The history of Aborigines in Van Diemen's Land is long. The first Tasmanians lived in isolation for as many as 300 generations after the flooding of Bass Strait. Their struggle against almost insurmountable odds is one worthy of respect and admiration, not to mention serious attention. This broad-ranging book is a comprehensive and critical account of that epic survival up to the present day.Starting from antiquity, the book examines the devastating arrival of Europeans and subsequ...

The Aboriginal Australians first arrived on the continent at least 60,000 years ago, occupying and adapting to a range of environmental conditions—from tropical estuarine habitats, densely forested regions, open plains, and arid desert country to cold, mountainous, and often wet and snowy high country. Cultures adapted according to the different conditions and adapted again to environmental changes brought about by rising sea levels at the end of the last ice age. European colonization of ...

The Australian Aborigines first arrived on the continent at least 60,000 years ago. They almost certainly landed on the northwest coast by sea from the nearby islands of the Indonesian archipelago. That first arrival may have been replicated many times over. The following exploration and settlement of a vast and varied continent was a venture of heroic proportions. The new settlers had reached southern Tasmania, the point farthest from the original landfall at least 30,000 years ago. By th...

Winner of the 2014 Victorian Premier's Award for non-fiction!Australia is dotted with memorials to soldiers who fought in wars overseas. Why are there no official memorials or commemorations of the wars that were fought on Australian soil between Aborigines and white colonists? Why is it more controversial to talk about the frontier war now than it was one hundred years ago? Forgotten War continues the story told in Henry Reynolds' seminal book The Oth...

The publication of this book in 1981 profoundly changed the way in which we understand the history of relations between indigenous Australians and European settlers. It has since become a classic of Australian history. Drawing from documentary and oral evidence, the book describes in meticulous and compelling detail the ways in which Aborigines responded to the arrival of Europeans. Henry Reynolds' argument that the Aborigines resisted fiercely was highly original when it was first publish...

A new paperback reprint of this best-selling and ground-breaking history. When first published in 1996 Making Peoples was hailed as redefining New Zealand history. It was undoubtedly the most important work of New Zealand history since Keith Sinclair's classic A History of New Zealand.Making Peoples covers the period from first settlement to the end of the nineteenth century. Part one covers Polynesian background, Maori settlement and pre-contact history. Part tw...

Tangata Whenua: A History presents a rich narrative of the Māori past from ancient origins in South China to the twenty-first century, in a handy paperback format. The authoritative text is drawn directly from the award-winning Tangata Whenua: An Illustrated History; the full text of the big hardback is available in a reader-friendly edition, ideal for students and for bedtime reading, and a perfect gift for those whose budgets do not stretch to the illustrated edition. Maps and diagrams c...

'Lyndall Ryan's new account of the extraordinary and dramatic story of the Tasmanian Aborigines is told with passion and eloquence. It is a book that will inform and move anyone with an interest in Australian history.' - Professor Henry Reynolds, University of Tasmania'A powerful and insightful historical account about a unique island and its First peoples, their dispossession and their struggle for survival and cultural birth right/heritage that reaches from the deep past...

In this Very Short Introduction Kenneth Morgan provides a wide-ranging and thematic introduction to modern Australia. He examines the main features of its history, geography, and culture since the beginning of the white settlement in New South Wales in 1788. Drawing attention to the distinctive features of Australian life he places contemporary developments in a historical perspective, highlighting the importance of Australia's indigenous culture and making connections between Aus...

Convincing Ground is a wide ranging, personal and powerful work which resonates with historical and contemporary Australian debates about identity, dispossession, memory and community. For Pascoe, the Australian character was not forged at Gallipoli, Eureka and the back of Bourke, but in the more satanic furnace of Murdering Flat, Convincing Ground and Werribee. He knows we can't reverse the past, but we can bring our soul in from the fog of delusion. He proposes a way forward, be...

In this spirited history of the remarkable first four years of the convict settlement of Australia, Thomas Keneally offers us a human view of a fascinating piece of history. Combining the authority of a renowned historian with a brilliant narrative flair, Keneally gives us an inside view of this unprecedented experiment from the perspective of the new colony’s governor, Arthur Phillips. Using personal journals and documents, Keneally re-creates the hellish overseas voyage and the challenge...

New Zealand was the last major landmass, other than Antarctica, to be settled by humans. The story of this rugged and dynamic land is beautifully narrated, from its origins in Gondwana some 80 million years ago to the twenty-first century. Philippa Mein Smith highlights the effects of the country's smallness and isolation, from its late settlement by Polynesian voyagers and colonisation by Europeans - and the exchanges that made these people Maori and Pakeha - to the dramatic struggles ove...