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Electronic access restricted; authentication may be required, 9780674061521 (alk. paper), American Council of Learned Societies History E-Book Project, (heb) heb32244.0001.001, http://hdl.handle.net/2027/heb.32244, Permission must be received for any subsequent distribution in print or electronically. Please contact info@hebook.org for more information.

The book is a joint effort of eight academics and journalists, Europe specialists from six countries (Australia, Germany, Poland, Slovenia, the United Kingdom and the United States). They give sometimes divergent views on the future of the so-called “European Project”, for building a common European economy and society, but agree that cultural changes, especially changes experienced through mass media, are rapidly taking place. One of the central interests of the book is the operation of the large media centre located at the European Commission in Brussels – the world’s largest gallery of permanently accredited correspondents. Jacket notes: The Lisbon Treaty of December 2009 is the latest success of the European Union’s drive to restructure and expand; yet questions persist about how democratic this new Europe might be. Will Brussels’ promotion of the “European idea” produce a common European culture and society? The authors consider it might, as a culture of everyday shared experience, though old ways are cherished, citizens forever thinking twice about committing to an uncertain future. The book focuses on mass media , as a prime agent of change, sometimes used deliberately to promote a “European project”; sometimes acting more naturally as a medium for new agendas. It looks at proposed media models for Europe, ranging from not very successful pan-European television, to the potentials of media systems based on national markets, and new media based on digital formats. It also studies the Brussels media service, the centre operated by the European Commission, which is the world’s largest concentration of journalists; and ways that dominant national media may come to serve the interests of communities now extending across frontiers. Europe and the Media notes change especially as encountered by new EU member countries of central and eastern Europe.

Literally thousands of annals, chronicles, and histories were produced in Italy during the Middle Ages, ranging from fragments to polished humanist treatises. This book is composed of a set of case studies exploring the kinds of historical writing most characteristic of the period. We might expect a typical medieval chronicler to be a monk or cleric, but the chroniclers of communal and Renaissance Italy were overwhelmingly secular. Many were jurists or notaries whose professions granted them access to political institutions and public debate. The mix of the anecdotal and the cosmic, of portents and politics, makes these writers so engaging to read. While chroniclers may have had different reasons to write and often very different points of view, they shared the belief that knowing the past might explain the present. Moreover, their audiences usually shared the worldview and civic identity of the historians, so these texts are glimpses into deeper cultural and intellectual contexts. Seen more broadly, chronicles are far more entertaining and informative than narratives. They become part of the very history they are describing.

This paper focuses on the allegations of malpractice launched against Australian historians by Keith Windschuttle in The Fabrication of Aboriginal History. The paper explores in particular Windschuttle's interpretation of the practices and protocols of historical scholarship. It argues that this issue is crucial to assessing the validity of the claims advanced in The Fabrication. The paper's immediate objective is twofold: to determine what scholarly standards Windschuttle is applying to the works he subjects to close scrutiny; and to ask whether the standards he applies are up-to-date, appropriate, and widely shared by the international community of practising historians.

Keith Windschuttle unleashed a storm of controversy with the publication of The Fabrication of Aboriginal History: Volume One, Van Diemen’s Land, 1803-1847 (2002; reprinted with corrections 2003). In a series of events unusual for works of this kind, Windschuttle’s book received considerable media exposure: almost immediately it became the focal point of impassioned debate. The debate moreover continues and promises to be with us for some time. The Fabrication is in fact the first of a projected series of volumes in which the author proposes to reexamine the early history of relations between White settlers and the indigenous populations of Australia (Windschuttle, 2003c: 3-4). The title Windschuttle chose for the book says a great deal about its contents. While purporting to rewrite a chapter of early Australian history, Windschuttle is in fact more concerned with examining recent Australian historiography. The Fabrication derives its power from being an act of accusation. Windschuttle’s real intent is to expose what he sees as gross malpractice within the Australian historical profession. His chief accusation is that a number of leading academic historians—including Lyndall Ryan and Henry Reynolds—have falsified the picture of race relations in early Australia. They have, according to Windschuttle, unduly over-emphasized conflict and violence as their main themes in discussing relations between Whites and Blacks. Windschuttle criticizes Ryan for using the term genocide to describe settler behavior towards the indigenous Tasmanians (Windschuttle, 2003c: 4, 13; Ryan, 1996: 255). He chastises Reynolds for depicting the Tasmanian Aborigines as engaged in a guerrilla war to defend their lands against the White invaders. He deplores the way both historians stress that British settlement of Tasmania proceeded through a process of physical elimination of the native populations.

Should biography have a place within a conference like the present one? Does biography have a legitimate role to play in humanities and social science research as conceived and practiced today, in the twenty-first century? Or is biography, as Bourdieu (1986: 69) once claimed, a cheat: “one of those common sense notions that have somehow managed to sneak their way into scientific discourse‿?