History

Perhaps no other social attitude has changed so markedly in this century as the prevailing public reaction towards the question of the limitation of population growth and the use of birth control devices.

This is the jubilee history of a unique Australian institution. Legacy, initially a club of World War I veterans, aiming to help each other re-establish themselves in civilian life, quickly became an organization concerned to assist the dependents of dead or incapacitated servicemen. Though the age of legatees is rising, the number of elderly widows increasing, and the number of dependent children declining, this remains its raison d’être. Forty-seven Legacy clubs today spend nearly $3,000,000 annually on some 100,000 widows and children in addition, personal assistance – leading youth groups, acting as advisers to bereaved families – continues the paramount part of Legacy’s service.

Few families in Italian history have enjoyed a fame greater than the Medici whose name has become inseparably linked with the Renaissance. It is paradoxical, therefore, how little has really been known, until recently, of how Cosimo, the founder of its predominance in Florence, paved the way for the establishment of the power it was to exercise over that city. Nicolai Rubinstein, some years ago in his Government of Florence under the Medici, showed how its ascendancy was maintained through a complex system of electoral controls, but it is only now, with the appearance of Australian historian Dale Kent’s study, The Rise of the Medici, that a clear picture is beginning to emerge of the process by which the Medici first issued from the ranks of the Florentine ruling class to the position of dominance which they gradually consolidated over the six decades following Cosimo’s triumphant return from exile in 1434.

One of the joys of reading Jack Fingleton on cricket is that the personality of the author illuminates every page. It is not merely that Fingleton’s style is the man himself; his work transcends a Parnassian obsession with manner of expression. Just as one expects existentialism in every scene of a Sartre play and Shavian philosophy in every line of a Shaw prologue, the reader would be disappointed if he did not discover a highly individualistic and forceful view­point on cricket eloquently expounded in each chapter of a Fingleton book.

Fifteen years ago the British urban historian Asa Briggs wrote a short but stimulating essay on Melbourne in the Victorian era in his Victorian Cities. In thirty pages he not only challenged the conventional assumptions of Australian historiography of that time (specifically deploring the lack of systematic study of the Australian city) but also threw out various ideas about how to approach Australian urban history. It took some time for historians here to take up Briggs’ challenge, but with the publication of Graeme Davison’s The Rise and Fall of Marvellous Melbourne Australian urban history has come of age.

This is a most interesting, readable and, in a larger context, valuable book. It deals with written recollections collected from some 215 living veterans from the First A.I.F. (some have since died) – a list of their names is included as an Appendix – detailing how they felt about the War as it approached and when it commenced, and also what led them to enlist at the time. Each informant is allowed to speak for himself, with his own peculiar spelling, punctuation end style of writing; in effect, the outcome provides a broad picture of the social origins and nature of this cross-section of soldiers.

A virile energetic people inhabits the island of Malaita in the middle Solomons. From the time of first contact Malaitamen were prized for their ability to work, but they had to be handled cautiously, or their inherited pride and confidence would turn them to rebellion. Those who live on the sea-coasts are readily adaptable to innovation when they can see value in it, but they abandon tradition with some misgivings.

Bibliomania is a disease that has afflicted men, and occasionally women, in many walks of life. Some of the most famous cases have been extremely wealthy bachelors, like Richard Heber in England and David Scott Mitchell in Australia, whose only interest in life was collecting books and manuscripts. At the other end of the spectrum have been men who were leaders in business, the professions or politics, yet who still had the time, energy and money to amass huge collections. Sir John Ferguson in Australia, John Pierpont Morgan and Henry Huntington in America, William Gladstone in England and Sir George Grey in New Zealand fall into the latter category.