Writer
Henry Reynolds
Henry Reynolds is an eminent Australian historian.
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Britain’s ‘enduring stranglehold’ on Australia
Australia is still tied to British legal decisions from 1786. It should come as no surprise that the Uluru Statement of the Heart directly challenges Australia’s entrenched legal doctrine. Continue reading »
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History repeats as Morrison provokes China hostility
The official visit of Chinese President Xi Jinping in 2014 was the high point in Sino-Australian relations. It has been all downhill ever since. Continue reading »
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The terrible effects and disastrous consequences of war. But we keep doing it.
The chaotic end to the war in Afghanistan coincides with a debate in the Senate on a bill which would curtail the unrestrained power of the executive to take the country to war. Continue reading »
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Anzac Day and the frontier wars
Anzac Day in Hobart in 2019 did not turn out in the way that participants expected. The Hobart Mercury explained why the following morning. The front page was dominated by a large and arresting headline. ‘Battle Cry’ it declared and went on to explain that ‘Anzac Day Marchers Highlight Black War.’ Underneath the headline was Continue reading »
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Truth and Treaties: the ongoing legacy of the Uluru statement
The 27th of October 2017 was the most shameful day in Malcolm Turnbull’s tenure as Australia’s Prime Minister. It was the moment when he peremptorily rejected the Uluru Statement which had been addressed to the people of Australia five months earlier. He declared that the projected voice to parliament would not be ‘either desirable or Continue reading »
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Book extract: It’s time for a new museum dedicated to the fighters of the frontier wars
Whether as paramilitary troopers, workers, trackers, guides, servants and sexual partners, many hundreds of Aboriginal Australians were participants in the outward thrust of the frontier. The implication is inescapable. Many Indigenous families have ancestors who were pioneers in the precise meaning of that term. Continue reading »
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Australian ‘patriots’ wrap themselves in the flag of a colony
By choosing to stick with January 26 (1788) as Australia’s National Day, conservatives are celebrating a date that highlights the very worst of British imperialism – a ‘rule of law’ belonging to a tiny aristocratic oligarchy with a vicious criminal code defending private property through capital punishment and transportation. Continue reading »
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In hunting for Chinese spies we hang on for dear life to Anglo-Saxon allies
Like so many members of the security establishment Director of ASIO Duncan Lewis adopted the time-honoured tactic of implicitly saying to the public ‘trust us because we know things you don’t know and which we can’t tell you’. Continue reading »
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The Australian Army’s inauspicious birth. From the Boer War to the Afghanistan War.
With such intense focus on the army’s record in Afghanistan we might look more closely at its history. It had an inauspicious birth on the first of March 1902 in South Africa, three months before the end of the Boer War. Continue reading »
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Those dangerous and subversive sister cities.
Sister cities provide opportunities for coercion, according to Professor John Blaxland. Continue reading »
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China: are we asserting Australia’s independence or America’s?
The recent determination to make an enemy of our important trading partner China is the most egregious foreign policy blunder since John Howard’s reckless decision to join George Bush’s invasion of Iraq. Continue reading »
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When the war on terror turns inward
We now have evidence of a campaign conducted in Australia to attack the credibility and the reputation of individuals and organisations seen as being too close to China. Continue reading »
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The extraordinary ambush of China Matters.
We have been caught in the slipstream of Donald Trump’s increasingly erratic struggle against overwhelming adversity . Continue reading »
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History Hits the Headlines.Our Troubled Past
History haunts many countries at the moment. This is especially true of the United States. But Australia , New Zealand, Britain, France and Belgium are being forced to once again face up to their legacy of colonial brutality and attendant racism. Continue reading »
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The American Alliance: More incantation than inquiry.
Our chosen national heroes are the young men who died fighting for King and Empire on the coast of the Ottoman Empire in 1915. When will our focus shift to the many thousands of indigenous men and women who died fighting for their kin, their customs and their country all over the continent for well Continue reading »
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HENRY REYNOLDS. Australia goes fishing in troubled waters.
A few weeks ago Foreign Minister Marise Payne condemned ‘ China’s actions in the South China Sea’, adding that in recent days the Australian frigate HMAS Parramatta had been conducting exercises with two American naval vessels as they ‘passed through the waters.’ Continue reading »
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HENRY REYNOLDS. Between America and China?
In his Lowy lecture delivered in Sydney last October Prime Minister Scott Morrison declared that ‘Australia does not have to choose between the United States and China.’ Continue reading »
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HENRY REYNOLDS. James Cook and the Contested ‘Discovery’ of Eastern Australia
With the widespread reporting of this year’s diminished Anzac Day, it seems we have forgotten another notable Cook cancellation. Continue reading »
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Thoughts on an unusual Anzac Day
This Anzac Day we should question the relentless militarisation of our history and the cult of the digger. These ideals make it easier for Australian governments to commit to wars overseas and more difficult for critics to engage in serious debate. Continue reading »
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HENRY REYNOLDS supports Pearls and Irritations.
As a daily reader of Pearls and Irritations and an occasional contributor, I am keenly aware of how important it is both to me personally and to the community at large. Continue reading »
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HENRY REYNOLDS.- When will we see a cost-benefit of our meddling in the Middle East?
By the end of this year Australia will have begun the process of removing our armed forces from the Iraq and Afghanistan or at least be considering what can fairly be termed a retreat after a series of engagements lasting almost twenty years. Continue reading »
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HENRY REYNOLDS. Australia Day or dying in a ditch for January 26.
Australia Day divides rather than unites the community which we presume is the key reason for having a national day in the first place. Continue reading »
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HENRY REYNOLDS. ‘Strange situation’: Why Australia must strike a treaty. (SMH 1.6.2019)
In ringing tones the Uluru Statement declares the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander tribes were the first sovereign nations of the Australian continent and possessed it under their own laws and customs. Sovereignty has never been ceded or extinguished, and co-exists with the sovereignty of the Crown. There is, as well, demand for a Voice Continue reading »
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HENRY REYNOLDS. The centre cannot hold.
In a recent article in the New York Times columnist Ross Douthat drew attention to the Australian elections and the cotemporaneous triumph of Narendra Modi in India and of Nigel Farage in Britain’s European elections. Each represented a surge in supporter for right wing populism and what he called’ the global fade of liberalism.’ Continue reading »
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HENRY REYNOLDS. The Debate About Anzus and the Defence of Taiwan.
Last week Pearls and Irritations printed spirited contributions by Hugh White and Cavan Hogue about the future of Anzus and the American Alliance. They were both responding to an earlier paper in The Strategist, the in- house journal of the Australian Strategic Policy Institute, by Paul Dibb entitled “ Australia and the Taiwan contingency.” It Continue reading »
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HENRY REYNOLDS. January 26….. and our Declaration of Dependence.
As we approach another Australia Day, public interest quickens and rhetoric escalates. On both sides of the front line the old trenches are reoccupied and well-known strategies rehearsed. The hostility of indigenous Australians looms large in the thinking of both camps. Opponents of 26 January frequently rest their arguments on the need to respond to Continue reading »
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HENRY REYNOLDS. When will it end?
Three days after the Abbott government was sworn in on the 18th of September 2013 the new defence minister Senator David Johnston made a statement to the media. He told the Sydney Morning Herald that he wanted the military to be ‘battle ready for future conflicts in the unstable Middle East and south Asia.’ After Continue reading »
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HENRY REYNOLDS. The Best of 2018: Australia’s perpetual ‘war footing’.
We should have paid more attention at the time. It was September 2013 and the Abbott government had just been sworn in. The new Defence Minister, Senator David Johnston, gave an interview to a Fairfax journalist which was reported on the front page of the Sydney Morning Herald. The content was truly extraordinary. Continue reading »
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HENRY REYNOLDS. Has the Cavalcade of Commemoration Finally Halted?
With Remembrance Day behind us we may finally have some relief from the relentless commemoration of conflict which began twenty years ago and climaxed with the centenary of the First World War. Historians of the future may well wonder where this obsession with war came from and why we spent more on the centenary than Continue reading »
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HENRY REYNOLDS. Mateship Multiplied.
I was idly trawling through the many programmes available on the hotel’s television and came upon the History Channel. To my surprise there was a feature about what was called Australia’s 100 years of mateship with the United States although the particular focus was on Australians who had worked in Hollywood. I later discovered that Continue reading »
