Overview

This new study offers a timely and compelling account of why past generations of Australians have seen the north of the country as an empty land, and how those perceptions of Australia’s tropical regions impact current policy and shape the self-image of the nation. It considers the origins of these concerns - from fears of invasion and moral qualms about leaving resources lying idle, from apprehensions about white nationhood coming under international censure and misgivings about the natural attributes of the north - and elucidates Australians’ changing appreciations of the natural environments of the north, their shifting attitudes toward race and their unsettled conceptions of Asia.

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9781349905737

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The book is, in many ways, a twentieth-century history of high modernity and failed development in a specific environmental and geographic context. ... This will be the go-to book that documents that long history. (Alison Bashford, Australian Historical Studies, Vol. 48 (2), May, 2017)

Author Information

Russell McGregor is currently Adjunct Professor of History at James Cook University in Townsville, Queensland, Australia. His publications include the award-winning books Imagined Destinies: Aboriginal Australians and the Doomed Race Theory and Indifferent Inclusion: Aboriginal People and the Australian Nation.

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