Latest Articles
The Republican presidential contender is an acquired taste. Given the alternative, it's a taste persnickety conservatives should make the effort to acquire
Sep 09 2024
4 mins
The proportions of Aboriginal children and young people placed in a relative or kin placement or with an Aboriginal foster carer have decreased, and the proportion of Aboriginal children who were reunified with their families has declined.
Sep 09 2024
17 mins
Imperialism’s Day
The Tears of the Rajas: Mutiny, Money and Marriage in India 1805–1905
by Ferdinand Mount
Simon & Schuster, 2015, 757 pages, $39.99
The British Empire in India was “unmentionable” in Britain for decades after the Second World War; the “memory of it was a huge embarrassment”, Ferdinand Mount says in The Tears of the Rajas. Similar distaste seems to apply here for the British imperialism that established modern Australian society.
Were the imperialists goodies or baddies? Mount seems to be saying that for India, as for most things, there is no easy answer; it’s more a question of how it was done. And the comparisons with Australian history are striking. The book reads like a case study in imperialism in its own right. The broadly common pattern goes back at least to Rome.
Both British India and modern Australia evolved from small coastal enclaves, which became bases for an immense spread that the founders did not really imagine. Throughout the nineteenth century sheep,…
Madam: Archbishop Fisher (July-August 2024) does not resist the attacks on his church by the political, social or scientific atheists and those who insist on not being told what to do.
Aug 29 2024
6 mins
To claim Aborigines have the world's oldest continuous culture is to misunderstand the meaning of culture, which continuously changes over time and location. For a culture not to change over time would be a reproach and certainly not a cause for celebration, for it would indicate that there had been no capacity to adapt. Clearly this has not been the case
Aug 20 2024
23 mins
A friend and longtime supporter of Quadrant, Clive James sent us a poem in 2010, which we published in our December issue. Like the Taronga Park Aquarium he recalls in its 'mocked-up sandstone cave' it's not to be forgotten
Aug 16 2024
2 mins
