Geoffrey Blainey

Professor Geoffrey Blainey AC (born 11 March 1930), is one of Australia's most significant historians. He is eminent both in academic circles and in the public mind, particularly after a controversy in 1984 over immigration policy.

Blainey was born in Melbourne and raised in a series of Victorian country towns before attending Wesley College and the University of Melbourne. While at university he was editor of Farrago, the newspaper of the University of Melbourne Student Union. He was appointed to a teaching post at the University of Melbourne in 1962, becoming Professor of Economic History in 1968, Professor of History in 1977, and then Dean of Melbourne's Faculty of Arts in 1982. From 1994 to 1998 Blainey was foundation Chancellor at the University of Ballarat.

Career

His first major project in the 1950's was, as an author and researcher working on the history of the Mount Lyell Mining and Railway Company, at Queenstown, Tasmania when a significant number of the older residents could remember the beginnings of the community. The resultant book is one of the few company and local histories in Australia to achieve six editions. He has since published 32 books, including his highly acclaimed, A Short History Of The World. His works have ranged from sports and local histories to interpreting the motives behind the British settlement of Australia in The Tyranny of Distance, covering over two centuries of human conflict in The Causes of War, and examining the optimism and pessimism in Western society since 1750 in The Great See-Saw.

Blainey has had an exceptionally long and distinguished career in Australian academia. He was a Professor of Economic History and later the Ernest Scott Professor of History at the University of Melbourne. He held a Chair in Australian Studies at Harvard University. He is listed as one of the Australian Living Treasures. Geoffrey Blainey was Chairman of the Australia Council for four years and Chairman of the Australia-China Council from its inception in 1979 until June 1984. In 2001, he was the Chairman of the National Council for the Centenary of Federation. From 1994 to 1998, he was the Foundation Chancellor of the University of Ballarat.

He has been a controversial figure too, and according to the Australian parliament is most often associated with radical right-wing politics [2]. Blainey has also been accused of being anti-Asian immigration to Australia, leading to claims of racism. He has been closely aligned with the government of John Howard in Australia, with the Prime Minister shadowing Blainey's conservative views on some issues, especially the view that Australian history has been hijacked by social liberals.

Among many other posts, Blainey has served on the Council of Australian War Memorial since 1997, the Council of National Council for the Centenary of Federation since 1997, and the Council of the Royal Humane Society of Australasia since 1997. He writes sporadic columns regarding history for The Australian a national newspaper.

In 2001, Blainey presented the Boyer Lectures on the theme This Land is all Horizons: Australian Fears and Visions.

Views on Asian immigration

In March 1984, Blainey commented to a group of Rotarians in the Southern Victorian town of Warrnambool that public opinion would not support the rate of Asian immigration to Australia. Speaking of South East Asian immigrants, he said: "Rarely in the history of the modern world has a nation given such preference to a tiny ethnic minority of its population as the Australian Government has done in the past few years, making that minority the favoured majority in its immigration policy." He further stated: "As a people, we seem to move from extreme to extreme. In the past 30 years the government of Australia has moved from the extreme of wanting a white Australia to the extreme of saying that we will have an Asian Australia and that the quicker we move towards it the better."

These and other comments, later expanded upon in a book entitled All for Australia, caused some controversy, and 24 historians from the University of Melbourne signed a public letter distancing themselves from his views. Many of Blainey's colleagues argued that his views were divisive and would inflame racism in Australia.

For the most part, Blainey stayed silent following his comments in Warnambool as others debated the merits of his opinions. Blainey's views were widely reported in overseas countries, particularly in Asia and there was a fear, subsequently discounted, that Australia's trading relations with its Asian neignbours would be affected by his comments. In 1988, Blainey resigned from the University of Melbourne to which he had given most of his working life because of the hostility from many of his colleagues following his speech in Warnambool. More than two decades later, in the more conservative climate of 2005, the University of Melbourne attempted to make restitution for their treatment of Blainey by naming a Chair in Australian history in his honour.

Although Blainey's book Triumph of the Nomads was considered to be a scholarly study into the history of Australia's original inhabitants, his opinions opposing High Court decisions in favour of Aboriginal land rights put him in the line of fire and once again led to accusations of racism.

Blainey and the History Wars

Blainey has been an important but low-key contributor to the debate over Australian history and settlement often referred to as the History Wars. Blainey coined the term the "Black armband view of history" to refer to those historians, usually leftist, who accused Australians of genocide against Aborigines having previously referred to nationalistic histories as the "three cheers" school.

Awards

• Order of Australia (1975).
• Companion in the Order of Australia (2000).

Bibliography

• The Peaks of Lyell, Melbourne University Press, Melbourne, Vic., 1954.
• A Centenary History of the University of Melbourne, Melbourne University Press, Carlton, Vic.; London, Cambridge University Press, 1957.
• Mines in the Spinifex: The Story of Mount Isa Mines, Angus and Robertson, Sydney, N.S.W., 1960.
• The Rush That Never Ended: A History of Australian Mining, Melbourne University Press, Melbourne, Vic., 1963.
• A History of Camberwell, Jacaranda Press in association with the Camberwell City Council, Brisbane, 1964.
• Tyranny of Distance: How Distance Shaped Australia's History, Sun Books, Melbourne, Vic., 1966.
• The Rise of Broken Hill, Macmillan of Australia, Melbourne, Vic., 1968.
• Across a Red World, Macmillan, Melbourne, Vic., 1968.
• The Steel Master: A Life of Essington Lewis, Macmillan of Australia, South Melbourne, Vic., 1971.
• The Causes of War, Macmillan, London, 1973.
• Triumph of the Nomads: A History of Ancient Australia, Macmillan, South Melbourne, Vic., 1975.
• A Land Half Won, Macmillan, South Melbourne, Vic., 1980.
• Gold and Paper 1858-1982: A History of the National Bank of Australasia, Macmillan, South Melbourne, 1983.
• Our Side of the Country: The Story of Victoria, Metheun Haynes, North Ryde, N.S.W., 1984.
• All for Australia, Methuen Haynes, North Ryde, N.S.W., 1984.
• The Great Seesaw: A New View of the Western World, 1750-2000, Macmillan, South Melbourne Vic., Basingstoke, 1988.
• A Game of Our Own: The Origins of Australian Football, Information Australia, Melbourne, Vic., 1990.
• Odd Fellows: A History of IOOF Australia, Allen & Unwin, Sydney, N.S.W., 1991.
• Blainey, Eye on Australia: Speeches and Essays of Geoffrey Blainey, Schwartz Books, Melbourne, Vic., 1991.
• Jumping Over the Wheel, Allen & Unwin, St. Leonards, N.S.W., 1993.
• The Golden Mile, Allen & Unwin, St. Leonards, 1993.
• A Shorter History of Australia, William Heinemann Australia, Port Melbourne, Vic., 1994.
• White Gold: The Story of Alcoa of Australia, Allen & Unwin, St. Leonards, N.S.W., 1997.
• In Our Time, Information Australia, Melbourne, Vic., 1999.
• A History of the AMP 1848-1998, Allen & Unwin, St Leonards, N.S.W., 1999.
• A Short History of the World, Penguin Books Australia Ltd., Vic., 2000.
• Black Kettle & Full Moon: Daily Life in a Vanished Australia, Penguin Books Australia Ltd., Vic., 2004.
• A Short History of the Twentieth Century, Penguin Books Australia Ltd., Vic., 2006.

Biography

• Deborah Gare, Geoffrey Bolton, Stuart Macintyre and Tom Stannage (eds), ed. (2003). The Fuss that Never Ended: The Life and Work of Geoffrey Blainey. Melbourne, Victoria: Melbourne University Press. ISBN 0-522-85034-0. {{cite book}}: |editor= has generic name (help)CS1 maint: multiple names: editors list (link)

External links

• Works by Geoffrey Blainey
• Works about Geoffrey Blainey
• ABC Interview with audio