Joan Beaumont reassesses the impact of the Great Depression in Australia

Abstract

For Australians, like the inhabitants of many nations, the first half of the twentieth century was an era of immense turbulence. Two world wars separated by a Great Depression shaped, indeed scarred, the memories of several generations. For those born in the 1890s, like my own grandparents, service in World War One was soon followed by economic hardship, then witnessing their own offspring marching back to the horrors of war. In this important book, Joan Beaumont suggests that, for Australians at least, the Great Depression was less traumatic than the two world wars and as a result has received less attention from scholars. She concludes that its impact has been overstated: ‘a more nuanced, less pessimistic view ... seems warranted’ (458). At the same time, though, she believes that this was the worst economic crisis Australia has faced, which might imply that we have never really had it bad in peacetime. The 1890s, which has received even less overall coverage, is surely also a strong candidate for the worst of times. Financial crises, drought and industrial conflict together cast a dark shadow over much of colonial Australia during that decade. Nonetheless, Beaumont provides a sensible, balanced interpretation of the Depression’s impact. Such a study, she suggests, is long overdue because race, gender, and memory have displaced class, labour relations and the economy in recent decades of Australian historiography. While ‘starvation did not stalk the streets of Depression Australia’ (215), hunger and malnutrition were evident, as were unemployment, homelessness, and itinerancy. Unemployment, of course, rose but perhaps not by as much, nor for as long, as many had initially feared. Secular trends in wellbeing and health – such as rising life expectancy and falling infant mortality rates – were barely interrupted. As in most crises, economic or otherwise, the most vulnerable took a disproportionate share of the burden, including the poor, the young, the old, Indigenous Australians, new migrants, and single women. Despite the rhetoric of the time, there was no ‘equality of sacrifice’. It would have been interesting to hear more about how Australia compared in terms of impact and policy responses with other nations. Britain faced enduring structural unemployment as the traditional staple industries collapsed in the old northern industrial