Arts and Humanities Commons^™

On The Margins, Rowan Cahill

Rowan Cahill

Tale Of A Manuscript, Rowan Cahill

Rowan Cahill

Review Of Port Kembla: A Memoir (2019) - A Local History That Captures The Diversity Of Australia, Rowan Cahill

Rowan Cahill

The Far Left In Australia, Rowan Cahill

Rowan Cahill

Rebel Roots.Docx, Rowan Cahill

Rowan Cahill

'Khaki Solutions' Are An Australian Tradition, Rowan Cahill

Rowan Cahill

Review: "The Protest Years: The Official History Of Asio, 1963-1975/The Secret Cold War: The Official History Of Asio, 1975-1989", Rowan Cahill

Rowan Cahill

Vintage Red.Docx, Rowan Cahill

Rowan Cahill

End Of Paragraph, Rowan Cahill

Rowan Cahill

A Brush With Weimar Germany.Docx, Rowan Cahill

Rowan Cahill

Review: Sylvia Martin, 'Ink In Her Veins: The Troubled Life Of Aileen Palmer', (Crawley: Uwa Publishing, 2016)., Rowan Cahill

Rowan Cahill

Review: Sylvia Martin, 'Ink In Her Veins: The Troubled Life Of Aileen Palmer', (Crawley: Uwa Publishing, 2016)., Rowan Cahill

Rowan Cahill

The Barber Who Read History And Was Overwhelmed, Rowan Cahill

Rowan Cahill

Turning Seventy, Rowan Cahill

Rowan Cahill

The author's ruminations on the occasion of him reaching the age of 70 years old.

Denis Kevans: Poet, Rowan Cahill

Rowan Cahill

A brief account of the poetry of Australian social movement poet Denis Kevans (1939-2005).

Groomed For War, Rowan Cahill

Rowan Cahill

An account of Australia's preparations for war before 1914, with the focus on the system of compulsory military training for boys and youths introduced in 1911.

Revisiting A Struggle: Port Kembla, 1938, Rowan Cahill

Rowan Cahill

A review and discussion of the 2015 documentary film 'Pig Iron Bob' (Producer/Director Sandra Pires). The focus of this film is the dramatic 2-month long boycott by Australian waterside workers in Port Kembla (NSW), 1938/39, of a cargo of Australian pig-iron bound for Japan. The workers took their action in protest against Japanese militarism and the Sino-Japanese War. The boycott enraged the conservative Australian government of the day which pulled out all stops to maintain its policy of appeasement towards Japan.

Radical Ruminations, Rowan Cahill, Terry Irving

Rowan Cahill

Beginning in 2010, historians Rowan Cahill and Terry Irving made wide ranging and reflective diary style contributions to their blog 'Radical Sydney/Radical History' about the nature of 'radical history', the process of being 'radical historians', politics, and political activism. This is that body of work.

Mullen's Choices, Rowan Cahill

Rowan Cahill

Obituary/biographical note concerning Geoff Mullen (1947-2014), and his anti-conscription activities (1967-1972) in Australia during the Vietnam War.

Book Review: David Grant, 'Jagged Seas: The New Zealand Seamen's Union, 1879-2003' (2012), Rowan Cahill

Rowan Cahill

Review of David Grant, 'Jagged Seas: The New Zealand Seamen's Union, 1879-2003' (Christchurch: Canterbury University Press, 2012). The reviewer co-authored a history of the Australian Seamen's Union (1872-1972) in 1981, and this review is sympathetic towards Grant's history, and makes a case for the ongoing production of worker/union histories.

A Case Of Open Access, Rowan Cahill

Rowan Cahill

I support ‘open access’, the enabling of unrestricted and free internet access to peer-reviewed scholarly research. Too much academic/scholarly writing is locked up behind the paywalls of multinational publishing empires, generating enormous profits from the unpaid, often publicly financed, labours of vassal scholars/academics. So too with scholarly books, confined as they are by small print runs and exorbitant ‘library copy/sale’ prices. To my mind there is much in contemporary scholarly publishing practice that reminds me of the medieval library at the heart of Umberto Eco’s novel The Name of the Rose (1980), hidden as it is in a labyrinth, accessible …

Book Review: Nichole Georgeou. Neoliberalism Development And Aid Volunteering, Rowan Cahill

Rowan Cahill

As Nichole Georgeou explains at the start of her book, the gestation of this study was her immersion and experiences in the field of aid volunteering in Japan and North Vietnam (pp.xv-xviii). This was during the early 1990s, when she was in her early twenties; they were experiences that left her asking huge moral, ethical, political questions about volunteering.

Shaping Histories, Terence H. Irving, Rowan Cahill

Rowan Cahill

During the last few years, a number of researchers have interviewed the authors regarding their politics and practice in relation to 'history'. In reflecting upon their individual 'historiographies', they have put the following together. The authors met at Sydney University in the 1960s; Irving was a post-graduate student and a tutor; Cahill was an undergraduate student. They were two of the five founders of the Sydney Free University (1967-1972).

Review: 'Disobedience: The University As A Site Of Political Potential, Rowan Cahill

Rowan Cahill

The radicalism of the 1960s and 1970s, and related student insurgency, is still largely uncharted territory when it comes to Australian history. There is a small body of scholarly research comprinsing theses, book chapter, journal articles, and an equally small number of relevant books. To my knowledge only one book, by Mick Armstrong (2001), attempts to survey and grapple with the entire period, its politics and complexities; in 114 pages, this is a brief but useful contribution.

The Looming War On Trade Unions, Rowan Cahill

Rowan Cahill

In October 2013, the right-wing journal Quadrant published the book Australia’s Secret War, an account by Hal Colebatch of homefront industrial disruptions by Australian trade unions during the Second World War. Described as a secret history rescued from ‘folk memory’ – and one previously suppressed by leftists – it detailed ‘treacherous’ industrial actions by unionists that denied/delayed vital war materials to the frontlines between 1939 and 1945, resulting in the deaths of service personnel. These actions, the argument went, pointed to a deliberate and coordinated attempt at sabotaging the war effort courtesy of the communist leaderships of the unions involved. …

The Enemy Within, Rowan Cahill

Rowan Cahill

As the Anzac commemoration industry, awash with millions of dollars of government and corporate investment, gears up to celebrate the centenary of the Gallipoli landing in 2015 (embracing in the process all Australian military adventures overseas going back to involvement in the New Zealand Maori Wars of 1863–64), and the Sudan intervention of 1885), it is salutary to reflect on a seldom discussed Australian military tradition closer to home – in fact, at home. Simply, military might in Australia has, since early colonial days, been deployed on the home front. Forget the ‘feel good’ domestic use of military forces in …

On Darkened Days And Sleepless Nights, Rowan Cahill

Rowan Cahill

The author's thoughts on the role of radical historians, and the roles of protest and dissent in history. He argues that it is the "act of resistance that is crucial, not necessarily its success or otherwise". The example of the resistance to Nazism by Pastor Dietrich Bonhoeffer (1906-1945) is invoked.

Breaking The Iron Collars, Rowan Cahill

Rowan Cahill

Review of Kevin Baker, "Mutiny, Terrorism, Riots and Murder: A History of Sedition in Australia and New Zealand", Rosenberg Publishing: Dural, 2006.

A Khaki Future?, Rowan Cahill

Rowan Cahill

Australia is a martial and warlike nation, established on beachheads on the east coast of the continent in 1789 by the military might of Britain. Long-running conflict with the indigenous people ensued, a struggle that went on into the 1920s and is yet to be incorporated into mainstream tellings of the history of the Australian nation. With invasion secured and indigenous dispossession well in hand, military interventions followed in the lands and affairs of others: in New Zealand during the 1860s against the Maori people, where volunteers were enticed with the promise of sharing confiscated land; the Sudan (1885–86); the …

Maritial Matters, Rowan Cahill

Rowan Cahill

Between 2006-2009, Rowan Cahill published a number of commentaries relating to the Anzac tradition, and to the Australian martial tradition generally, on the Leftwrites experiment in progressive group blogging. A selection of these commentaries follows; they represent views of the Australian martial experience at radical odds with mainstream Australian histories. The issues raised are still relevant, especially as the Australian government is currently spending its way through millions of dollars as it prepares to commemorate/celebrate the centenary of the Gallipoli landing (2015). Leftwrites is archived in the Pandora web archive of the National Library of Australia.