Mark McKenna has been the most prominent Australian Republican historian in the dead tree media during the last fifteen years. This book,
Australian Republicanism: A Reader
was edited by Mark and Wayne Hudson. It can be probably viewed as a primary source complement to his book,
The Captive Republic
.
I picked up my copy from the National Museum. The book is not new, having been published in 2003, but has a such a wealth of historical material in it, that it will not age, nor become out-dated quickly. The editors divide the book up into;
-
A Deep Undercurrent of Republicanism that will Someday Burst Forth and Astonish the World (1788-1856)
-
A Commonwealth for the British Race, a Commonwealth Under the Crown (1856-1901)
-
Still Captive After All These Years: Imagining The Republic (1901-2001)
The first section contains wondrous sources such as Deniehy's
Bunyip Aristocracy
speech, Harpur's Tree of Liberty, Dunmore-Lang's Deceleration of Independence for Victoria, plus numerous other articles from newspapers such as the Sydney Morning Herald and People's Advocate. I am a fan of Harpurian Republicanism, and this section contains much of the exuberance and hope of republicans who saw New South Wales, Victoria and Queensland making the transition from colony to Republic.
The Commonwealth Debate
The second section is dominated by the conflict between the loyalists and the republicans. Ultimately the loyalists enforced their views on Australia through the constitution in 1901 and effectively made the monarchy and Australian nationalism entwined. Often this was
achieved through brutish and illiberal means
.
Nationalism was often mixed with racial purity, especially to do with the Briton race. This period contains the nationalist writing of Henry Lawson, George Black and William Lane. For instance an article in the highly pro-republican and pro-nationalist Bulletin was titled, "A Republic Without The Chinese".
But this was not unique to the republicans, the monarchists and loyalists were just as heavily of the Briton view - one of the reasons the Australian Constitution does not have a Bill of Rights is so the government wasn't restricted constitutionally against discriminating against the Chinese.
This section also covers the republicanism in Queensland during the second half of the 1800s. In Charters Towers the firebrand Frederick Vosper ran the local labor newspaper. Queensland being provincial and independent minded even back then, had republicans in all walks of life, from workers, to writers, to judges. McKenna notes that Vosper's writing often made Eureka look tame;
The men [shearers strike of 1881] - they must either have BREAD or BLOOD - WOOL OR HEADS - and if the government be not careful they will have BOTH ... The government ought to know that in no country is revolution so easy as here; and once let the masses be roused, then good-bye to capitalistic domination and the sham royalty that is inflicted upon us now, and hurrah for the Republic.
To be fair to Vosper,
Horace Tozer enacted laws that allowed strike organisers to be shot on sight
. Despite Tozer making the government of Queensland and the Squattocracy an easy target, Vosper had a revolutionaries zeal, he claimed to have been involved in two revolutions in Bolivia before coming to Australia. Despite this this, the journal he edited was distributed widely in Brisbane, and was met with approval by other Queensland republicans.
Inevitability
The third section contains the republicanism after the establishment of federation. It all became inevitable - an inevitability that is yet to be achieved. There is some source material from the first half of the century, and a good chunk from the 1999 referendum.
Great collection of source material. The only thing I would ask for is Mark McKenna to either set up his own website/blog or join an existing one (such as SSR) and start writing on Republican history for the internet as well as dead-tree media. His voice is needed on the internet.
cam
Phoenix Eats Out is the restaurant review site for
Phoenix,
Scottsdale and
Old Town Scottsdale which lists the modernist and contemporary restaurants, taverns and bars in the greater Phoenix area.
This is the list of the most popular restaurants pages from phoenixeatsout.com that have been viewed the most;
My personal favourite restaurants in Phoenix are
AZ88,
Postinos,
Bomberos with
Grazie,
Humble Pie,
Orange Table,
The Vig,
Fez and others coming close behind. View the complete list with the photo-journalistic style images on
phoenixeatsout.com
Arizona is an outdoor state and has lots of hiking in the city and around the state. Phoenix is unusual for most cities in having several large mountains in the center of the city with great hiking. Anyone who comes to Phoenix has to do the
Echo Canyon trail on Camelback and the
Summit Hike on Squaw Peak or Piesta Peak. The views of the city, suburbs and surrounding mountains are wonderful from Camelback and Piesta Peak.
For more experienced hikers there is the McDowell Mountains in North Scottsdale that has several difficult and strenuous hikes in
Tom's Thumb and
Bell Pass. Alternatively, you can hike the highest mountain in Arizona. At 12,600 feet
Humphrey's Peak is a long and difficult hike.
Between 2004 and 2009 this site,
southsearepublic.org, was a constitutional blog based on scoop which focused on Australian and global constitutional issues.
One of the strongest aspects of it was the development of constitutions by those involved in the blog. These constitutions are the outcome:
The constitutions were built using principles from Montesquieu's separation of powers, the enlightnment's universal political rights and the ancient Athenian technology of sortition and choice by lot.
South Sea Republic started in 2004 as an Australian constitutional blog in 2004 based on scoop software. It was an immigrative outgrowth of Kuro5hin. The archives for each year since then;
The articles are ordered by views.
I am an Australian living in the United States as a permanent resident.
I am a software developer by trade and mostly work in Java and jump between middleware and front end.
I originally worked in the New York area of the United States in telecommunications before moving to Washington DC and
working in a mix of telecommunications, energy and ITS. I started my own software company before heading out to
Arizona and working with Shutterfly. Since then I have joined a startup in the Phoenix area and am thoroughly enjoying myself.
I do a lot of photography which I post on this website, but also on flickr. I have a photo-journalistic website which lists
the modernist and contemporary restaurants in phoenix. I have a site on the
Australian Flying Corps [AFC] which has been around since the 1990s and which I unfortunately
lost the .org URL to during a life event; however, it is under the
www.australianflyingcorps.com URL now.
The AFC website has gone through several iterations since the 90s and the two most recent are
Australian Flying Corps Archives(2004-2002) and
Australian Flying Corps Archives(2002-1999) which are good places to start.
