The question of how to maintain the continuity of diplomacy while developing democracy without military intervention is an old and new issue. The challenge can be described as a dilemma between democracy and diplomatic coherence. This dilemma is not unique to the twenty-first century; it has been a constant challenge to the development of democracy. In non-Western countries, democratisation originated in the nineteenth century and has had many successes and failures. After the Russo-Japanese War, political parties began to take power in Japan.

When James Boswell famously lamented the irrationality of war in 1777, he noted the universality of conflict across history and across space – even reaching what he described as the gentle and benign southern ocean nations. This volume discusses archaeological evidence of conflict from those southern oceans, from Palau and Guam, to Australia, Vanuatu and Tonga, the Marquesas, Easter Island and New Zealand. The evidence for conflict and warfare encompasses defensive earthworks on Palau, fortifications on Tonga, and intricate pa sites in New Zealand.

The second issue of International Review of Environmental History for 2021 features contributions on limpets and global environmental history, US bird conservation, soyabean agriculture in South America, settler environmental change in Aotearoa New Zealand, woodlands, communities and ecologies in Australia, and irrigation and agriculture in Australia.

How can power over others be transformed to ‘power with’? It is possible to transform many institutions to build societies with less predation and more freedom. These stretch from families and institutions of gender to the United Nations. Some societies, times and places have crime rates a hundred times higher than others. Some police forces kill at a hundred times the rate of others. Some criminal corporations kill thousands more than others. Micro variables fail to explain these patterns. Prevention principles for that challenge are macrocriminological.

There is no bigger policy agenda in the East Asian region than connectivity. Costs of international connectivity are indeed falling, in the movement of goods, services, people and data, leading to greater flows, and to the reorganisation of business and the emergence of new forms of international transactions. There are second-round effects on productivity and growth, and on equity and inclusiveness.

This ethnographic dictionary is the result of Hans Fischer’s long-term fieldwork among the Wampar, who occupy the middle Markham Valley in Morobe Province, Papua New Guinea (PNG). Their language, Dzob Wampar, belongs to the Markham family of the Austronesian languages. Today most Wampar speak not only Wampar but also PNG’s lingua franca, Tok Pisin. Six decades of Wampar research has documented the extent and speed of change in the region.

The 2020 Olympics put a spotlight on Japan’s crisis governance capabilities. Whether it be in the sphere of social issues, domestic political economy or foreign policy, Japan’s capacity to manage ‘slow-burn’ crises will be a primary test for the country’s policymakers and citizens alike in coming years. This edition of East Asian Forum Quarterly looks at these challenges, including the COVID-19 pandemic, digital governance, women’s rights in the #MeToo era, foreign policy, natural disaster response and tone-party control of Japan’s government.

‘In 1993, Manning Clark came under severe (posthumous) attack in the pages of Quadrant by none other than Peter Ryan, who had published five of the six volumes of Clark’s epic A History of Australia. In applying what he called “an overdue axe to a tall poppy”, Ryan lambasted the History as “an imposition on Australian credulity” and declared its author a fraud, both as a historian and a person. This unprecedented public assault by a publisher on his best-selling author was a sensation at the time and remains lodged in the public memory.

In 1883, the New South Wales Board for the Protection of Aborigines was tasked with assisting and supporting an Aboriginal population that had been devastated by a brutal dispossession. It began its tenure with little government direction – its initial approach was cautious and reactionary. However, by the turn of the century this Board, driven by some forceful individuals, was squarely focused on a legislative agenda that sought policies to control, segregate and expel Aboriginal people.

The years 1921–57 marked a period of immense upheaval for Australia as the nation navigated economic crises, the threat of aggressive Japanese expansion and shifting power distributions with the world transitioning from British leadership to that of the US. This book offers a reassessment of Australia’s foreign policy origins and maturation during these tumultuous years. Successive Australian governments carefully observed these global and regional forces.