During the Boer War in South Africa, Australian George Ramsdale Witton (1874 -1942) served as a lieutenant in the Bushveldt Carbineers until he was sentenced to death for murder after the shooting of nine Boer prisoners.

Witton's scathing political indictment of the British Empire during the Boer War, originally published in 1907. The basis for the movie Breaker Morant. Witton's main assertion, as indicated by the book's provocative title, was that he, Morant, and Handcock were made scapegoats by the British authorities in South Africa - that they were made to take the blame for widespread British war crimes against the Boers, and that the trial and executions were carried out by the British for political reasons, partly to cover up a controversial and secret no prisoners policy by Kitchener, and partly to appease the Boer government over the killing of Boer prisoners, in order to facilitate a peace treaty; the Treaty of Vereeniging was signed on 31 May 1902.

*Includes pictures
*Includes contemporary accounts
*Includes online resources and a bibliography for further reading
When one house dies, a second lives. - Maori proverb
In 1769, Captain James Cook's historic expedition in the region would lead to an English claim on Australia, but before he reached Australia, he sailed near New Zealand and spent weeks mapping part of New Zealand's coast. Thus, he was also one of the first to observe and take note of the indigenous peoples of the two islands. His instructions from the Admiralty were to endeavor at all costs to cultivate friendly relations with tribes and peoples he might encounter, and to regard any native people as the natural and legal possessors of any land they were found to occupy. Cook, of course, was not engaged on an expedition of colonization, so when he encountered for the first time a war party of Maori, he certainly had no intention of challenging their overlordship of Aotearoa, although he certainly was interested in discovering more about them.
It was on October 6, 1769 that land was sighted from the masthead of the HMS Endeavour. The ostensible purpose of the expedition was to observe the transit of Venus across the Sun, but in sealed orders, to be opened only when these astrological observations were complete, he was instructed to search for evidence of the fabled Terra Australis. Approaching from the east, having rounded Cape Horn and calling in at Tahiti, the Endeavour arrived off the coast of New Zealand, and two days later it dropped anchor in what would later be known as Poverty Bay. No sign of life or habitation was seen until on the morning of the 9 October when smoke was observed to be rising inland, indicating that the territory was indeed inhabited. Cook and a group of sailors set off for shore in two boats and leaving four men behind to mind the boats, the remainder set off inland over a line of low hills. The sentries, however, were surprised by the arrival of a group of four Maori, who adopted an aggressive posture, and when one lifted a lance to hurl, he was immediately shot down.
The impression that all of this left on Cook and the scientific members of the expedition was mixed. By then there had already been several encounters with Polynesian people scattered about the South Pacific, and although occasionally warlike, there were none quite so aggressive as the Maori. In fairness, it must be added that the Maori understanding of Cook's appearance, and what it represented was by necessity partial, and in approaching it they simply fell back on default behavior, applicable to any stranger approaching their shores. The presence on board the Endeavour of Tupaia allowed for a certain amount of superficial exchange, and a little trade, but little else, and Cook was intrigued by this upright, warlike and handsome people.
Taking into account similarities of appearance, customs and languages spread across a vast region of scattered islands, it was obvious that the Polynesian race emerged from a single origin, and that origin Cook speculated was somewhere in the Malay Peninsula or the East Indies. In this regard, he was not too far from the truth. The origins of the Polynesian race have been fiercely debated since then, and it was only relatively recently, through genetic and linguistic research, that it can now be stated with certainty that the Polynesian race originated on the Chinese mainland and the islands of Taiwan, the Philippines, Malaysia and Indonesia. Oceania was, indeed, the last major region of the Earth to be penetrated and settled by people, and Polynesia was the last region of Oceania to be inhabited. The vehicle of this expansion was the outrigger canoe, and aided by tides and wind patterns, a migration along the Malay Archipelago, and across the wide expanses of the South Pacific, began sometime between 3000 and 1000 BCE, reaching the western Polynesian Islands in about 900 BCE.

A beautifully written, fiercely intelligent and boldly conceived book that puts the author's unlikely marriage to a Maori man into the context of the history of Western colonization of New Zealand and the South Pacific.

Come on Shore and We Will Kill and Eat You All is the story of the cultural collision between Westerners and the Maoris of New Zealand, told partly as a history of the complex and bloody period of contact between Europeans and the Maoris in the late 18th and early 19th centuries, and partly as the story of Christina Thompson's marriage to a Maori man.

As an American graduate student studying history in Australia, Thompson traveled to New Zealand and met a Maori known as Seven. Their relationship is one of opposites: he is a tradesman, she is an intellectual; he comes from a background of rural poverty, she from one of middleclass privilege; he is a native, she descends directly from colonizers. Nevertheless, they shared a similar sense of adventure and a willingness to depart from the customs of their families and forge a life together on their own.

In this book, which grows out of decades of reading and research, Thompson explores cultural displacement through the ages and the fascinating history of Europeans in the South Pacific, beginning with Abel Tasman's discovery of New Zealand in 1642 and Cook's circumnavigation of 1770. Transporting us back and forth in time and around the world, from Australia to Hawaii to tribal New Zealand and finally to a house in New England that has ghosts of its own, Come on Shore brings to life a lush variety of characters and settings. Yet at its core, it is the story of two people who meet, fall in love, and are forever changed.

A multilayered, highly informative and insightful book that blends memoir, historical and travel narrative...vivid and meticulously researched.--San Francisco Chronicle

Everything Australia wants to achieve as a country depends on its capacity to understand the world outside and to respond effectively to it.

In Fear of Abandonment, expert and insider Allan Gyngell tells the story of how Australia has shaped the world and been shaped by it since it established an independent foreign policy during the dangerous days of 1942. Gyngell argues that the fear of being abandoned - originally by Britain, and later by our most powerful ally, the United States - has so far driven how Australia acts in the world.

Spanning events as diverse as the Malayan Emergency, the White Australia Policy, the Vietnam War, Whitlam in China, apartheid in South Africa, East Timorese independence and the current South China Sea dispute, this vivid narrative history reveals how Australia has evolved as a nation on the world stage.

Fear of Abandonment is a gripping and authoritative account of the way Australians and their governments have helped create the world we now inhabit in the twenty-first century. In revealing the history of Australian foreign affairs, it lays the foundation for how it should change.

Stuart Macintyre, one of Australia's most highly regarded historians, revisits A Concise History of Australia to provoke readers to reconsider Australia's past and its relationship to the present. Integrating new scholarship with the historical record, the fifth edition of A Concise History of Australia brings together the long narrative of Australia's First Nations' peoples; the arrival of Europeans and the era of colonies, convicts, gold and free settlers; the foundation of a nation state; and the social, cultural, political and economic developments that created a modern Australia. As we enter the third decade of the twenty-first century, Macintyre's Australia remains one of achievements and failures. So too the future possibilities are deeply rooted in the country's past endeavours. A Concise History of Australia is an invitation to examine this past.

First there was Girt. Now comes ...

True Girt

In this side-splitting sequel to his best-selling history, David Hunt takes us to the Australian frontier.

This was the Wild South, home to hardy pioneers, gun-slinging bushrangers, directionally challenged explorers, nervous indigenous people, Caroline Chisholm and sheep. Lots of sheep.

True Girt introduces Thomas Davey, the hard-drinking Tasmanian governor who invented the Blow My Skull cocktail, and Captain Moonlite, Australia's most infamous LGBTI bushranger. Meet William Nicholson, the Melbourne hipster who gave Australia the steam-powered coffee roaster and the world the secret ballot. And say hello to Harry, the first camel used in Australian exploration, who shot dead his owner, the explorer John Horrocks.

Learn how Truganini's death inspired the Martian invasion of Earth. Discover the role of Hall and Oates in the Myall Creek Massacre. And be reminded why you should never ever smoke with the Wild Colonial Boy and Mad Dan Morgan.

From Wall Street to the supreme court, how the world's largest banks control the money markets and crush competition

In the 1980s and 90s, amid an explosion in international money flows, a handful of people saw a new financial future and staked claims in it, triggering a battle to control the world's money markets. With phenomenal profits at stake, the conflict would go all the way to the United States Supreme Court, in a case that involved not just the largest Wall Street banks but also the tech behemoths of Silicon Valley. The extraordinary story of Alice Corporation, a company created to reimagine financial markets, brings together an unlikely cast of characters: renowned author Kate Jennings, international banking insider Ian Shepherd, Enron CEO Jeffrey Skilling, German-born World War II historian Sigrid MacRae, J.P. Morgan deputy chair Roberto Mendoza - and his dog, Stanley. In the tradition of Michael Lewis's Flash Boys and The Big Short, Alice is a story of ground-breaking insights, legal intrigue and improbable friendships. Pinpointing the likely causes of the next financial crisis, Alice reveals the fight to build a safer, fairer financial future.

Girt. No word could better capture the essence of Australia ...

In this hilarious history, David Hunt reveals the truth of Australia's past, from megafauna to Macquarie - the cock-ups and curiosities, the forgotten eccentrics and Eureka moments that have made us who we are.

Girt introduces forgotten heroes like Mary McLoghlin, transported for the crime of felony of sock, and Trim the cat, who beat a French monkey to become the first animal to circumnavigate Australia.

It recounts the misfortunes of the escaped Irish convicts who set out to walk from Sydney to China, guided only by a hand-drawn paper compass, and explains the role of the coconut in Australia's only military coup.

Our nation's beginnings are steeped in the strange, the ridiculous and the frankly bizarre. Girt proudly reclaims these stories for all of us.

Not to read it would be un-Australian.

About the author: David Hunt is an unusually tall and handsome man who likes writing his own biographical notes for all the books he has written (one). He has worked as an historical consultant and comedy writer for television, and also has a proper job.

A sneaky, sometimes shocking peek under the dirty rug of Australian history.
John Birmingham

Hilarious and insightful -- Hunt has found the deep wells of humour in Australia's history.
Chris Taylor, The Chaser

NATIONAL BESTSELLER - This incredible true history of the colonization of Australia explores how the convict transportation system created the country we know today.

One of the greatest non-fiction books I've ever read ... Hughes brings us an entire world. --Los Angeles Times

Digging deep into the dark history of England's infamous efforts to move 160,000 men and women thousands of miles to the other side of the world in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, Hughes has crafted a groundbreaking, definitive account of the settling of Australia.

Tracing the European presence in Australia from early explorations through the rise and fall of the penal colonies, and featuring 16 pages of illustrations and 3 maps, The Fatal Shore brings to life the history of the country we thought we knew.

Almost half of the convicts who came to Australia came to Van Diemen's Land. There they found a land of bounty and a penal society, a kangaroo economy and a new way of life.

In this book, James Boyce shows how the convicts were changed by the natural world they encountered. Escaping authority, they soon settled away from the towns, dressing in kangaroo skin and living off the land. Behind the official attempt to create a Little England was another story of adaptation, in which the poor, the exiled and the criminal made a new home in a strange land.

This is their story, the story of Van Diemen's Land.

Winner of the 2009 Tasmania Book Prize, the 2008 Colin Roderick Award and the H.T. Priestley Memorial Medal

Shortlisted for the 2009 Prime Minister's Literary Award, the 2009 NSW Premier's Literary Awards, the 2010 Adelaide Festival Awards for Literature, the 2008 Age Book of the Year Awards, the 2008 Victorian Premier's Literary Awards, the 2008 Queensland Premier's Literary Awards, the 2008 NSW Premier's History Awards and the 2008 Australian Book Industry Awards

New Zealand was the last major landmass, other than Antarctica, to be settled by humans. The story of this rugged and dynamic land is beautifully narrated, from its origins in Gondwana some 80 million years ago to the twenty-first century. Philippa Mein Smith highlights the effects of the country's smallness and isolation, from its late settlement by Polynesian voyagers and colonisation by Europeans - and the exchanges that made these people Maori and Pakeha - to the dramatic struggles over land and recent efforts to manage global forces. A Concise History of New Zealand places New Zealand in its global and regional context. It unravels key moments - the signing of the Treaty of Waitangi, the Anzac landing at Gallipoli, the sinking of the Rainbow Warrior - showing their role as nation-building myths and connecting them with the less dramatic forces, economic and social, that have shaped contemporary New Zealand.

Pearl divers & sea rovers in Australian seas.

Mr. Idriess reveals to the reader the technique of pearling with him, the reader boards the lugger for the pearling grounds, makes the acquaintance of the skipper and crew, dons the diving dress and descends to the sea floor, sees the wonders of a new and beautiful, fascinating and frightful world, shares the divers' dangers, gathers the shell, opens it on the lugger, thrills at the sight of baroque and pearls, sells them to the dealer and watches as the rough pearl is transformed by delicate and skilful hands into a thing of exquisite loveliness. - Canberra Times, 1937

His extraordinary thoroughness in inquiry... his almost microscopic accuracy of observation, and his almost poetic gift of natural description - not to speak of narrative power often seen in harmonious combination with this cannot be too often insisted upon as positive and peculiar merits. - Sydney Morning Herald, 1937

Did you know New Zealand was the first country to offer universal suffrage?

Many people today only started dreaming of visiting New Zealand after discovering it was the beautiful filming place of the Lord of the Rings series. However, ignoring the two islands in the Pacific Ocean is not a modern thing. The remote lands of New Zealand were the last large, livable lands to be discovered, inhabited, and colonized.

Since the Polynesians (the first humans in New Zealand who would become known as the Māori) were the most modern humans to settle in an uninhabited land, it is no surprise New Zealand has always been ahead of its time. Despite its late settlement, New Zealand has been one of the most rapidly modernizing nations in the world. New Zealand was the first country to introduce full democracy, women's suffrage, state pensions, and state housing. New Zealand has a history unlike any other nation, from its late inhabitation to its unusually respectful colonization, involving hundreds of Māori chiefs signing an agreement to allow European settlement.

Although New Zealand was the last inhabited country and one of the most isolated developed regions in the world, it has been significantly involved in historical events, adding even more interest to its complex and rich history.

Intrigued? Pick up this book to learn more about the following:

• Extinct animals that used to call New Zealand home;
• The arrival of the Polynesians and what that meant for the region;
• The early European explorations and who is credited with discovering the island nation;
• Colonization efforts and their impact on the Māori;
• How New Zealand was run under European control;
• The progressive changes that took place;
• And so much more!

The stories of the hard-rock miners' shooting wars, young Elizabeth Gurly Flynn (the Rebel Girl of contemporary sheet music), the first sit-down strikes and Free Speech fights, Emma Goldman and the struggle for birth control access, the Pageant for Paterson orchestrated in Madison Square Garden, bohemian radicals John Reed and Louise Bryant, field-hand revolts and lumber workers' strikes, wartime witch hunts, government prosecutions and mob lynching, Mexican-American uprisings in Baja, and Mexican peasant revolts led by Wobblies, hilarious and sentimental songs created and later revived--all are here, and much, much more.

The IWW, which has been organizing workers since 1905, is often cited yet elusive to scholars because of its eclectic and controversial cultural and social character. Wobblies presents the IWW whole, scripted and drawn by old-time and younger Wobbly and IWW-inspired artists.

Contributors include Carlos Cortez (former editor of the Industrial Worker), Harvey Pekar (author of American Splendor), Peter Kuper (MAD's Spy vs. Spy), Sue Coe, Seth Tobocman, Chris Cardinale, Ryan Inzana, Spain Rodriques, Trina Robbins, Sharon Rudahl, and the circle of artists for World War 3 Illustrated.

The saga of Australia continues with ... GIRT NATION

David Hunt tramples the tall poppies of the past in charting Australia's transformation from aspiration to nation -an epic tale of charlatans and costermongers, of bush bards and bushier beards, of workers and women who weren't going to take it anymore.

Girt Nation introduces Alfred Deakin, the Liberal necromancer whose dead advisors made Australia a better place to live, and Banjo Paterson, the jihadist who called on God and the Prophet to drive the Australian infidels from the Sudan 'like sand before the gale'. And meet Catherine Helen Spence, the feminist polymath who envisaged a utopian future of free contraceptives, easy divorce and immigration restrictions to prevent the 'Chinese coming to destroy all we have struggled for!'

Thrill as Jandamarra leads the Bunuba against Western Australia, and Valentine Keating leads the Crutchy Push, an all-amputee street gang, against the conventionally limbed. Gasp as Essendon Football Club trainer Carl von Ledebur injects his charges with crushed dog and goat testicles. Weep as Scott Morrison's communist great-great-aunt Mary Gilmore holds a hose in New Australia. And marvel at how Labor, a political party that spent a quarter of a century infighting over how to spell its own name, ever rose to power.

The Age Book of the Year 2012
'A first-class piece of historical writing' - The Sunday Age

Shortlisted for the Australian History Prize in the 2012 Prime Minister's Literary Awards, the History Prize in the 2012 Queensland Literary Awards, and the Non-Fiction Prize in the 2012 Adelaide Festival Awards for Literature, 2012 Victorian Premier's Literary Awards and 2011 WA Premier's Book Awards.

With the founding of Melbourne in 1835, a flood of settlers began spreading out across the Australian continent. In three years more land - and more people - was conquered than in the preceding fifty.

In 1835 James Boyce brings this pivotal moment to life. He traces the power plays in Hobart, Sydney and London, and describes the key personalities of Melbourne's early days. He conjures up the Australian frontier - its complexity, its rawness and the way its legacy is still with us today. And he asks the poignant question largely ignored for 175 years: could it have been different?

With his first book, Van Diemen's Land, Boyce introduced an utterly fresh approach to the nation's history. 'In re-imagining Australia's past, ' Richard Flanagan wrote, 'it invents a new future.' 1835 continues this untold story.

'Boyce is a graceful and robust stylist and a fine storyteller and he organises his material beautifully. His book ... deserves a wide audience.' The Sunday Age

'1835 is a date to be remembered and this is a book to be pondered.' The Sun-Herald

About the author

James Boyce's first book, Van Diemen's Land, won the Tasmania Book Prize and the Colin Roderick Award and was shortlisted for the NSW, Victorian and Queensland premiers' literary awards, as well as the Prime Minister's award. Tim Flannery described it as 'a brilliant book and a must-read for anyone interested in how land shapes people.' Boyce wrote the Tasmania chapter for First Australians, the companion book to the acclaimed SBS TV series. He has a PhD from the University of Tasmania, where he is an honorary research associate of the School of Geography and Environmental Studies.

This vivid, multi-dimensional history considers the key cultural, social, political and economic events of Australia's history. Deftly weaving these issues into the wider global context, Mark Peel and Christina Twomey provide an engaging overview of the country's past, from its first Indigenous people, to the great migrations of recent centuries, and to those living within the more anxiously controlled borders of the present day.

This engaging textbook is an ideal resource for undergraduate students and postgraduate students taking modules or courses on the History of Australia. It will also appeal to general readers who are interested in obtaining a thorough overview of the entire history of Australia, from the earliest times to the present, in one concise volume.

According to persistent rumours, the Australian government suppressed the book because its untold story of a slice of colonial history was an embarrassment to the British Empire.

Opens a window on the Boer War, politics of the empire, and the life of enlisted soldiers of the time.

George Witton's Scapegoats of the Empire was published in 1907; however, only seven copies of the book survived. According to persistent rumours, the Australian government suppressed the book because its untold story of a slice of colonial history was an embarrassment to the British Empire.

George Witton wrote the book to show that he, Breaker Morant and Handcock, who fought in the second Boer war as members of the Bushveldt Carbineers regiment of the British army were scapegoated by the British authorities in South Africa. They were court-martialled for the war crime of summarily executing twelve Boer prisoners of war, which they admitted. However, they claimed that they were obeying the unwritten, but widely-known take no prisoners policy of Lord Kitchener.

Both Morant and Handcock were executed by firing squad in February 1902, allegedly to appease the Boer government in order to facilitate the peace Treaty of Vereeniging signed in May 1902, which ended the Second Boer War.

George Witton served twenty-eight months in prison, after which he returned to Australia, and wrote this gripping account.

George Ramsdale Witton (28 June 1874 - 14 August 1942) was a lieutenant in the Bushveldt Carbineers in the Boer War in South Africa.

Harry Breaker Morant (9 December 1864 - 27 February 1902), a larger-than-life character, is a major figure in the book. He was born to parents who ran a British workhouse but passed himself off as well-educated and a member of the British upper class, creating romantic legends about his past. He went to Australia for the colonial experience and was variously a drover, a horseman, a bush poet and balladeer, a petty criminal and a military officer. Morant and Handcock have become folk heroes in modern Australia. Their court-martial and death have been the subject of books, a stage play, and an award-winning Australian New Wave movie by director Bruce Beresford, depicting them as Australian icons and martyrs.

New Zealand was the last country in the world to be discovered and settled by humankind. It was also the first to introduce full democracy. Between those events, and in the century that followed the franchise, the movements and the conflicts of human history have been played out more intensively and more rapidly in New Zealand than anywhere else on Earth. The Penguin History of New Zealand, a new book for a new century, tells that story in all its colour and drama. The narrative that emerges in an inclusive one about men and women, Maori and Pakeha. It shows that British motives in colonising New Zealand were essentially humane; and that Maori, far from being passive victims of a 'fatal impact', coped heroically with colonisation and survived by selectively accepting and adapting what Western technology and culture had to offer. This book, a triumphant fruit of careful research, wide reading and judicious assessment, was an unprecedented best-seller from the time of its first publication in 2003.

Many developed countries restructured relations between state and economy from the late 1970s into the 1990s. Among them, New Zealand went far, fast, and left a clear trail, making it possible to study economic restructuring as it occurred, with all the debates, uncertainty, surprises, mistakes, and accomplishments this entailed. Adam Smith's Islands reveals the inside life of a government determined to revolutionize its nation's politics and economy. While the 1980s economic restructuring of members of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development and former Warsaw Pact countries can seem like a foregone conclusion from the vantage point of the twenty-first century, John Weaver examines how local and global institutions had to come together to implement social adjustments in New Zealand. Mounting evidence that the state had not functioned as an effective manager split the business community and primary producers between defenders of subsidization and free-market insurgents. Reforms undertaken by the governing Labour Party included abandoning currency controls, privatizing state-run businesses, ending a multitude of open and disguised subsidies, tightening fiscal responsibility, and reforming taxation. Adam Smith's Islands focuses on the verifiable: direct primary sources from dozens of state collections and deposits of personal papers. The archival cornucopia informing this history supports a narrative that has little in common with intellectual histories of neoliberalism. To understand how the relationship between the economy and the state changed, we need to grasp how and why core institutions, practices, and cultural beliefs shed some of their once potent legitimacy. Through the lens of New Zealand, Adam Smith's Islands examines larger questions about policy dilemmas, the global flow of capital, and the sustainability of social adjustments in economic restructuring. In so doing, it casts new light on the formation and history of what is casually labelled today as the neoliberal state.