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Between 1967 and 1971, 280,000 US military personnel visited Sydney on ‘Rest and Recreation’ (R&R) leave from the conflict in Vietnam. During the period in which the R&R program was being negotiated, Australian authorities, along with correspondents to daily newspapers, worried that the presence of large numbers of ‘cashed-up’ Americans would see the public repudiate the R&R scheme, the war and the relationship with the United States. These concerns proved largely unfounded as a majority of Australians welcomed the visiting Americans as both the human face of an alliance deemed critical to the nation’s security and a return of a ‘long lost friend’ from World War II.

African American interest and presence in Australia during the Pacific War was a significant if largely forgotten aspect of a conflict in which racial and colonial issues loomed large. Link...

There is now a sizeable historiography devoted to the US–Australian relationship, particularly during World War Two. Following an early focus on diplomatic, strategic, and economic issues, historia...

Alongside the growing literature exploring Australia's political, strategic, and economic relationships with the nations of the Asia-Pacific, there is an emerging body of scholarship analysing the ...

In late 1960s a powerful myth developed in the United States that Vietnam veterans were spat on when they returned home. A parallel myth survives in Australia with widespread claims that paint or even blood was routinely thrown at returning soldiers. In a 1966 incident, red paint was thrown on Lieutenant Colonel Alex V. Preece as he led the First Battalion through Sydney. The Australian myth remains central to perceptions of Australian Vietnam veterans as despised outsiders and feeds into contemporary demands that Australians support their soldiers and the wars in which they are involved. This paper explores connections between cultural politics in the Unites States and Australia, particularly as they pertain to the contentious legacies of the 1960s.

This paper discusses the challenges of applying standards to the teaching of tertiary-level history. It gives a critical overview of the emerging standards process in Australia, re-emphasising the importance of disciplinary input in producing a workable and acceptable regulatory framework under the aegis of Australia’s recently-established Tertiary Education Quality and Standards Agency (TEQSA). To this end, it argues for the importance of building capacity within the history discipline both to engage with policy makers in coming months, and to take an active role in defining and implementing national standards for tertiary history. It suggests the potential of grassroots initiatives such as the After Standards project to assist historians in meeting this challenge.

Introduction The IMF prescriptions attached to the rescue loans agreed with Indonesia, South Korea, and Thailand during 1997 involved substantial and immediate liberalization, particular]y of controls over foreign ownership, reform of corporate governance and privatization of state-owned enterprises. This was a marked departure from earlier conditions under which liberalization and reforms of these types were seen as part of longer-term development. For many commentators, the demands for such rapid liberalization indicated that the IMF had not only exceeded its remit, but was serving the interests of Western and Japanese business that had long been demanding access to markets and ownership in the stricken economies. (1) However, the IMF policies have been justified in terms of increased foreign participation being necessary for the "cleaning up" and restructuring that neither domestic business communities nor governments were capable of undertaking. (2) Foreign investment in sectors that had previously been effectively domestic monopolies was expected to bring modern business practice, improved corporate governance and increased efficiency, as well as raise productivity and increase competition. (3) The World Bank laid particular emphasis on the importance of corporate reform to sustained economic recovery. (4) Overall, there were views that increased foreign market penetration and ownership would accelerate the recovery of the distressed Asia Pacific economies and the reform of corporate governance. (5) It was widely expected that the liberalization measures, together with the distressed state of the corporate sectors, would result in rapid consolidation of ownership and expansion of foreign ownership. Indeed, many commentators foretold large-scale "fire sales", with foreign companies picking up substantial assets at rock-bottom prices. (6) However, it is argued here that, while there has been significant liberalization of the restrictions on foreign ownership in Thailand, this has not been accompanied by significant restructuring and effective reform of the corporate sector. In addition, while there has been a major increase in foreign participation in Thai registered companies, and some increase in foreign control, the latter has only involved a small proportion of the Thai corporate sector. To a degree, the limited developments in these areas reflects the slow and uncertain course of Thai economic recovery and reform, but, as is outlined in this article, there has been a significant element of resistance to restructuring by the Thai corporate sector, particularly the most heavily indebted elements. This has been facilitated by the established patterns of ownership and cumbersome bankruptcy and merger procedures, all reinforced by popular protest and continuing government support for major business interests, something that became more overt following the January 2001 election of the Thaksin Shinawatra government. This paper is organized under four main headings: liberalization of foreign ownership, foreign ownership in the banking sector, corporate restructuring and reform of the non-financial sector, and the rise and fall of economic nationalism. Liberalization of Foreign Ownership Following the Thai government reaching agreement with the IMF in mid-August 1997 over the US$17.2 bn funding package, some immediate moves were made to liberalize foreign ownership. In October 1997 the government announced that majority stakes would be permitted in the distressed financial sector for up to ten years, after which any holdings over 49 per cent would have to be sold to local investors. (7) Later in the same month the BOI (Board of Investment) made use of its powers of exemption to permit majority sales of Thai companies operating under its promotion scheme in the Bangkok Metropolitan Region and Immediate Environs, provided that the local owners agreed. This was extended to the rest of the country in February 1998. …

In late 1944, Corporal Lois E. Smey, serving with the United States Women’s Army Corps (WAC), wrote to her parents in Cuyahoga County, Ohio: New Guinea was the most beautiful thing I’d ever seen. Like an emerald, so green and verdant and beautiful. Tall palms, sandy beaches, and all the ships in port signaling a welcome and signals flashing from the mountains all around. And then you think—here am I safe and sound and surrounded by people who have all lived through this, and so have I!1

The Pacific War presented innumerable opportunities for the deconstruction of the South Seas tradition. Yet the resilience of the South Seas reflects the tradition’s enduring place in Western culture. Hollywood’s representations of the South Seas, epitomized by the sexually alluring Dorothy Lamour, resonated so emphatically because these movies were reinforcing ideas that were well established in Western culture. The pedagogical power of the South Seas explains Allied servicemen’s excitement at the prospect of encountering the South Pacific. Many service personnel saw their deployment to the Pacific as an opportunity to fulfil their South Seas fantasies. For some men, their initial encounters with the South Pacific lived up to their Hollywood-inspired expectations. For most, however, excitement soon gave way to disappointment and frustration, as the climate, environment, and indigenous people defied naive optimism and denied them intellectual control over their new environment.

In December 1942, Flying Officer Peter Hopton, the son of the Reverend and Mrs. Hopton of Hindmarsh, South Australia, arrived with his Royal Australian Air Force (RAAF) squadron in Port Moresby, Australian New Guinea. Soon after arriving, Hopton told his father, “We haven’t done much investigating of the surrounding countryside but hope to be very soon when we get some time off.” Two days later, in a reassuring letter to his mother, he noted that he was “feeling very fit and enjoying life just like a holiday—with the open air, the interest of it all, the variety.” Having “hitchhiked” 20 miles up the Kokoda Track, Hopton was pleased to report he had seen some of the countryside.3

In 1945 the African American civil rights advocate and war correspondent Walter White declared that the Second World War had “given to the Negro a sense of kinship with other colored—and also oppressed-peoples of the world.” The “struggle of the Negro in the United States,” he contended, was “part and parcel of the struggle against imperialism and exploitation in India, China, Burma, Africa, the Philippines, Malaya, the West Indies, and South America.” Confident that African Americans would be at the vanguard of this international alliance, and recalling the language and ideas of Marcus Garvey, White was “convinced that as time proceeds” the “identification of interests will spread even among some brown and yellow peoples who today refuse to see the connection between their exploitation by white nations and discrimination against the Negro in the United States.”1

In 1944, as the Allied juggernaut was pressing hard on the beleaguered Japanese forces throughout the Pacific, New Zealander Frank Cooze found himself in the “Pacific paradise” of New Caledonia. Although the “soul-destroying boredom” of military life was mitigated by watching American movies, with their depictions of “glamorous Pacific islands,” he lamented that when he subsequently looked “for Dorothy Lamour,” his search was “in vain.” “She must have left hurriedly,” he concluded, “when she found there were no stores—or sarongs!”1

Despite being mentioned often in studies of the African American experience during the Civil War era, Abraham H. Galloway has nonetheless remained a peripheral figure in the historiographymone of those black leaders whose contribution was acknowledged but largely undocumented. As David S. Cecelski explains, however, Galloway was a major figure in the African American community during the late 1850s and 1860s. This meticulously detailed biography depicts Galloway's life as both representative of the torment of slavery and racism as it was experienced by millions of African Americans and exceptional in that he was one of the relatively few black southerners to establish a national reputation for his leadership of the African American community...

Contents Figures Tables Contributors Preface Acknowledgements Abbreviations. 1. Pacific Asia in a Global Context Chris Dixon and David W. Smith 2. The Growth Economies of Pacific Asia in their Changing Global Context Peter Dicken 3. What's in it for us? Images of Pacific Asian Development Dean Forbes 4. The Impact of Foreign Direct Investment on the Geographical Pattern of Foreign Trade Flows with Special Reference to Taiwan Claes Alvstam 5. The Role of the State in Economic Transformation of East Asia Jeff Henderson 6. ASEAN Economies: Continuing Dynamic Growth in the 1900's John Wong 7. Footprints in Space: Spatial Re-structuring in the Asian NICs 1950-1990 Terry McGee and George Lin 8. China: The Consequences of Liberalisation Denis Dwyer 9. Transition in a Centrally Planned Economy: the Impact and Potential of Economic Reference in Vietnam Richard Vokes and Ingrid Palmer 10. North Korea in Pacific Asia Aiden Foster-Carter 11. Towards the Pacific Century? Chris Dixon and David W. Smith

A collection of essays examining the various ways in which 19th and 20th century European rule has affected the economic, social and political geography of post-colonial countries. A series of richly textured, local studies conveying the nature of colonial experience and examining in detail the key issues in the debate about the nature of imperialism. Although each chapter stands alone as an independent statement with its own focus and conclusions, they all address the central theme and provide a comparative analysis of similar processes.

Between 1941 and 1945, as the U.S. military machine sent millions of Americans—and American culture—around the world, several thousand African Americans spent time in Australia. Armed with little knowledge of Australian racial values and practices, black Americans encoutered a nation whose long-standing commitment to the principle of "White Australia" appeared to rest comfortably with the segregative policies commonly associated with the American South. Nonetheless, while African Americans did encounter racism and discrimination—practices often encouraged by the white Americans who were also stationed in Australia during the war—there is compelling evidence that their experiences were not always negative. Indeed, for many black Americans, Australians' apparent open-mindedness and racial views of white Britons and others with whom African Americans came into contact during the war. Making use of U.S. Army censors' reports and paying attention to black Americans' views of their experiences in Australia, this article not only casts light on an aspect of American-Australian relations that has hitherto recieved scant scholarly attention and reveals something about the African American experience, but also offers insights into race relations within the U.S. armed forces.