May 15, 2025
Considered to be a most authoritative reference about the history of Australia it did not disappoint with its range of details about events and people who drove or had been affected by them in the early days of its history. Its style reminded me of the other history writing giants, like Edward Gibbon, Thomas Carlyle and Tony Judt. Wide vistas, detailed discussion of events and their implications combine to make it a very interesting reading.
Among many interesting issues I learnt about in this volume I need to highlight some of the most stimulating. One of them is a discussion of an absence of any attempts to colonise Australia between the end of the ace age and the coming of the Europeans in the last quarter of the eighteen century. The author mentions that two Malay migrations into the area, the first approximately 3000 B.C. and the second beginning in around 200 B.C. stopped at Timor. The Hindu-Buddhists, partly from population pressure, partly to obtain spices and gold began colonise Sumatra and other islands of the archipelago in the first century B.C., but again did not proceed past Timor. The same happened to Chinese and Muslim migrations. Clark contributes improvements in ship-building, aids in navigation and map making made possible for European reach past the known worlds.
Between 1717 and 1776 approximately thirty thousand convicts from England and Scotland and ten thousand from Ireland were transported to the colonies in America. This stopped with the American Revolution. When the British government started looking for alternative destinations, Joseph Banks told the committee that the place which appeared best adapted for such a purpose was Botany Bay on the coast of New Holland.
Another interesting issue was about conflicting views on a purpose of the colony. At the time when Lachlan Macquarie led the government in the colony two conflicting ideas were put forward. Governor Macquarie believed that New South Wales was a colony founded for the punishement and reformation of convicts. He supported a view to restore a man to the rank in society, which he forfeited. He promoted some ex-convicts to work within the legal fremwork, encouraged local manufacturing and provided land grants to develop selfsufficiency of the colony.
His opponents pushed for radical changes in the methods used in the panishment and reformation of the convicts. They recommended to maintain the degree of severity to ensure that transportation might be made a subject of dread for even the worst offenders. They discouraged local manufacturing as all those goods could be exported from the mother country. They believed that the future of New South Wales was highly favourable to the production of delicate breeds of wool, and in such work the convicts would be removed from the evil example of the towns.
The English government sent a commissioner Bigge to investigate the issue. He toured the country and listened to some leading free settlers and military officers to formulate his view. He clashed with Macquarie and an increasing animosity and opposition from the military and free settlers led to Macquarie resignation and return to England to defend his view on the colony. Following the release of the Bigge's report, the government withdrew his support to Macquarie, and he died soon after. Fortunately, with time a more balanced view prevailed and the emancipated convicts increasingly became engaged in the colony's economy.
Among many interesting issues I learnt about in this volume I need to highlight some of the most stimulating. One of them is a discussion of an absence of any attempts to colonise Australia between the end of the ace age and the coming of the Europeans in the last quarter of the eighteen century. The author mentions that two Malay migrations into the area, the first approximately 3000 B.C. and the second beginning in around 200 B.C. stopped at Timor. The Hindu-Buddhists, partly from population pressure, partly to obtain spices and gold began colonise Sumatra and other islands of the archipelago in the first century B.C., but again did not proceed past Timor. The same happened to Chinese and Muslim migrations. Clark contributes improvements in ship-building, aids in navigation and map making made possible for European reach past the known worlds.
Between 1717 and 1776 approximately thirty thousand convicts from England and Scotland and ten thousand from Ireland were transported to the colonies in America. This stopped with the American Revolution. When the British government started looking for alternative destinations, Joseph Banks told the committee that the place which appeared best adapted for such a purpose was Botany Bay on the coast of New Holland.
Another interesting issue was about conflicting views on a purpose of the colony. At the time when Lachlan Macquarie led the government in the colony two conflicting ideas were put forward. Governor Macquarie believed that New South Wales was a colony founded for the punishement and reformation of convicts. He supported a view to restore a man to the rank in society, which he forfeited. He promoted some ex-convicts to work within the legal fremwork, encouraged local manufacturing and provided land grants to develop selfsufficiency of the colony.
His opponents pushed for radical changes in the methods used in the panishment and reformation of the convicts. They recommended to maintain the degree of severity to ensure that transportation might be made a subject of dread for even the worst offenders. They discouraged local manufacturing as all those goods could be exported from the mother country. They believed that the future of New South Wales was highly favourable to the production of delicate breeds of wool, and in such work the convicts would be removed from the evil example of the towns.
The English government sent a commissioner Bigge to investigate the issue. He toured the country and listened to some leading free settlers and military officers to formulate his view. He clashed with Macquarie and an increasing animosity and opposition from the military and free settlers led to Macquarie resignation and return to England to defend his view on the colony. Following the release of the Bigge's report, the government withdrew his support to Macquarie, and he died soon after. Fortunately, with time a more balanced view prevailed and the emancipated convicts increasingly became engaged in the colony's economy.
July 6, 2018
A solid work of history which goes a long way to dispelling some of the memery regarding Australia's supposed lack of history. Important to note that this book has not been written in the style of a text book but more of a narrative and one where the author rather nicely injects the various cultures, biases and personalities of the figures involved. This is done particularly well when it comes to capturing the conflict that existed between Protestants and Catholics or the Free immigrants vs former convicts. Now whilst this makes for a more engaging read if you aren't careful these flourishes could easily be mistaken for the authors own beliefs - which aside from making him seem confused and hypocritical could be off-putting to a sensitive reader.
Giving this a bonus star for bringing excitement and colour to an area that sorely needs it without sacrificng academic quality.
Giving this a bonus star for bringing excitement and colour to an area that sorely needs it without sacrificng academic quality.
June 14, 2023
Riveting. Seriously. Every Australian should read these volumes.
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews