Richard White

The dilemma for confessedly nationalist intellectuals has always been what to do about their strange bed-fellows, the scoundrels who have sought a last refuge under the same patriotic blanket. Generally they have distanced themselves with glib distinctions between good and bad nationalisms, left and right nationalisms, radical and conservative and larrikin and respectable nationalisms. Often, too, they looked back – radicals to the 1890s, conservatives to the Great War – and contrasted an idealised past nationalism with contemporary selfishness. How often does discussion of Australian nationalism not get past the 1890s?

Despite the rhetoric of globalisation, it is impossible to buy an airline ticket online in the United States with a credit card issued abroad. When I needed a ticket from Boston to Washington last year, and after numerous unsuccessful arguments with airline websites and 1800 numbers, I dropped into the local Harvard travel agency. There was a welcome familiarity in discovering that it was a branch of STA, one of more than 400 branches operated around the world by the Australian-based company.

The editors of this book declare that cultural history is fashionable, so fashionable that it stands in for what might otherwise be known as ‘general history’ or even just ‘history’. ‘When historians set out to write the history of everything,’ they claim, ‘these days they are most likely to imagine themselves writing cultural history.’

Why, then, is it necessary to assemble a collection of essays on the subject? It cannot be simply to celebrate the triumph of this form of history, since many of the contributors are still urging its attractions. The purpose might be to demonstrate the range and accomplishment of cultural history in Australia, since the collection includes some distinguished local practitioners – except that their contributions to the genre are well established and readily available. Alternatively, such collections can provide the opportunity to consider the theory and method of cultural history, and quite a few of the contributors do so – but mostly with reference to their own practice.