Windschuttle Research Articles

Multidisciplinarity or Encroachment

Multidisciplinarity or Encroachment

The ‘little empire of Wybalenna’:1 Becoming colonial in Australia1

The colonial past is hot property in Australian public life at present. Debates throughout the 1990s about 'black armband' history versus 'white blindfold' history, about histories of land use and ownership, and about what constitutes 'mainstream' Australian historical scholarship seem to have coalesced in the arguments surrounding Keith Windschuttle's publications. In this most recent set of history wars, some Australian historians seem to feel under siege.' Others, as Nicolas Rothwell suggests, see this as a breath oflife for the discipline, reasserting the centrality of history even as it calls into question the authority and reliability ofhistorians. These debates draw such heat because they are ultimately about the relationship between the colonial past and what might be called the 'postcolonial' present. It is at once a debate about history as a discipline and a debate about how historical understandings affect our present: as Graeme Davison suggests, history has become 'a bone of national contention'P Ifarguments about 'the past' are those we can

Review Essay

Reassuring 'White Australia': A Review of The Fabrication of Aboriginal History: Volume One, Van Diemen's Land 1803—1847 by Keith Windschuttle (Sydney: Macleay Press, 2002) is a review essay that assesses Keith Windschuttle's latest book in light of historical scholarship of Australian Aborigines over the last thirty years. The essay critiques both Windschuttle's methodology and his historical analysis, concluding that Windschuttle's book conforms to the prejudices of those on the right in Australian politics. In addition, an effort is made to place Australian Aboriginal history in a broader context, incorporating analyses of the impact of (settler) colonialism on Aboriginal people. In this way, the essay may have value to students and scholars of various other colonial contexts wishing to draw comparisons with their own field of expertise.

This Land was Forcefully Taken

My name is Liz Wilson. I'm a proud indigenous woman from the Jiman people of Central Queensland. I was in attendance at the debate between Keith Windschuttle and Henry Reynolds. As a single mother of two daughters, I have found that teaching your children to be proud of their culture, and to know who they really are, a hard achievement, but I have done that and they now know the real history of Australia. As a child, I was ashamed of being of Aboriginal descent and it is because of people's small mindedness and the negativity of people like Keith Windschuttle that I felt that way. To me, being Aboriginal meant that I would grow up in a park and be nothing but vermin to society, to be nothing but a drone to be homeless and ignored because of the colour of my skin. It was my wonderful Nana who took the time to teach me the real beauty of who I am and where I came from she taught the richness, sacredness and the real truth of being an Australian Aborigine. Now I can proudly say I am Aboriginal and proud to be Aboriginal. A few points Keith Windschuttle made convinced me this man knew nothing about our culture and history. If genocide was not attempted in Australia, then why were my people massacred in the Dawson River in the Central Queensland Belt? Another point, does it matter if only 20 deaths or 2,000? Deaths did occur and people lost loved ones. Isn't that the real issue that lives were lost unnecessarily? With these numbers of deaths, were they just numbers for the adults that were murdered or did they include the children who died as a consequence of these actions? I'd like to know how much time Keith has spend with the Aborigines and if he went out to the real people and found out their stories he might not be so quick to slander them.

'Many Deeds of Terror': Windschuttle and Musquito

Keith Windschuttle has presented The Fabrication of Aboriginal History as 'the most exhaustive study that's ever been done'.1 Yet within its pages are many examples of errors and misrepresentations that cast doubt on his management of colonial source material. One conspicuous blunder is in his treatment of the Risdon Cove massacre of May 1804.2 The shooting was certainly mass murder even Windschuttle concedes three Aborigines were killed. An eyewitness, Edward White, informed the 1830s Aborigines Committee that 'a great many' Aborigines were killed, and the attack was unprovoked. Windschuttle discredits White, saying the man was working at a creek below the settlement and could not have seen the shootings. Either Windschuttle did not read White's statement properly or he misleads his readers, for White's account continues: 'the soldiers came down from their own camp to the creek to attack the Natives'.3 White also claimed that Surgeon Mountgarret packed bones in barrels and sent them to Port Jackson, which Windschuttle disputes, saying that White, a convict, could not have had any direct knowledge of the behaviour of a member of the colonial elite. This is laughable. Risdon Cove was a tiny outpost that relied on convict labourers who were perfectly placed to observe the activities of their masters. There is no reason to doubt White's recollection or to pour scorn on those who tell the story today. This article challenges Windschuttle's self image as a purveyor of 'truth', by forensically examining another of his misrepresentations that the Black War of 1824-31 is a misnomer. Windschuttle claims it was not a war but a 'crime spree' begun by Musquito, the Sydney Aborigine who joined ranks with the Oyster Bay people of Tasmania. Windschuttle's depiction of Musquito reveals the shallowness of his research. The notion that Musquito led the Tasmanians into aggression, and consequent denial of their agency in the conflict, dates from Governor Arthur's time. In replicating this narrative Windschuttle obscures significant information to present Musquito as a criminal antagonist because he sees the Tasmanian people as primitive degenerates who were incapable of political organisation, and who were not fighting for their land, but engaging in 'senseless violence'.4 This essay will present the known details of Musquito's life in a more complex light. While Musquito was a skilled fighter, his involvement in Tasmanian hostilities lasted only seven months, and only a few of the attacks that occurred within that period can possibly be associated with Musquito. 'The guerrilla warfare thesis' is the name given by Windschuttle to the view, shared by most contemporary historians, that the Aboriginal violence that broke out in 1824 and continued into the 1830s was a concerted campaign against the colonists. In chapters three and four Windschuttle attributes the outbreak of hostilities to the work of a band of 'detribalised' or 'Europeanised' Aborigines, who were 'simply outlaws', engaged in a 'minor crime wave'. At the head of this band of

Carolinas

February 2002 Historically Speaking 23 REGIONAL REPORTS Carolinas Jobi/ Headley. University of North Carolina On December 8, 2001, the University of North Carolina's department ofhistory and the Carolinas Region ofThe Historical Societyco-sponsored a one-dayconference at Chapel Hill: "Reconsidering Current Fashions in Historical hiterpretation." The morning session featured Keith Windschuttle's paper "The Historian as Political Activist: The Legacy ofMichel Foucault." Windschuttle , well-known for advocating empirical historical scholarship, attacked Foucault's cavalier use of evidence and the Foucaultian assertion that since all knowledge exudes power, the work of the historian must serve political ends. University ofNorth Carolina history professorJames Hevia responded in defense of Foucault, arguing that Windschuttle fails to appreciate Foucault's contribution of many new and useful issues and themes for further historical inquiry. The afternoon session was devoted to Eric Arnesen's important essay "Whiteness and the Historians' Imagination," which appeared in the Fall 2001 InternationalLabor and Working-Class History (a brief excerpt appears in this issue oíHistorically Speaking). Arnesen, who chairs the history department at the University ofIllinois at Chicago, challenged labor historians' use of "whiteness" on substantive, methodological, and conceptual grounds. Duke University labor historian Robert Korstad gave a response. Chesapeake Don Avery, Harford Comminili) Colle ist againstApartheid in SouthAfrica," Vigne's lecture dealt with the activities of South Africa's nonracial Liberal party, which organized in opposition to the white supremacist Verwoerd regime. Born in South Africa of Huguenot descent, Vigne was educated at Oxford University and returned to South Africa to become national deputy chairman ofthe Liberal party. When the Verwoerd government banned the party, Vigne and others went underground, where he became a founder of the African Resistance Movement. He was assigned the difficult taskofrecruitingblacks inTranskei for the predominantlywhite Liberal party. AfterVigne's house was blown up by government forces, he barely escaped arrest and fled to London. In Britain Vigne continued to oppose South African repression ofhuman and political rights. He worked for the independence ofSouth Africa's illegally occupied colony of South West Africa, chairing the Namibia Support Committee from 1971 to 1990. He was foundingjoint editor ofthe NewAfrican Monthly, which published manyAfricanwriters , including Bessie Head of South Africa. In addition to many articles in literary, historical , and political journals, Vigne has published books on southern African and Huguenot themes, notably LiberalsAgainst Apartheid: The History ofthe Liberal Party of South Africa (1997) and A Gesture ofBelonging : Lettersfrom Bessie Head(1991). On November 7, 2001, Towson University 's department of history and the Chesapeake Region ofThe Historical Society co-sponsored a lecture by Randolph Vigne, a South African journalist/historian. Titled "The Personal Crusade ofaJournalGreater New York City Martin Burke. Lehman College. Cl1NY Jostbh Skelly, College of Mount Saint Vince) On October 12, 2001, the Greater New YorkCityRegion hosted the firstinstallment of a new series of seminars honoring books recentlypublished bymembers ofThe Historical Society. The volume so honored on this occasion wasJohn Buchanan'sJacksons Way:AndrewJackson and the People ofthe Western Waters (John Wiley and Sons, 2001). Mr. Buchanan's book is history without apology. Jacksons Way, Buchanan said, "is about conquest—an ancienttale, as old as the species. This particular tale deals with the American conquest ofwhat was once called the Old Southwest, that vast sweep ofterritorybetween the Appalachian Mountains and the Mississippi, from the Ohio River to the GulfofMexico." One ofMr. Buchanan's primaryaims "in tellingthis tale ofconquestwas to describe itwarts and all, without, however, the kind ofdemonizing ofAmerican heroes to which we have been subjected by too many historians and writers over the past 30 to 40 years." This trend "probably began with the quite honorable and long overdue effort to bring into the historical mainstream those who had been relegated to the nooks and crannies ofhistory: blacks, women, Indians, ethnics, and so on." Yet this worthwhile "undertaking has too often veered into polemics. And these polemics that pass for history have percolated down to the popular media and general public." This deleterious process has deformed many great American historical figures. AndrewJackson is no exception. The common refrain "he wasn'tverynice to the Indians " has been replaced by the sobriquet "old genocidal Jackson." Yet Buchanan's book reminds us thatAndrewJackson was extraordinarilycomplex —taciturn, aggressive...

Scientific irrationalism: origins of a postmodern cult

Little known outside his native Australia, David Stove was one of the most illuminating and brilliant philosophical essayists of his era. A fearless attacker of intellectual and cultural orthodoxies, Stove left powerful critiques of scientific irrationalism, Darwinian theories of human behavior, and philosophical idealism. Since its inception in the 1940s, the field of science studies, originally intended to bridge the gap between science and the humanities, has been the center of controversy and debate. The most notable figures in this debate are Thomas Kuhn and Karl Popper. In Scientific Irrationalism, now available in paperback, David Stove demonstrates how extravagant has been the verbiage wasted on this issue and how irrational the combatants have been. He shows that Kuhn and Popper share considerable common ground. Stove argues that the problems all reside in the reasoning of the critics. He identifies the logical mistakes and conceptual allusions made by Kuhn and Popper and their supporters, as well as their collective dependency on a single argument made by the philosopher of the Scottish Enlightenment, David Hume. He then demonstrates how little potency that argument actually has for the claims of science. In his foreword, Keith Windschuttle explains the debate surrounding the field of science studies and explores David Stove's contribution as well as his lack of recognition. In an afterword, James Franklin discusses reactions to Stove's work.

Literary Evidence: A Response to Keith Windschuttle

Literary Evidence: A Response to Keith Windschuttle

Archives: A Second Look at History Careers : The Profession

Archives: A Second Look at History Careers : The Profession

Editor's Notebook

EDITOR'S NOTEBOOK by Elizabeth Fox-Genovese Nothing hadprepared mefor the wave ofgenerous response to thefirst issue /The Journal, andalthough I neverfound the time to thank in person all ofthose who wrote, their notes and letters warmed my heart and rewarded the efforts ofthose who had conjured up thatfirst issue: mainly our authors, Victor Hanson, Darryl Hart, Mark Smith, and the hte Robert Wiebe, but abo our managing editor, Laura Crawley, and myself. Above all, that warm appreciation ofour efforts strengthened my conviction that it would bepossible toproduce ajournai that combined thefinest scbofarship with a commitment tofostering a conversation about historicalproblems andcommunicatingsomething ofthe excitement ofthoseproblems to a variety ofreaders. The only drawback to our readers'generosity—ifI may be so ungracious as to voice one—lay in the attendant responsibility to live up to thatfirst success and hopefully, toprove it something more than afortuitous accident, which is surely how our critics would like to view it. In the timeworn phrase, so what doyou dofor an encore? Pondering the responsibilities ofan encore, I could not but think sympathetically ofA. E. Houseman's "To An Athlete Dying Young," or, to put it more vulgarly, why not quit while you are ahead? For better or worse, quitting was not an option, and Laura and I set ourselves to putting some flesh on the skeleton ofour original vision. Happily, we have been blessed with assistance from all quarters. The forthcoming double issue will more than testify to the quality of that assistance and—no less important—to the rapidity with which it was tendered, although even that gratifying response did not permit us to assemble a second issue as rapidly as we should have wished. Many thanks to thefolbwing foundations that havegiven THSfinancialsupport: The Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation The John M. Olin Foundation The Tom Watson Brown Foundation The Earhart Foundation The William H. Donner Foundation The second issue proved a daunting challenge, primarily because of the nature ofour vision and ambition for TheJournal For ifwe are dedicated to the ideal ofpublishing scholarship of the highest quality—with which our members can abundantly provide us— we are no less dedicated to the vision of a journal that invites conversation and the continuing investigation of important historical questions. Consequently, we needed to persuade others to provide substance for that vision, either by writing responses to one ofour first four essays or by permitting us to publish revised versions of their conference papers or comments. In the end, the commentators proved the most difficult to convince, doubtless because most people do not expect to publish comments, which they often expect to develop for publication in another form. We prevailed only when we convinced them that publication in The Journal did not foreclose the future development and that we especially valued the exploratory and speculative nature of their remarks. continued on page 4 ~3~ The Presidents Comer Editor s Notebook Left, Right, Left Economic History Affiliation Announcement On Libraries Publishing In Memoriam—Robert Wiebe The Academic Job Search Regional Reports Regional Contact Info Recent Publications Awards and Achievements Announcements Membership Form fOR'S NOTEBOOK amtitiutä frompap I Thanks to the efforts of an impressive group of historians from different specializations and different stages of seniority, our forthcoming issue will begin to demonstrate some of the possibilities. For, in addition to original research (Richard Graham and Constantine Gutzman), it will include two responses to one of the articles in the first issue (Dennis Martin and David Whitford), the papers and comments from one of the sessions at our most recent national conference (Robert Kingdon, John Witte, Jr., Steven Ozment, and Philip Soergel), and three probing essays, one on the pitfalls of teaching religion (Norman Ravitch), one on Alan Guelzo's important new book on Abraham Lincoln (Darryl Hart), and one on the pitfalls of postmodern literary studies (Keith Windschuttle). And as the various pieces came in and the issue took shape, it became increasingly clear that, in various ways, they are contributing to a cluster of interlocking themes, which, in their permutations, open new questions and new lines of investigation. Finally, to end with the beginning as it were, we have one that crosses borders in that...

‘Media Wars’

The relationship between journalism and cultural studies in the tertiary education system in Australia has never been a comfortable one. Communications studies, journalism studies, media studies and cultural studies programmes have all developed over the last two decades, but in an institution-specific manner. The tensions embedded in some of these ad hoc arrangements – tensions not necessarily confined to these disciplines but often implicit in any merger between critical theory and professional practice – boiled over in a series of newspaper articles by journalism educator Keith Windschuttle in 1998 which attacked the use of cultural and media studies in journalism programmes. A one-day conference was held in November 1998 specifically to debate the relationship between journalism educators and cultural studies academics. This review essay outlines some of the lessons to be learned from the ‘Media Wars’ conference, before defending the value of developing specific areas of common ground – both in the academy and in public debates about the function of the media – between the two disciplinary fields.

Historiography and Postmodernism

Historiography and Postmodernism

Capital Punishment for Murderous Theorists?

Book reviewed in this article: The Killing of History: How Literary Critics and Social Theorists areMurdering our Past, by Keith Windschuttle

Genre Anxiety in the Postmodern Public Sphere

This paper examines the roots of contemporary concerns about the influence of poststructuralist theories and aligned disciplines such as cultural studies on media studies, exemplified here by Keith Windschuttle's attack on the latter. Rather than taking detailed issue with Windschuttle's attack on critical theory, I examine the roots of what, I argue, is an anxiety about the shifting boundaries between conventional institutional and discursive arenas. Far from identifying a schism between academic and professional practice in media studies, I argue that recent developments in both fields have fostered a far closer relationship between the two arenas, and that it is precisely this proximity which is engendering anxiety among some commentators.

The Killing of History: How a Discipline is Being Murdered by Literary Critics and Social Theorists.

Journal Article The Killing of History: How a Discipline Is Being Murdered by Literary Critics and Social Theorists. By Keith Windschuttle. Paddington: Macleay, 1996. viii, 298 pp. and The Opening of the American Mind: Canons, Culture, and History. By Lawrence W. Levine. Boston: Beacon, 1996. xxiv, 212 pp. Get access Margaret C. Jacob Margaret C. Jacob University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Journal of American History, Volume 85, Issue 2, September 1998, Pages 625–627, https://doi.org/10.2307/2567757 Published: 01 September 1998

Book reviews

Richard Cashman, ’Ave a go, yer mug!’ Australian Cricket Crowds from Larrikin to Ocker, William Collins, Sydney, 1984, pp. 192, $14.95. Christopher Dowd, The Adelaide Kindergarten Teachers’ College, A History 1907–1974, South Australian College of Advanced Education, 1984, pp. 316, $20. John Rickard, H B Higgins, The Rebel as Judge, George Allen & Unwin, Sydney 1985, pp. ix + 350, $29.95. Ross Fitzgerald, From 1915 to the Early 1980s, A History of Queensland, University of Queensland Press, 1984, pp. xviii + 653, $25.00. Patrick O'Farrell, Letters from Irish Australia 1925–1929, New South Wales University Press, 1984, pp. 244, $19.95. Janet Morice, Six‐Bob‐a‐Day Tourist, Penguin, Melbourne, 1985, pp. 95, $7.95. Madge Dawson and Heather Radi (eds.) Against the Odds, Fifteen Professional Women Reflect on Their Lives and Careers, Hale and Iremonger, Sydney, 1984, pp. 272, $25.95, paper, $12.95. Keith Windschuttle, The Media: A new analysis of the press, television, radio and advertising in Australia, Penguin, Melbourne, 1984, pp. xi + 436, $12.95. Janis Wilton and Richard Bosworth, Old Worlds and New Australia, The post‐war migrant experience, Penguin, 1984, pp. 215, $8.95. Janet McCalman, Struggletown: Public and private life in Richmond 1900–1965, Melbourne University Press, 1984, pp. 325, $19.50. Christopher Cunneen, Kings’ Men, Australia's Governors‐General from Hopetoun to Isaacs, George Allen and Unwin, Sydney, 1983, $24.95, paper $12.95. James Walter and Raija Nugent (eds.), Biographers at Work, The Institute for Modern Biography, Griffith University, 1984, pp. 76, $6. Inglis, K. S. (assisted by Jan Brazier), This is the ABC. The Australian Broadcasting Commission 1932–1983, Melbourne University Press, 1983, pp. 521, $24.95. Peter Love, Labour and Money Power, Australian Labour Populism, 1880–1950, Melbourne University Press, 1984, pp. xii + 240, $9.95.