Brad Underhill
Brad Underhill lectures at Deakin University. He is a past recipient of the Hank Nelson Memorial award for best PhD internationally on any aspect of Papua New Guinea’s history, a Deakin University Vice-Chancellor’s Prize for academic excellence, and the Bowater Trust medal for best all-round undergraduate student at Deakin University. He has published widely on Papua New Guinea.
https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3255-5994
Preparing a Nation? »
The New Deal in the Villages of Papua New Guinea
Authored by: Brad Underhill
Publication date: 2024
Preparing a Nation?, based on extensive archival research, addresses perennial questions of Australian colonialism in Papua New Guinea. To what extent did Australia prepare Papua New Guinea for independence? And what were the policies and the ideologies behind colonial development, implemented after World War Two? A key innovation of this book is to take these questions from policy desks in Canberra and Port Moresby to the villages of four administrative areas: Chimbu, Milne Bay, Sepik and New Hanover. How successful were Australian colonial planners in designing and implementing programs that could ameliorate the potential harm of market capitalism and develop ‘new’ socioeconomic structures that would combine a disparate people into an ‘imagined community’, capable of becoming an independent nation-state in the far distant future? Colonial intention is contrasted with Indigenous experience. Bradley Underhill explores an Australian governmental tendency to prioritise colonial control over Indigenous autonomy in circumstances where subjugated people do not necessarily fit within an expected narrative of compliant or westernised ‘native’.
‘I expect it will become the standard reference for its subject, which covers a pivotal aspect of Australia’s colonial administration.’
— Bill Gammage
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