The ‘historical expert’: M.H. Ellis and the historiography of the cold war*

Abstract

Malcolm Henry Ellis (1890–1969) was a distinguished historical biographer. His lives of Lachlan Macquarie, Francis Greenway and John Macarthur are substantial contributions to Australian historical writing. But Ellis is more widely remembered for his acerbic reviews, especially of volume one of Manning Clark's History of Australia, and his controversial disputes with professional historical groups like the Royal Australian Historical Society and the Australian Dictionary of Biography. A prominent Cold War intellectual, Ellis appeared before the 1949 Victorian Royal Commission on Communism as its ‘historical expert’. This article examines the intersections between Ellis's anticommunist politics and his work as a pioneering Australian historian.