Select Documents In Australian History: 1788-1850
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: Good
Jacket: Worn/faded, no tears
Pages: Good
At the dawn of a nation's story, the raw, unfiltered voices of settlers, administrators, convicts, and explorers tell a truth no single historian could fabricate — and Select Documents in Australian History: 1788-1850 gathers those voices into one indispensable archive. Selected and edited by the eminent C. M. H. Clark, Professor of History at Canberra University College, with the assistance of L. J. Pryor, this landmark primary-source collection chronicles the formative decades of colonial Australia, from the arrival of the First Fleet through to the eve of the gold rush era, presenting official dispatches, personal letters, legislative records, and eyewitness accounts that together construct a vivid and unflinching portrait of a society being built from the ground up. Clark's editorial hand is both disciplined and deeply scholarly, arranging the documents to illuminate the central tensions of the period — the collision of Indigenous sovereignty with colonial ambition, the brutal mechanics of the convict system, and the gradual emergence of free settler culture and governance. This collection stands as a foundational text in Australian historiography, one that continues to instruct researchers, students, and general readers alike on the contested and complex origins of the modern nation. For anyone seeking to understand not just what happened in those critical decades, but how contemporaries understood and articulated their own world, this volume remains an essential and revelatory starting point.
Author: C. M. H. Clark
Format: Hardback
Genre: Australian history
Condition remarks:
Book: Good
Jacket: Worn/faded, no tears
Pages: Good
At the dawn of a nation's story, the raw, unfiltered voices of settlers, administrators, convicts, and explorers tell a truth no single historian could fabricate — and Select Documents in Australian History: 1788-1850 gathers those voices into one indispensable archive. Selected and edited by the eminent C. M. H. Clark, Professor of History at Canberra University College, with the assistance of L. J. Pryor, this landmark primary-source collection chronicles the formative decades of colonial Australia, from the arrival of the First Fleet through to the eve of the gold rush era, presenting official dispatches, personal letters, legislative records, and eyewitness accounts that together construct a vivid and unflinching portrait of a society being built from the ground up. Clark's editorial hand is both disciplined and deeply scholarly, arranging the documents to illuminate the central tensions of the period — the collision of Indigenous sovereignty with colonial ambition, the brutal mechanics of the convict system, and the gradual emergence of free settler culture and governance. This collection stands as a foundational text in Australian historiography, one that continues to instruct researchers, students, and general readers alike on the contested and complex origins of the modern nation. For anyone seeking to understand not just what happened in those critical decades, but how contemporaries understood and articulated their own world, this volume remains an essential and revelatory starting point.