Australian Journal of Politics and History最新文献

Nearly 10% of the 3 million Americans who served in Vietnam spent one week of “R&R” leave in Australia—principally in Sydney. This “friendly invasion” constitutes a substantial neglected legacy of the conflict. Across dozens of oral history interviews and memoirs, US servicemen recall with fondness their week-long respite in a nation that was at once comfortably familiar and safely distinct. Their preconceptions of Australia were framed by racialised and sexualised imaginaries. Comforted by the prospect of spending time in a predominantly “White” nation, White Americans were candid about their desire to enjoy the company of Australian women. At the same time, perceptions of Australian racism and immigration exclusion framed the expectations of African American servicemen. Reality, however, was more complicated, and undermines easy assumptions. While Australian memory of the scheme centres on its supposedly dramatic role in Sydney's nightlife district, Kings Cross, the experiences of Americans were far more diverse than such narratives would suggest. Perhaps surprisingly, the experiences of African American and Latino servicemen in Australia were also frequently welcoming and non-discriminatory. Individual Australians were more colour-blind in their everyday interactions than their governments, reinforcing scholarly findings regarding the reception of Black servicemen during the Second World War.

Marriage has long been a legacy of overseas deployment for Australian servicemen. In the case of the war in Vietnam, Australian men often interacted with local women on base, in civilian spaces, or in passing. Occasionally, couples would form private relationships and, in some cases, marry and return to Australia at the end of deployment. Vietnamese war bride marriages challenged Australian military norms and societal pressures. Despite having previously received little attention, these marriages—set against the Australian context of 1960s counter-revolutions, 1970s anti-war protests and continued anxieties around race nearing the end of the White Australia Policy—were indeed political. This paper is primarily concerned with the complex gender and racial dynamics of the intimate lives of soldiers and examines how couples met, courted, and married during the Vietnam War. This paper will address the ways marriages were controlled by military procedure, defined by the public and experienced by the couples themselves. Despite being small in numbers, historicising Vietnamese war bride marriages allows for a unique exploration of cross-cultural relationships during the war and shows how the intimate legacy of public military service interacts with the private lives of those deployed to Vietnam.

This article explores the challenges faced by American and Australian advisors working in Phuoc Tuy province, South Vietnam, from 1968 to 1973, with a focus on the persistent belief that ineffective Vietnamese leadership was the principal obstacle to a successful pacification process. It examines how advisors identified underperformance among officials and officers in Phuoc Tuy and pursued either coaching or removal as solutions—efforts that were repeatedly undermined by cultural barriers, systemic corruption, and structural weaknesses within the Republic of Vietnam. The study argues that the RVN’s failure to develop and retain capable leaders was symptomatic of broader institutional failings, and that the limitations of the advisory model—combined with a flawed understanding of Vietnamese society and the complex wartime environment—contributed to a cycle of superficial progress and recurring setbacks. Ultimately, the experience in Phuoc Tuy challenges optimistic assessments of pacification success and illustrates the broader difficulties of nation-building during wartime.

Over the past decade, the ideas of democratic socialism have gained significant popularity, especially in the United States. However, public discourse—both among critics and supporters—often presents conflicting and highly debatable concepts of democratic socialism, especially when it comes to interpretations of its relationship to the concept of social democracy. This article explores the historical relationship between these two concepts. It examines the relationship between democratic socialists and Russian Bolshevism, as well as the political order of the USSR. Additionally, the paper analyses the relationship between the concepts of socialism and democracy, which is characteristic of the social democratic ideological and political tradition. It also reveals the relationship between democratic socialism and the concept and practice of nationalisation, as far as it is relevant to this analysis. The paper argues that, in historical terms, democratic socialism is essentially (almost) synonymous with social democracy.

Australian public debates about race have featured intense contests about free speech and identity, including about the federal Racial Discrimination Act (RDA). While these developments may be understood as reflecting the contemporary ascendency of “culture war” politics, they may in fact follow a familiar pattern of political contestation around racism and anti-racism. This article seeks to retrieve some of the history of this contestation by examining parliamentary debates associated with the first two legislative contests relating to the RDA: in 1975 surrounding the enactment of the Act, and in 1994–1995 around the proposed inclusion in the Act of provisions relating to the prohibition of racial hatred. While each set of parliamentary debates was concerned with specific questions of legislative development, our analysis reveals significant continuities. Debates about racial discrimination in Australia have served as sites of contest over multiculturalism and national identity and reveal the shifting parameters of acceptable debate about racism. They also illustrate how political conflicts in Australia, rather than merely exhibiting national tendencies, replicate rhetorical patterns that broadly characterise ideological contests between progress and reaction. This article, in particular, draws upon Albert O. Hirschman's work on the “rhetoric of reaction,” and analyses how Australian political argumentation about race has frequently centred on certain ideas of “perversity,” “futility” and “jeopardy.”

The sharing of revenue between the states to achieve fiscal equality has long been an important and internationally notable feature of Australian federalism. While horizontal fiscal equalisation is always prone to dispute, unprecedented conflict erupted in the Australian system in the second decade of this century and resulted in changes that brought the long-standing principles of the system into question. Central to both the origins and the crisis of the equalisation system was the State of Western Australia, a long-time beneficiary transformed into a much-aggrieved donor. This article outlines the history and nature of the system before analysing the causes, character, and consequences of the 2018 changes.

This article surveys the state of European history in Australia as measured by the 2023 conference of the Australasian Association for European History (AAEH). It places the current study of European history in the context of the crises of the contemporary world and asks how the eye of the European historian can be usefully mobilised to inform the present moment. Despite challenges history and humanities generally face at Australian universities today, the AAEH conference and the articles stemming from it demonstrated the scope and depth of research on European history of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, and its relevance to understanding the current socio-political turbulences around the world. The special issue features seven articles which bring historical insight and sensibility to contemporary reflections in the fields of international relations, migration and diaspora, and gender studies, as well as new approaches to understanding and remembering the past today.