A Concise History of Australia: Second Edition.

A CONCISE HISTORY OF AUSTRALIA: Second Edition. By Stuart Macintyre. New York: Cambridge University Press. 2005. xiii, 342 pp. (Maps, B & W photos, figures.) US$70.00, cloth, ISBN 0-521-84122-4: US$25.99, paper, ISBN 0-521-60101-0.

Stuart Macintyre is one of Australia's most prolific historians and perhaps the foremost left-wing historian in the country. First published in 1999, A Concise History quickly became part of the ferocious debates about Australian history here (now known as the history wars), because Macintyre had emerged as a leading author of critical national histories and a target of abuse from the federal government and the Murdoch press, both purveyors of a comfortable and comforting national history. (North American historians will be familiar with the part the Murdoch press plays in their own political and intellectual life). This second edition updates the first and deals with the rapid changes in Australia over the last few years, as a right-wing national government is undoing much of the reform of the previous hundred years. It also reviews the current state of play in the history wars.

This may appear a conventional history. It tells familiar stories about Australia's past. The usual signposts are there, as is the "commonsense" historical trajectory. High politics and political ideology shapes much of the narrative (which means there is much excluded, popular culture being a case in point) and it is structured by the familiar time periodization. It is also methodologically orthodox, owing little, for example, to the new cultural history, at which, from time to time, Macintyre makes subtle digs.

What distinguishes it from other similar books is the way it deals with the dispossession of Australia's indigenous people. Macintyre is mindful of the historiographical and conceptual changes required of Australian history by a recognition of Aboriginal people's prior occupation of the continent. He describes Australia, then, not as a nation whose history began with federation in 1901, nor an empty land whose history began with the first landing by Europeans in 1606, but as a continent with a continuous human occupation of more than 60,000 years. The dynamic of invasion and dispossession and the way in which non-Aboriginal Australians have dealt with this practically, philosophically and historically, runs through the book. Macintyre writes persuasively about the lingering uneasiness among non-Aboriginal Australians about their right to the continent.

A second theme concerns the ways in which the Australian story has been written. Macintyre has published widely on earlier Australian historians and the book shows how much he relishes engagement with other interpretations of Australia's past. He is interested in successive Australian self-images and the way different historical discourses help shape them. It is unusual to see a general history that is quite so conscientiously historiographical.

Macintyre also makes a plea for Australians to remember their achievements, to engage with what is best about Australia's history but escape what is worst. He shows how at times it has led the world: in the early twentieth century, for example, when the country was known as a social laboratory because it regulated the economy in the interests of the poor and politically weak. He is especially regretful that this commitment to equality in Australia has been swept away, partly by supposedly left-wing, Labor Party governments in the 1980s and 1990s, and views the last 10 years of conservative government with undisguised distaste. Macintyre is clearly disappointed that Australia has not done better.

This is a fine book. It is worth reading for its insights into contemporary Australian historiography and politics, and its descriptions of the Australian history wars alone. Macintyre writes with passion and elegance so it makes a very good read. It is an excellent introduction to Australian history.

CHARLIE FOX

University of Western Australia, Australia