Textbooks
Browse or search textbooks or find out more about the publications' authors. Download the ebook for free or buy a print-on-demand copy.
Displaying results 2601 to 2610 of 2617.
Search for New Guinea's boundaries: from Torres Strait to the Pacific »
Publication date: 1966
This is the first study of the origin and evolution of the borders that Western powers have imposed upon New Guinea. Making extensive use of diplomatic correspondence, official documents, and Australian and Dutch patrol reports from the end of the nineteenth century up to the 1960s, Dr van der Veur gives the reader an insight into what happens when diplomats and officials of different colonial administrations are faced with periodic crises over invisible boundaries. In this work the Irian boundary receives the most intensive treatment, but attention is also paid in separate chapters to the peculiar border between Queensland and Papua, and the lines which separate the Trust Territory of New Guinea from Papua and the British Solomons. In his conclusion the author surveys the heritage of absentee boundary-making and general unconcern, and points to several idiosyncracies and unsolved problems. The text is supported by some excellent maps, while the reader interested in consulting the original documents, most of which have not been published previously, may do so in a companion volume, Documents and Correspondence on New Guinea{u2019}s Boundaries. Search for New Guinea{u2019}s Boundaries will be of great interest not only to specialists in international relations and political geography but also to the general reader, for it treats a topic which is gaining in international importance in a scholarly and straightforward manner, often touched with humour.
Documents and correspondence on New Guinea's boundaries »
Publication date: 1966
This is a collection of various documents, correspondence and memoranda dealing generally with the boundaries up to 1962. They have been reproduced as faithfully as is possible in this format from original material in Canberra, London and The Hague. Some of the translations are official; others have been made for this volume. Documents and Correspondence on New Guinea{u2019}s Boundaries is a complementary volume to Dr van der Veur{u2019}s main study Search for New Guinea{u2019}s Boundaries which is described on the back flap of this book.
Water and land: two case studies in irrigation »
Publication date: 1966
The two studies in this book appraise Australia{u2019}s largest irrigation schemes, those of the Murray-Murrumbidgee river systems. Because an absolute shortage of water and a notoriously erratic rain fall severely restrict industrial growth and closer settlement, most Australians accept - in fact, demand - government-implemented water conservation projects, including irrigation. The authors{u2019} primary concern in this book is not with the economic wisdom of such irrigation development: they accept some expansion as inevitable. But they condemn acceptance of specific projects in which official assessments stress engineering or agronomic issues at the expense of less spectacular but equally vital socio logical or economic aspects. This book analyses, and contributes substantially to the understanding of, the problems of irrigation, both in Australia and abroad: problems as acute and controversial in Egypt, India, Asia, or America as they are in Australia.
The politics of patriotism: the pressure group activities of the Returned Servicemen's League »
Publication date: 1966
As Australia's largest veterans' organization, the R.S.L. has been the subject of bitter controversy. The League has often been attacked, and as frequently defended, but it has never been examined in depth by an impartial observer. This book is the first detailed and dispassionate examination. It is not an 'official', or even an authorized account of the R.S.L.'s pressure group activities - while the League provided unrestricted access to its files and records, the organization's leaders exercised no censorship or control over the final results. The author examines the R.S.L.'s attempts to influence the Commonwealth government against a background of continual internal conflict over tactics. He describes the constant approaches to the government on pensions, medical benefits, war service homes, soldier settlement, employment preference, and gratuities, as well as on such controversial subjects as defence and anti-communism, all of which serve to mark the R.S.L. as one of Australia{u2019}s most active pressure groups. The book also points to the danger implicit in the R.S.L.'s attempt to monopolize the virtues which it claims are uniquely Australian. In its rigid enforcement of the exclusiveness of Anzac Day, it is argued, lie both the League's peculiar strength and its greatest problems.
New Guinea on the threshold: aspects of social, political, and economic development »
Publication date: 1966
New Guinea today is the largest, if not the most populous, non-self-governing territory outside the Communist world. It includes some of the most recently contacted primitive races known to mankind, and its population comprises hundreds of tribal groups whose native languages are mutually unintelligible. The geographical, political, and social fragmentation of the country, its wide range of economic activities, from the most primitive subsistence gathering to the most sophisticated internal air transport system, and the growing political pressures from the outside world, present a fascinating concatenation of problems to those concerned with the future of this land. In this book a group of experts, who have made a special study of Papua and New Guinea, examine the present situation in that Territory from the point of view of their own specialities, and consider what this bodes for the future.
Australian English: an historical study of the vocabulary 1788-1898. »
Publication date: 1966
Australian English has been variously received: English visitors have called it barbarous and corrupt; Australians have seen it as a unique and distinctive national language. Dr Ramson{u2019}s study places it in the context of other branches of the English language, of which it is a natural extension. He examines the main sources and character of the vocabulary the nineteenth-century settlers brought to Australia, the histories of the words they borrowed or adapted to meet the needs of their new environment: words such as billy, dinkum, and larrikin, from the regional dialects of the British Isles, muster and station, put to new use in Australia, or new words such as stockman and stockyard, borrowings from Aboriginal languages, from American English (whence bush and bushranger), and from immigrant minorities. Earlier attempts to record and describe Australian English have aroused popular interest and also certain partisan and polemical attitudes. Dr Ramson demonstrates the need for restraint and care in making such claims, and argues that Australian English is neither barbarous nor uniquely national; basically it is Standard English, its extensions occasioned by a new environment but fed by the settlers{u2019} existing vocabulary and controlled by their link with the mother country.
The Prime Minister's policy speech: a case study in televised politics »
Publication date: 1966
Before the Australian federal election of 1963 the then Prime Minister, Sir Robert Menzies, announced that he would deliver his policy speech over nation-wide television. Instead of his usual mixed audience of supporters and hecklers he would have in front of him only a selection of Liberal Party members, and would himself be quite unaware of the immediate impact of the speech. This method of presenting policy had never before been used in Australia. This is a study of about 250 Canberra voters who viewed the policy speech. It examines the effect of this intensive political communication, delivered by one of Australia{u2019}s most effective political leaders, and traces its impact on the knowledge, attitudes, and opinions of the group. It is the first such detailed study undertaken in Australia, and provides both a testing of theories of cognitive equilibrium in relation to voting behaviour and an examination of the use of television in political communication.
Printers and politics: a history of the Australian printing unions, 1850-1950 »
Publication date: 1966
Printing from movable type began in Europe in the fifteenth century, and those who commanded 'the art and mystery of printing' had a special place in society as men of skill, learning, and comfortable means. When the industrial revolution lowered the status of their craft, printers formed their first trade unions in an attempt to preserve or regain established privileges. Some of those who sought work in Australia during the gold rushes formed unions in the 1850s from which present-day unions are descended. This book outlines the struggles of the various Australian printing unions during their first hundred years, through economic depression, war, and technological revolution. Newspaper compositors were Australia's first printing unionists, and one measure of their success is that they remain today the highest-paid of all craftsmen. The author shows the printing unions in the context of the labour movement as a conservative force that relied mainly on arbitration - although one of their few strikes actually earned them a profit. Today they are one of Australia{u2019}s largest and most prosperous unions and one of the largest printing unions in the English-speaking world.
The formation of the Australian Country Parties »
Publication date: 1966
This book analyses the social and eco nomic factors which led to the rise of the Country Parties in Australia, and shows that they were related to the agrarian parties of the Canadian Prairie Provinces and the American Mid-West. All these movements, Dr Graham suggests, reflected the social insecurity of the countrymen as well as their determination to improve their economic status and to gain a more secure position in the political structure of their community. The marketing and price controls in troduced during World War I had a direct effect on the agricultural and pas toral interests of Australia, and members of this faction entered politics with the object of forming efficient and vigorous pressure groups and country parties in Parliament. By 1920, such parties had been formed in all but the Tasmanian Parliament, and tlte National and Labor Parties found themselves experiencing the utmost diffi culty in coping with the new arrival. In their first years, the Country Parties experimented with a variant of the balance-of-power strategy, used by several of the Labor Parties before the war, but by 1923 they had adopted the policy of co-operating with the Nationalists in government and parliament. A new balance had been achieved within the Australian party system, but this book suggests that the ease with which the Country Party was tamed has been exaggerated, and that the new role was not accepted without dissent by the Country Parties{u2019}rank and file.
American investment in Australian industry »
Publication date: 1966
Never before in Australia{u2019}s history has there been so much popular concern over the growth of foreign investment in the economy. Why can Australians not buy shares in so many of the large foreign-owned subsidiaries? Are they being exploited by highly profitable foreign companies? Is Australia losing control of its own economic destiny? These and other questions are increasingly worrying not only the ordinary citizen but also senior government ministers. In this controversial book, written as much for the interested layman as for the economist, Dr Brash attempts answers to many of these questions. His study deals only with American corporate investment in Australian manufacturing industry, but his conclusions are significant for any country that is concerned about large amounts of foreign capital invested in its industry. In the author{u2019}s own words {u2018}the conclusions of the study may well be unpopular with both Right and Left{u2019}.