Geoffrey Blainey
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Professor Geoffrey Blainey AC (born 11 March 1930), is one of Australia's most significant historians. He is eminent both in academic circles and in the public mind, particularly after a controversy in 1984 over immigration policy.
Blainey was born in Melbourne and raised in a series of Victorian country towns before attending Wesley College and the University of Melbourne. While at university he was editor of Farrago, the newspaper of the University of Melbourne Student Union. He was appointed to a teaching post at the University of Melbourne in 1962, becoming Professor of Economic History in 1968, Professor of History in 1977, and then Dean of Melbourne's Faculty of Arts in 1982.
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[edit] Career
His first major project in the 1950's was, as an author and researcher working on the history of the Mount Lyell Mining and Railway Company, at Queenstown, Tasmania when a significant number of the older residents could remember the beginnings of the community. The resultant book is one of the few company and local histories in Australia to achieve six editions. He has since published 32 books, including his highly acclaimed, A Short History Of The World.
Blainey has had an exceptionally long and distinguished career in Australian academia. He was a Professor of Economic History and later the Ernest Scott Professor of History at the University of Melbourne. He held a Chair in Australian Studies at Harvard University. He is listed as one of the Australian Living Treasures. Geoffrey Blainey was Chairman of the Australia Council for four years and Chairman of the Australia-China Council from its inception in 1979 until June 1984. In 2001, he was the Chairman of the National Council for the Centenary of Federation. From 1994 to 1998, he was the Foundation Chancellor of the University of Ballarat.[1]
Among many other posts, Blainey has served on the Council of Australian War Memorial since 1997, the Council of National Council for the Centenary of Federation since 1997, and the Council of the Royal Humane Society of Australasia since 1997. He writes sporadic columns regarding history for The Australian a national newspaper.
In 2001, Blainey presented the Boyer Lectures on the theme This Land is all Horizons: Australian Fears and Visions.[2]
[edit] Asian immigration and accusations of racism
In March 1984, Blainey commented to a group of Rotarians in the Southern Victorian town of Warrnambool that public opinion would not support the rate of Asian immigration to Australia. Speaking of South East Asian immigrants, he said: "Rarely in the history of the modern world has a nation given such preference to a tiny ethnic minority of its population as the Australian Government has done in the past few years, making that minority the favoured majority in its immigration policy." He further stated: "As a people, we seem to move from extreme to extreme. In the past 30 years the government of Australia has moved from the extreme of wanting a white Australia to the extreme of saying that we will have an Asian Australia and that the quicker we move towards it the better." These and other comments, later expanded upon in a book entitled All for Australia, caused some controversy, and 24 historians from the University of Melbourne signed a public letter distancing themselves from his views.[3] Many of Blainey's colleagues argued that his views were divisive and would inflame racism in Australia.
The public reaction to Blainey's comments were mixed. Some Australians claimed that Blainey's views legitimized the stigmatization of Asian migrants and would hinder their integration into Australian society.[citation needed] Others, although disagreeing with his views, asserted his right to free speech.[4] Other Australians applauded Blainey's comments believing that white-Australians needed more time to get used to the idea that migrants who were from Asian countries were no different than other newcomers. Some supported Blainey's comments on the grounds that a large influx of Asian immigrants could create social friction and undermine Australia's European-derived culture and institutions.[citation needed]
For the most part, Blainey stayed silent following his comments in Warnambool as others debated the merits of his opinions.[5] Blainey's views were widely reported in overseas countries,[citation needed] particularly in Asia and there was a fear, subsequently discounted, that Australia's trading relations with its Asian neignbours would be affected by his comments.[citation needed] In 1988, Blainey resigned from the University of Melbourne to which he had given most of his working life because of the hostility from many of his colleagues following his speech in Warnambool.[6] More than two decades later, in the more conservative climate of 2005, the University of Melbourne attempted to make restitution for their treatment of Blainey by naming a Chair in Australian history in his honour.[citation needed]
Although Blainey's book Triumph of the Nomads was considered to be a scholarly study into the history of Australia's original inhabitants, his opinions opposing High Court decisions in favour of Aboriginal land rights put him in the line of fire and once again led to accusations of racism.
[edit] Blainey and the History Wars
Blainey has been an important but low-key contributor to the debate over Australian history and settlement often referred to as the History Wars. Blainey coined the term the "Black armband view of history" to refer to those historians, usually leftist, who accused Australians of genocide against Aborigines having previously referred to nationalistic histories as the "three cheers" school.[7]
[edit] Awards
[edit] Bibliography
- The Peaks of Lyell, Melbourne University Press, Melbourne, Vic., 1954.
- The Rush That Never Ended: A History of Australian Mining, Melbourne University Press, Melbourne, Vic., 1963.
- Tyranny of Distance: How Distance Shaped Australia's History, Sun Books, Melbourne, Vic., 1966.
- Triumph of the Nomads: A History of Ancient Australia, Macmillan, South Melbourne, Vic., 1975.
- All for Australia, Methuen Haynes, North Ryde, N.S.W., 1984.
- A Short History of the World, Penguin Books Australia Ltd., Vic., 2000.
- Black Kettle & Full Moon: Daily Life in a Vanished Australia, Penguin Books Australia Ltd., Vic., 2004.
- A Short History of the Twentieth Century, Penguin Books Australia Ltd., Vic., 2006.
[edit] Biography
- (2003) in Deborah Gare, Geoffrey Bolton, Stuart Macintyre and Tom Stannage (eds): The Fuss that Never Ended: The Life and Work of Geoffrey Blainey. Melbourne, Victoria: Melbourne University Press. ISBN 0-522-85034-0.
[edit] References
- ^ Wickham, Dorothy (2005). Professor Emeritus Geoffrey Blainey (1930-); Historian and author; Foundation Chancellor of the University of Ballarat. UB Honour Roll. University of Ballarat. Retrieved on February 11, 2007.
- ^ This Land is all Horizons: Australian Fears and Visions. Boyer Lectures. Australian Broadcasting Corporation (2001). Retrieved on February 11, 2007.
- ^ Letter to the Age of 19 May 1984 signed by 24 historians in quoted in Morgan, Hugh (2006). Can Australia Survive the 21stCentury? (pdf). The Wilfred Brookes Memorial Lecture. Deakin University.
- ^ For example Stuart Macintyre's introductory paper in the Fuss that never ended cited in Champion, Rafe (2004). Historian on His Own. July 2004 - Volume XLVIII Number 7-8. Quadrant. Retrieved on February 11, 2007.
- ^ Speaking in an interview in August 2006, Blainey said "there was a book written against me in 1985, called, I think, Surrender Australia. It was the work of a group of academics, some of whom I knew, and it attacked me in virtually every field in which I'd written. Fortunately, before the book came out, I got some excellent advice from Sir John Bunting, the former head of the Prime Minister's Department, with whom I'd served on the Australia Council. He told me: "You have to acknowledge the book's existence. Write something for the Age and the [Melbourne] Herald, then say nothing at all. In no circumstances must you go on television or radio." ...I followed it to the letter." [1]
- ^ Blainey's comments in interview with Frank Devine of Quadrant published in October 2006
- ^ Gordon, Michael. "Going down in history", The Age, 6 September 2003. Retrieved on 2007-02-11.
