Crisis, Conflict And Consensus
Condition: SECONDHAND
This is a secondhand book. The jacket image is a photograph of the exact copy we have in stock. This image shows the condition of this book. Further condition remarks are below.
Condition remarks:
Book: Fair
Jacket: Wear and tear with damage
Pages: Tanning and foxing
Few nations are forged without fire, and Crisis, Conflict and Consensus by Bill Murray is a penetrating account of the turbulent political and social forces that shaped Australia's colonial and early national identity. Set against the backdrop of a young and restless nation — one where tall ships still carried the fates of settlers, convicts, and colonisers — Murray chronicles the clashes of power, ideology, and ambition that defined Australian governance from its earliest days. The central argument is clear and compelling: Australia's political character was not inherited peacefully, but hammered out through repeated confrontations between competing interests, ideologies, and classes. Murray writes with the authority of a scholar deeply immersed in the primary record, presenting a narrative that is both analytically rigorous and vividly grounded in historical detail. The tension between colonial authority and emerging democratic impulses, between labour and capital, and between imperial loyalty and national self-determination runs through every chapter like a fault line. Crisis, Conflict and Consensus ultimately argues that it was precisely these unresolved tensions — never fully suppressed, only temporarily managed — that gave Australian democracy its peculiar resilience. For anyone seeking to understand how a penal colony became a federation, this is essential and electrifying reading.
Author: Bill Murray
Format: Hardback
Genre: Australian history
Condition remarks:
Book: Fair
Jacket: Wear and tear with damage
Pages: Tanning and foxing
Few nations are forged without fire, and Crisis, Conflict and Consensus by Bill Murray is a penetrating account of the turbulent political and social forces that shaped Australia's colonial and early national identity. Set against the backdrop of a young and restless nation — one where tall ships still carried the fates of settlers, convicts, and colonisers — Murray chronicles the clashes of power, ideology, and ambition that defined Australian governance from its earliest days. The central argument is clear and compelling: Australia's political character was not inherited peacefully, but hammered out through repeated confrontations between competing interests, ideologies, and classes. Murray writes with the authority of a scholar deeply immersed in the primary record, presenting a narrative that is both analytically rigorous and vividly grounded in historical detail. The tension between colonial authority and emerging democratic impulses, between labour and capital, and between imperial loyalty and national self-determination runs through every chapter like a fault line. Crisis, Conflict and Consensus ultimately argues that it was precisely these unresolved tensions — never fully suppressed, only temporarily managed — that gave Australian democracy its peculiar resilience. For anyone seeking to understand how a penal colony became a federation, this is essential and electrifying reading.