George Brown (1835-1917) was many things during his long life; leader in the Wesleyan Methodist Church in Australasia, explorer, linguist, political activist, apologist for the missionary enterprise, amateur anthropologist, writer, constant traveller, collector of artefacts, photographer and stirrer. He saw himself, at heart, as a missionary.

Keith Woodward has produced an inside account of the intricacies of official politics in the latter stages of the history of the Anglo-French Condominium of the New Hebrides, which will be essential reading for anyone interested in the colonial period of Vanuatu. Woodward spent 25 years in the New Hebrides (1953 to 1978) based in the British Residency and it is his long service which makes his memoir so informative and important.

Coral Mary Bell AO, who died in 2012, was one of the world’s foremost academic experts on international relations, crisis management and alliance diplomacy. This collection of essays by more than a dozen of her friends and colleagues is intended to honour her life and examine her ideas and, through them, her legacy. 

Intellectual, biological and cultural property rights are a powerful and debatable topic. They offer the possibility for protection of rights to intangible resources, including the products of knowledge and creativity. The forces of globalisation have made this subject of immediate, international concern. Struggles for ownership of intellectual property occur between and within local and global arenas.

When lorry drivers in Northampton slapped stickers on their cabs declaring ‘No truck with the Chilean Junta!’ they were doing more than threatening to boycott. They were asserting their own identity as proud unionists and proud internationalists. But what did trade unionists really know of what was happening in Chile? And how could someone else’s oppression become a means to solidify your own identity? The labour movements of Britain and Australia used ‘Chile’ as an impetus for action and to give meaning to their own political expression, though it was not all smooth sailing.

Papua New Guinea is one of the many former British Commonwealth colonies which maintain the criminalisation of the sexual activities of two groups, despite the fact that the sex takes place between consenting adults in private: sellers of sex and males who have sex with males. The English common law system was imposed on the colonies with little regard for the social regulation and belief systems of the colonised, and in most instances, was retained and developed post-Independence, regardless of the infringements of human rights involved. 

The Australian Council for International Development is the peak body of Australian international development NGOs. This book explores ACFID’s history since its founding in 1965, drawing on current and contemporary literature as well as extensive archival material.  The trends and challenges in international development are seen through the lens of an NGO peak body: from the heady optimism of the first Development Decade of the 1960s, through the growth in government support of NGOs in the 1980s, to the challenges of the 2010s.

In the years between the two world wars of the twentieth century leaders in Western countries worried about a food surplus. The hardships of the Great Depression were intensified by a glut of wheat and consequent low prices on the world market. Yet at the same time nutrition scientists protested that significant proportions of populations, even in affluent countries, were unable to afford a diet ‘adequate for health’. Fresh fruits, vegetables, dairy products and meat were out of reach for the poor.

‘I know no place where firm and paternal government would sooner produce beneficial results then in the Solomons … Here is an object worthy indeed the devotion of one’s life’.

Professor Lal has been remarkably successful in combining scholarship with autobiography in Mr Tulsi’s Store. In the essays which cover the author’s childhood and education up to university, diligent scholarship combines with evocative autobiographical details to reveal a philosophical pattern that encompasses the experience of the descendants of all Indian indentured workers everywhere.

Professor Frank Birbalsingh
York University
Canada