Manning Clark was a true Australian great, although I'll be honest and say the 4-stars could easily have slipped down to a 3. This is the volume that [a:Geoffrey Dutton|329598|Geoffrey Dutton|https://s.gr-assets.com/assets/nophoto/user/u_50x66-632230dc9882b4352d753eedf9396530.png] (contemporaneously with this history's publication in 1980) called the masterpiece of the set in his wonderful [b:The Australian Collection: Australia's Greatest Books|4340201|The Australian Collection Australia's Greatest Books|Geoffrey Dutton|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1545612726l/4340201._SX50_.jpg|4388105]. I think, if nothing else, it's certainly emblematic of the set.

Clark details Australia's history from the days of the gold rush and Eureka Stockade in the 1850s, to the celebrations for the country's centenary in 1888. It is a period in which Australians are beginning to argue about whether to federate the states, are beginning to move away from the Catholic/Protestant divide, and in which the typical white enemies like the Irish and the English face their first threats from non-Anglo migration. It is, of course, the high watermark of the British Empire under Queen Victoria, but also a time of much crisis in Europe and the USA.

Clark - an alarmingly skilled historian - had spent his later life combing the archives of Australia to find the stories of individuals from all levels of life. He is criticised by conservative historians for his focus on the negative, for his vision of Australia as a struggle for power in which those without get trampled in the dirt, be they the Irish, women, Aboriginals, Chinese immigrants, the poor, or the convicts. I can hardly profess to being impartial when I say that I dispute their argument. It has always been clear that power resides in the hands of the few, and even now at the end of the 2010s we watch as many of the same battles play out in new (but strikingly similar) arenas.

That is not to clear Clark of accusations of bias, of course not. He was - especially later in life - a victim of his world view, and determined to present it. This is a rambling history (polite people would say 'sprawling') filled with his love of lengthy sentences and the desire to quote - and footnote - everyone from Aeschylus to Dickens. (I haven't read the abridged one-volume version of Clark, but I can see its appeal!) Nevertheless for me, the literary nature of this history is part of its glory. It can't replace those that attempt to be impartial, or those that provide worthy if conservative viewpoints (Clark's great frenemy [a:Geoffrey Blainey|248532|Geoffrey Blainey|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1482893611p2/248532.jpg] being the obvious example). Or even, I suppose, other great progressive historians such as [a:Robert Hughes|48890|Robert Hughes|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1312251489p2/48890.jpg]. But it is an important, pressing, beautifully outraged addition to the canon. Clark asks us - most importantly - to remember that no tradition is there because it is so. No. Traditions, cultures, aristocracies: they all emerge from the power struggle and that seemingly eternal desire of those who have made it in the door to close it rapidly behind them.

As an example, my 2019 self was struck by this passage, written in the late 1970s, referring to the transition in the 1850s from solo gold prospectors (most of whom never made a cent, or pissed away small winnings on a night's drinking) to corporate, industrial mining:
"In the eyes of the digger, companies, capital and machinery in their colossal proportions, threatened the 'whole cherished vocation of individual mining', and his freedom of action. Those who continued to wield the pick and the shovel became like men who had been superseded by the march of human progress. They became lost, bewildered and frightened men who were just as wild in their fears as they had been previously in their hopes... Henceforth they looked for a scapegoat on which to explode that anger of men who had asked for bread and been offered a stone. At the same time as they feared the loss of their economic freedom, they became afraid that those men in high places were plotting to deprive them of another freedom - their freedom as men."

No wonder, when [a:Patrick White|50783|Patrick White|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1245343908p2/50783.jpg] was reading these books, he remarked: "Interesting to see how we have remained the same pack of snarling mongrel dogs." ( )