Robert Dare

Robert Dare was educated at the University of Melbourne and at Oxford, where he was one of A.J.P. Taylor’s last doctoral students, preparing a thesis on the British Labour Party. He taught British, European, American, and Australian History at the University of Adelaide, and was the inaugural head of its School of History and Politics before his retirement.

Robert Dare reviews 'Unfinished Empire: The Global Expansion of Britain' by John Darwin

December 2013–January 2014, no. 357 • 28 November 2013

The main title of John Darwin’s new book is simple but mischievous. Its primary purpose is to announce that he sees empire as an activity rather than a thing. People, millions of them, made it, and remade it constantly, over long stretches of time; it was always in progress, always being finished. They built empire from a variety of motives, some commercial, some geopolitical, some religious, so ... (read more)

Robert Dare reviews 'Labour and the Politics of Empire: Britain and Australia 1900 to the Present' by Neville Kirk

November 2011, no. 336 • 25 October 2011

In 1902 the New Zealander William Pember Reeves published a pioneering study of social innovations in Australia and New Zealand. He wrote it, he said, for the ‘increasing number of students in England, on the Continent, and in America who are sincerely interested in them’. Neville Kirk wants us to remember that British interest in innovation down under continued well beyond Federation. Almost ... (read more)