The Neighbour from Hell: Two Centuries of Australian Imperialism

by Tom O'Lincoln

Imperialism has long been the subject of sharp debates. Now Tom O'Lincoln offers an original study of Australia's ruthless participation in the imperialist system. Left analysts have often accused Australia's rulers of being "lapdogs" for the great powers, notably the USA and Britain. O'Lincoln's analysis of Australia's "boutique imperialism" gives us a very different portrayal: of a ruling class out to extract maximum benefits for itself from calculated interventions into the conflicts wracking global capitalism.

This book is another of Tom O'Lincoln's distinctive contributions to Marxist history, following publication in 2011 of the book Australia's Pacific War.

Tom O'Lincoln has been active on the left since 1967, in Germany, the US and Australia. He is the author of Into the Mainstream: The Decline of Australian Communism, Years of Rage: Social Conflicts in the Fraser Era and United We Stand: Class Struggle in Colonial Australia. Tom is a member of the Socialist Alternative.

Genres: Australia, Politics

89 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2014

About the author

Tom O'Lincoln (August 27, 1947 − October 12, 2023) was an American Marxist historian, author and one of the founders of the International Socialist Tendency in Australia.

Reviews

[Tess · Rating 5 out of 5]

It is often assumed that Australia’s armed forces are mainly involved in ‘humanitarian peacekeeping’, and that they only head off for war because they are dragged into it kicking and screaming by the US.

This detailed history of Australia’s armed forces shows that quite the opposite is true. From the very start, Australia has been enthusiastic about invading and colonising neighbouring islands; Australia has begged and pleaded with first Britain and now the US to both allow Australian troops to join in their imperialist adventures, and to start wars on our behalf—Vietnam was mainly Australia’s idea in the first place that the US was reluctant to get involved with; and far from being motivated by humanitarianism, Australia’s ‘peacekeeping’ has been to ensure stability for Australian imperialism and profit-making at the expense of the local populations , and has usually activated situations rather than resolving them.

[Finn Penter · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excellent and succinct history of Australian imperialism and the crimes of the Australian state. Fuck Australia

[Christopher Redfern · Rating 3 out of 5]

I really wanted to rate this higher because Australian imperialism is a story few think about. there's definitely the bones of something really explosive here, from the point of view of someone who saw the last decades described in this book through an Aussie commercial media screen. the war on terror? "Just patriotism." East Timor? "tribes gone crazy - thank God our brave servicemen and women are keeping the peace," etc.

so the history is here in very broad strokes. but in only 100 pages, you have to be Lenin to encapsulate 200 years of imperialism. there's just not enough meat on the bones. like, the idea that Malaysia is a colonial construct - very interesting - but who were the architects? what did we have to gain materially? just a few short paragraphs are all we get.

the same can be said of every event in history touched upon here. just not enough class analysis, not enough simple academic rigour. so the NT intervention was to stamp out native titles - whose, and to benefit which mining companies? don't get me started on the trotskyist china bashing in the introduction.

it's a real shame because a people's history, a marxist history of australia, desperately needs to be told

[Suleman Dawood · Rating 4 out of 5]

A refreshing insight into colonialism and the assumptions we have regarding it. Lincoln makes a good case for why the binary of Coloniser vs Colonised does not fully capture the complexities of Colonial era geopolitics. I always wondered how states like Sweden or the Czech republic played a role in colonialism but Australia's relationship with the colonized people and Great Britain is far more fascinating. The author outlines how states like Australia not only had the aim and the autonomy to engage in colonization of the third world but were at times even shaping colonial policy. Sometimes these ambitions aligned with Britains own and other times they didn't. Often it was not clear whether Australia was to blame or Britain or the entire European project. Nevertheless, the myth of Australia being a puppet of Britain and America is successfully debunked.