Oceania Books

I practically wore this book out during my 2 week trek through "The Top End" - Darwin, Litchfield, Katherine and Kakadu. It was extermely helpful in deciding where to go, what to see, and where to stay. All the supplemental reading was very useful and entertaining as well. Go Lonely Planet!!

The Northern Territory of Australia is one of the world's most facscinating places to visit. Kakadu and Litchfield are superb national parks with stunning landscapes and further south things like Devil's Marbles and Ayers Rock are breathtaking. Of course, the whole journey of about 2500 miles from Darwin to Alice Springs along the Stuart Highway is an adventure.

The LP guide gives a lot of good tips on where to stay and what to see. The information, as usual, is accurate and certainly helps to get around. It contains a lot of interesting "extra" information on things like Aboriginal Art etc.

However, the book misses out on quite a few things which you can see and do in the parks and villages you visit like e.g. the gold digger in Pine Creek who for the "gold museum" in Pine Creek where we could "find" our own gold.

The best thing is to take a couple of books. During the long ride there is plenty of time to read. The LP guide is not an appetite wetter, but it is a very good tool for planning your trip and should not be missed out.

I just got back on a trip from Tasmania where I used this book. Given that there aren't many tour books just on Tasmania, and the only other option would have been to carry around a huge Australia book with a little section on Tasmania, this was the best option. This not too shabby book proves there is enough to talk about in Tasmania, and so I think more tour book companies should publish single editions.

When I look at a tour book, especially Lonely Planet, I feel overwhelmed at all the information. And I think that's what LP does best - get the facts across. It's always good to have a second book about the same place for a second opinion. So as this book did fine at informing me, I also like to have a book that is more of an editorial, I don't think it's bad if in a tour book the author will give his/her personal opinion of something. This is what makes Rick Steve's so popular. Unfortunately he seems to only do Europe.

Rough Guides are good at giving opinions, and I think they are laid out in a much more accessible way. Also Fodor's just has one page where they list the big important "to do's" in one area; and I don't think that's a crime.

As a traveler I wasn't very selective because I went all over the island and saw just about everything.

So here's my little editorial:

Launceston: A nice town, smaller than Hobart. I think it's best to know someone here; otherwise I wouldn't spend much time.

Hobart: A great town, rich in history and activities. Try to be near the Salamanca boardwalk. The fantastic flee market happens there on Saturday mornings and it's also the general center of commotion. If you happen to be around during the "10 Days on the Island" festival, (early April) there will also be a lot happening there too.

Bruny Island: Skip it.

Tasman Peninsula: This large promontory sticks out of the south western part of the island, and along with great (bush) walking, also contains the islands premier tourist attraction, Port Arthur. This is a famous jail where the worst British convicts were sent. It has impressive buildings and a church, but probably wouldn't rank up with what you've seen if you have been to Europe. For history however, it is a great stop. I just went on the ghost tour, which was a waste of time. Go during the day.
Also in the Tasman Peninsula was the best hike I took on my stay. It was to Cape Raoul, just south of Port Arthur. Really impressive sea cliffs and you're looking straight at Antarctica from the view. You may want to spend one night on the peninsula, but keep in mind it's the countryside, so not the center of it all. The Comfort Inn is surprisingly nice, and has a good restaurant.

And of course, go to the devils park, seeing them fed is priceless.

West Coast: Strahan is a tourist rigged port, but still a trip up the Gordon River is worth it. Stay at the Gordon Gateway, eat at Risby Cove.

Cradle Mountain: A necessity, this is the big nature attraction in Tasmania. The walk around Dove Lake (which sits below the mountain) is unforgettable.

Mt. Field Park: Here I did the most strenuous hike, straight up to an alpine plateau. Great scenery but I wouldn't do it unless you really want your ass beaten.

Freycinet: Interesting mountains, and seeing Wineglass Beach makes you think you're in the tropics, wish it was warmer.

On a recent trip to Tasmania I refered often to this book and found it a useful companion. Like all Lonely Planet books it has good coverage of contexts such as political, historical, natural. There aren't too many guidebooks specifically devoted to Tasmania, and this one does the job admirably.

Not only does this book hold a wealth of information impossible to find elsewhere, it is also accompanied by beautiful photos.
The detail on the fauna of the Moluccas is better than anything one could find for any other, actually far less remote region of Indonesia. Every bit as good as the book on the Mammals of New Guinea by this author.

Absolutely fascinating book by well known mammalogist Tim Flannery. In the same series as "The mammals of Australia" by Strahan and "Mammals of New Guinea" by Tim Flannery, and equally as well laid out. Sections of the book are divided into families such as muridae (rats), phalangeridae (possums) and pteropodidae (fruit bats). Each species description includes a colour photograph, along with most available information on the species (many species are relatively unstudied. Overall, this book is a wonderful insight into the mammal fauna of this area, and I highly recommend it for any mammalogist or interested individual.

Bob Hill's book, Moving to Australia; Two Texans Down Under, is a must-read for anyone thinking of making that major, life-changing move. But even if you are not contemplating such a move, you will enjoy reading about the adventures of Bob and his wife Kristi as they overcome their reluctance to leave behind the familiarity and comforts of home and venture off to a new home, a new culture, a new environment. The book is not only packed with detailed, practical information and advice for the newly-arrived in Australia, but is a nice mix of personal anecdotes spiced with Bob's special brand of Texas humor. There are tales of Bob and Kristi's travels away from their home in Brissy (Brisbane) to beaches, deserts, mountains, and forests, and their hikes through natural areas where they see hundreds of Australia's unique animals and birds--roos and koalas, kookaburras and lorikeets, and many more. Go with them to local farmers' markets, meet some of the Australians they come to know, and laugh at their attempts to decipher some of the oddball Aussie words and phrases they encounter, like "whinge" (whine) and stoush (fight), and "not all that flash" (smart). You will share in their Australian odyssey without having to leave home, and perhaps even get motivated to set out on your own great adventure.

Book was pretty good, but much better if you are moving to Brisbane, because it focuses a lot on that.

This book is a revelation! I thought I knew quite a bit about the annexation of Hawaii into the United States, but Tom Coffman has gone back to original sources and come up with a new and compelling account. This book shows how the annexation of Hawaii was engineered by American planters and how mainland public opinion was manipulated into accepting the takeover. It also places the annexation in context of the imperialism and colonalism that was sweeping the world in the late 19th century. Finally, it shows the resistance of the Hawaiian people to being submerged in the American nation and gives us an idea of what is behind the sovereignty movement in Hawaii today. This book is not an easy read -- it's packed with detail and unfamiliar names and places. But if you want to look beyond "beautiful Hawaii" and read some little known US and world history, you will find this book fascinating.

The annexation of Hawai`i by the U.S., as well as the preceeding overthrow of Hawai`i by U.S. military forces and the installation of a republic, is not widely understood. In fact, most sources either gloss over the overthrow and annexation or else present a grossly misleading presentation which has worked its way from the writings of those who originally orchestrated the events into the average history book.

Tom Coffman goes through much effort to review not only the body of secondary sources, but also a very large body of primary sources available from the records of the Republic, the various Hawaiian civic bodies, the original newspapers (including the Hawaiian language newspapers), the letters of American businessmen and politicians, and other sources. The synthesis he builds reveals a very insightful and different story of how and why Hawai`i went from an internationally-recognized autonomous nation to a property of the U.S. In contrast to the claims of many sources, the overthrow and annexation were against the wishes of the vast majority of Hawaiians, whose opinions are recorded in petitions stored at the U.S. National Archives as well as in the newspapers and Hawaiian-language writings of the time.

Coffman goes well beyond merely correcting many of the common misconceptions about the stability of the monarchy and the opinions of the people of Hawai`i. He presents insights into the thinking and motivations of all involved parties, from various segments of the population of Hawai`i to businessmen and politicians in the U.S., and explains how Americans in Hawai`i and the U.S. worked together on the common goal of overthrowing and annexing Hawai`i.

This is an important text for anybody trying to understand the history or current events of Hawai`i. It is also of interest to anybody who is interested in American politics at the turn of the century, as Manifest Destiny changed its goal from expanding to fill the continental U.S. into the U.S. exerting itself as an imperial global superpower.

Author of this book died in 1980, about twenty years after the book has been published. Have things changed? You should read this book and see! The book covers Rites and Ceremonies, Iatmul (Papua New Guinea People), Ethnology, Social life and Customs.

This is a wonderful book. Bateson is writing in the mid-1930's about his stay a few years earlier with the Iatmul, a tribe of recently subdued headhunters, on the Sepik River in the mandated territory of New Guinea. The people are fierce, yet ultimately they are people like everyone else. Bateson seems to have arrived at an easy working relationship with them, and he sets about defining the mechanics of their society, with an eye on the similarities and differences in Iatmul and European approaches to life. Bateson leaves it to us to combine this information with the premise that all of us are made of the same stuff, in hopes of learning things that would otherwise be denied us.

The aspect of Iatmul culture which interests Bateson most is the eponymous "naven." Although descent is patrilineal in Iatmul society, there is also a strong matrilineal element. Every male, and to a lesser extent every female, has a "wau", a maternal uncle, who from the day of his birth goes to great lengths to build an ongoing relationship with him. This includes gifts of food, support during the painful initiation process, and in former times assistance with early homicides.

The recipient of these favors is known as a "laua". Whenever the "laua" accomplishes something for the first time, his "wau" dresses up like a shabby old woman, parades, dances, and acts like a buffoon to commemorate the event. It is this display which is known as the "naven." Qualifying events include building a canoe, killing a crododile, killing an inhabitant of one of the other villages, or luring such an inhabitant to the Iatmul village under friendly pretenses, allowing others to kill him. Not only does the "wau" put on this display, but he is joined by other males who are not quite as closely related to the "laua", and women who are related in various ways dress up as men to commemorate the achievement. Bateson's primary question is why do these people do these things?

To answer his question, Bateson has to tread lightly between the competing "functionalism" of Bronislaw Malinowski and the "structural" approach of Reginald Radcliffe-Brown. He seems to address both viewpoints satisfactorily, simultaneously showing us how the "naven" allows the members of a Iatmul village to get what they want out of life, and how the custom itself is the consequence of the structure of Iatmul society, and how it contributes to the structure of that society. Basically, both "wau" and "laua" get strong allies for life, something not to be taken lightly in the violent internal and external environment of a Iatmul village. They also get a relationship which can be a source of personal pride to both of them. Bateson thinks that given the contentiousness of the individual Iatmul men, it is surprising that they can live in villages of two hundred to one thousand inhabitants. He attributes their ability to do so to the "naven" customs, which in conjunction with patrilineal and initiatory affinities bind members of the society to multiple clans and moieties. Once the village attains a certain size, even the ties of the "naven" are not strong enough to hold it together. The village is split into factions, and one group leaves to found a new village.

Bateson finds the individualism of the Iatmul people splendid. He points out that there is no law of the sort that Europeans are accustomed to. There are taboos and prohibitions, but it is always understood that if an individual is strong enough to defy these taboos and prohibitions, then he may do as he pleases. There is no chief. There are no tribal elders as such, although the older men have more sway than the younger ones. Needless to say, if the individual is not strong enough to defy the taboos and prohibitions and does so anyway, he suffers a much unhappier fate. When conflict arises, various individuals decide they have an interest in one side or the other, and they confront each other. This does not necessarily lead to violence, although one gets the impression that it did so more regularly in pre-European times. Rather, an offender's actions may result in the slit-gongs being sounded, summoning all the men of the village to the Ceremonial House for a debate concerning what is to be done. In the course of the debate the speakers will make their points by beating a ceremonial stool with branches of certain trees while declaiming their points of view. Sometimes they will threaten to expose the totemic secrets of the other side, and sometimes they will do so, openly mocking them. When this happens, a brawl often results. Women are excluded from these prceedings.

Since the "naven' is basically an exercise in transvestitism, Bateson examines in depth the differences between Iatmul men and women. The men tend to be harsh, arrogant, and uncooperative. These traits are so exaggerated that Bateson is sometimes surprised that they can live together at all. The women, on the other hand, tend to be jolly and cooperative, especially when they are away from the men. The women do most of the day-to-day work, gathering food in the surrounding forest, raising pigs, catching prawns and fish in the river, and tending to the young. The men get together in groups to build houses and communal structures, and they often put on shows and festivities, one of whose purposes is to impress the women who constitute their audience. They have many secrets which are hidden from the women. The woman's role in sexual activities is regarded as shameful.

The concept of death by natural causes is alien to the Iatmul. Violent death is quite common, and those who die by other means are considered the victims of sorcery. When an influenza epidemic kills a number of people in the villages, this is considered a series of murders by sorcery, one in retaliation for another. And there are village "sorcerers" who step forward to take credit for these deaths, sometimes explaining how the deceased or a relation of the deceased had offended in some way. These sorcerers use the fear engendered by their claims to extort food, wealth, and women from the other villagers. They tend to be hated as well as feared. They also tend to prosper.

Anthopology monographs go out of print rather quickly. This one is still in print. I think the book's high quality, combined with its entertaining style, is responsible for this. Bateson went on to other pursuits, including attempts to communicate with dolphins in Hawaii. I acquired the book, willing to indulge in anthropological theory, but really seeking the forbidden pleasure of watching people go about their lives free of the constraints with which I had grown up. Although Bateson ultimately gave his backers the science they had paid for, I always counted him as a fellow traveler in this pursuit.

The B&B book is loaded with choices of nice places to stay with personal writings on each by the owner/operators of the various B&Bs. My only request would be for each entry to show one photo of the rooms at their establishment.

A beautifully illustrated book, very reasonably priced for the wealth of information it contains. My husband and I love choosing our own itinerary when travelling and especially love staying at Bed and Breakfasts. A very informative book which correlates very well with the Lonely Planet on New Zealand. I do have the Friar's Guide to New Zealand Accommodation for the Discerning Traveller 2005 which is a magnificent book to have in one's library. However, this Guide by Elizabeth James is something one can take on one's travels and is compact. It also has a great description and lovely, individual illustrations of many places of varying cost from which to choose in both the North and South Islands. A great purchase!

Peter's journey throughout the Pacific, following in the footsteps of the travelling Polynesians, takes you far and wide across the vastness of the ocean. Excellently written and divided into easily negotiated sections, you can see in stages, how the islands came to be inhabited.

The pictures are breathtaking although the maps of the Pacific and individual islands look a little cheap and could have been more detailed for the price of the book.

Particularly poignant is the story of the most remote spot on earth, namely "Rapa Nui" or Easter Island. This strange tale tells how the island was populated and then brought about it's own extinction, leaving the eerie Moai figures staring out across the sea for all eternity.

A beautifully written piece of work, that I would recommend any arm chair traveller to read.

When I read this book I was looking for a detailed account of the natural history of the south pacific-the people, cultures, places, maps, archaeology, geology, biogeography, and so on. This book is very good, but not by any means exhaustive-its 11 chapters provide a useful overview of natural history, initial polynesian and then European discovery, and the various cultures of the Tahitian islands (chapters 1-2), the Fijian group (3), the Tongan group (4), a chapter on polynesian seafearing (5), the story of Fletcher Christian and the Bounty Mutineers (6), the Cook Islands (6), the Marquesas Islands (6-7), Easter Island (8), European Impact (9), Hawaii (9), New Zealand (10), and the future (11).

A strong point is the beautiful colour photographs and cultural depictions, however a notably weak point is the poorness of the maps. Often it is difficult to tell which islands belong to which particular "group" from the text, and the maps don't help in this respect-they are very simplisitic and look hand-drawn. These maps are in stark contrast to the beauty and extravagance of the colour photos of various wildlife, vistas and aerial photographs.

One of the best chapters is that on Easter Island with its stone statues, general cultural and natural history and subsequent decline. It is a little brief, but I found the archaeological accounts of it the islands cultural downfall particularly interesting. Basically, the ruling religious class (hanau eepe) are overthrown by a warrior class (matatoa) after the resource base of the island, and the cultural structure which depended on it, collapsed. By the time Europeans arrived in the 17th and 18th centuries, the island was already in warfare and decline.

Typical useful snippets include the taro root being found to contain natural flouride complexes by western science, which was discovered after someone researched why the polynesians seemed to have such good teeth. After the connection was made, flouide was routinely introduced into toothpaste/water in western societies. The New Zealand Maoris had no pigs or chickens, unlike other polynesians, probably because they were substituted by the now extinct Moa as a food source, after they first arrived in New Zealand. The presence of the sweet potatoe and other South American oddities suggests some natural or cultural influx from South America-either with seafarers from the east, by natural currents and winds (eg some lizards on Fiji, and South American trees on Easter Island), or by the polynesians themselves who may have reached South America, but never settled there. Another bit of trivia is on page 84-it is an aerial colour shot of the island where Tom Hanks was marooned in the movie "Castaway".

Overall quite a useful overview of the natural history of Polynesia, and beautifully illustrated, but not presented in any exhaustive detail.

Mr Fitzpatrick has researched this topic well, as one would expect, and produced a book which will be of immense help to researchers and family historians.

With an Irish/Australian family background, I found the book very helpful in putting a detailed perspective on the privations of the Irish Immigrants, and those left behind in the homeland.

The book is not a light read. But it is very readable.

PS. I wish the publisher had bound the book as well as the author/editor had written it. Be careful. It will fall apart if opened wide!

Oceans of Consolation is a collection of 111 letters written between 1843 and 1906 to and from members of 14 families of Irish immigrants to Australia. The collections were gathered and the book is edited by David Fitzpatrick, an associate professor of Modern History and Fellow of Trinity College, Dublin.

The letters are augmented by profiles on each of the families written from genealogical, biographical and historiographical sources that give context to the letters and by six themed chapters in which Fitzpatrick analyzes the letters and the general subject of Irish emigration.

The author claims his work is distinguished from similar collections of Irish emigrant correspondence by its focus on "the forgotten vernacular of the steerage classes." In other words, Fitzpatrick aims to give insight into the Australian migration experience of Ireland's lower economic classes.

The book includes a Preface and an introductory first chapter explaining the method of the work. The Introduction is required reading if one is to have a thorough understanding of the many aspects of the author's complicated research method that yields what one well-published Australian historian calls a "showpiece."

The sets of letters penned by members of the 14 families are organized into chapters in four groups: News from Australia with three chapters of letters and associated family profiles; Victorian Voices containing profiles and letters to/from members of five families; News from Home, with letters and profiles of three families; and Ulster Accents with similar content on and by three families.

Six chapters of analysis follow the 14 family profile / letter chapters. Fitzpatrick includes these commentaries to explore "a formidable range of issues in the history of Ireland, Australia and human migration." It is in these 160 pages where Fitzpatrick meets his obligation as an interpreter of history. While the letters are valuable insight into the Irish-Australian migrant experience - they permit the reader to "hear" the idiom of the writers, thus to know them better as individuals - the meat of interpretation and historical value lies in the final six chapters.

A List of Sources and a Thematic Index complete the 649-page book.

Readers should be aware the Index is difficult to use. In a regrettable omission, the author and his editors fail to include page numbers for the key word references. Instead they are identified with a "letters-number-letter" sequence: a two-letter abbreviation of the family name; a number designating the specific piece of correspondence in which the word, phrase or reference is to be found; and an alphabetical letter identifying the pertinent paragraph in the specific letter. If one is to use the Index, this reader-unfriendly method forces one to memorize the abbreviations of the family names, then to plod tediously through the book to find the citation. The effort is often unjustified by the return.

Fitzpatrick's goal is to discover how the written word sustained solidarity among lower-class 19th Century Irish families separated from their emigrant relatives by the mighty ocean distance between Ireland and Australia. He also claims to reveal the differences between Ireland and Australia and what he calls "the very nature of Irishness."

Because of his complex research method and reliance on "letters of the unlettered," there is little doubt this book was difficult to produce. With commendable candor, Fitzpatrick confesses his need for "the courage to complete what sometimes seemed an impossible assignment." He apparently wishes he'd been more disciplined either in defining his scope or pursuing it. Regardless, Oceans of Consolation is a tour de force.

Fitzpatrick consulted an extensive list of sources, both individual and institutional. He expresses his gratitude to descendents of the correspondents whose letters are included in the book. He is equally grateful to numerous institutional sources and individual specialist scholars in Australia, Ireland, the United Kingdom and the United States. His long list of institutional sources included public and university libraries, archives, museums, offices of public records, church registers, Catholic religious orders and Protestant fraternal organizations.

Fitzpatrick discusses the twin challenges of distance and delay that confronted Irish-Australian families in their correspondence written, he says, to "reinforce the emigrant's fading link with `home'." Both had much greater impact on the new Aussie family than on families of Irish émigrés to other lands, notably England and North America.

Four letters written by Michael Hogan between 1853 and 1857 to his brother Mathew, a cooper and publican in County Tipperary, are the subject of Chapter Five and illustrative of the book's content. As in all the letter collections, the editor's impressively researched and well-written family profile precedes them.

Fitzpatrick tells us Michael Hogan, the only convict immigrant featured in the book, arrived at Port Jackson, Australia on the good ship, "Blenheim" from Cork on Nov. 14, 1834 after being convicted of "maiming" at the Cashel Quarter Sessions in January, earlier that year.

Fitzpatrick refers to the Clonmel Herald to describe the charge against him. "Hogan's violent assault on James Kinnealy had been unprovoked and no motive could be assigned for it by the prosecutor. The principal witness in the case was a little girl of about eight or ten years of age, whose testimony was as artless as convincing."

Fitzpatrick uses Blenheim's "printed convict indent," the penal system's answer to a passenger list or cargo manifest, to introduce us to Michael. He is described as "an unmarried, literate, Catholic `farm laborer' aged 27 years, just over 5 feet 6 inches tall; with a `dark ruddy freckled' complexion, brown hair, bluish eyes and `scar top of left side of forehead, top joints of both little fingers crooked.'"

After receiving his "ticket of leave" - his release - a year early in 1840, Michael Hogan married Margaret O'Brien, also formerly of Tipperary, who bore him seven children. Michael worked at several jobs, bought a freehold house (the house plus the land on which it sits) in south Melbourne, sent his brother two checks of £30 each and referred in his letters to the presence in his house of several servants. His self-image revealed in his letters "was that of a man who had made good," writes Fitzpatrick, "and wished this to be recognized." Michael died in 1873, a widowed laborer who had earned the means to have buried his wife and two of his sons in an eight-foot square grave plot in Melbourne's Old Cemetery.

Thus the reader arrives at the actual letters with an appreciation of the background and personality of their writers. Fitzpatrick's well researched and artfully crafted family stories bring life to the letters, thereby enhancing the reader's experience and raising the historical value of the work.

Fitzpatrick suggests lower class Irish-Australian correspondents often seem to have sought help to write their letters. "Help" means reference to letter-writing manuals, plagiarism of friends' letters and dictation of desired messages to more accomplished - maybe even professional - letter writers. Among many common elements, Fitzpatrick cites the frequency of elaborate, identical salutations and Irish-Australian expressions of intimacy resembling "those recommended in manuals for `the juvenile correspondent'."

He says one might presume this style was quintessentially Irish, but he turns to an English manual published in 1856 to verify it conformed closely "to the general base of letter-writing as practiced by uneducated persons." In other words, there's nothing special in this fact; the same characteristic would have been true, for example, of lower class Irish in North America and England. This is the case with many of Fitzpatrick's observations: perhaps pertinent to Irish emigrants in general, but not unique to the history of Irish-Australian migration.

As is the case for economists, political scientists and sociologists, it's important for historians to focus on statistically significant data and avoid wasting effort where the knowledge is less valuable. With this in mind, Fitzpatrick spends too much time in his analyses at the 50th percentile of interpretation. For example, he writes "The letters illustrate eagerness and reluctance to emigrate in roughly equal measure" and "Advice concerning the prospects for future emigrants, when directive, was as often discouraging as encouraging." These letters are obviously not a statistically valid sample of all Irish-Australian migrant correspondence. Nevertheless, it would be preferable for this editor - and all historians, in this reviewer's opinion - to focus on attitudes and feelings shared by at least 75 percent of his sample. It is at the poles of the semantic differential where the most meaningful learning is to be found.

Fitzpatrick wanders frequently from his Irish-Australian thesis in his six commentaries. He writes extensively about the Irish emigrant experience per se, but often fails to drill down into any geographical destination. He spends time on conditions in Ireland, but often doesn't link his topic either to the families of emigrants or emigrants themselves. He occasionally slips away to citations about Irish emigrants to North America without comparing or contrasting the parallels with their Australian cousins.

Perhaps because they are written as summaries, the final two chapters contain several more specific Irish-Australian examples of the emigration experience, important because they support Fitzpatrick's objective. Here are two of many:

* It was the rough life of the outback, bush, homestead, or diggings which engrossed those trying to imagine Australia from Ireland.

* Emigrant letters gave Irish readers graphic accounts of the unfamiliar Australian climate, with its bewildering succession of floods, frosts and fires and above all its summer heat.

History professor Patrick O'Farrell of the University of New South Wales is quoted in "The Sydney Morning Herald" on his reaction to Oceans of Consolation.

"I am humbled by what Professor Fitzpatrick has done so exhaustively and so well . . . It would be hard, if not impossible, to better his treatment of the exercise he has undertaken; this is a showpiece, a master class, in the handling of a certain type of historical source."

Judith Reid of the Library of Congress says the book is definitely "an important acquisition for libraries collecting Irish and Australian history and emigration history."

Professor Fitzpatrick has produced a Herculean contribution to the history of the Irish-Australian emigration experience in Oceans of Consolation. We trust he has enough energy left for other work of equally high value that will add to the body of knowledge on the subject. At the least, we hope he got some rest after this one. He earned it!

In the 1760s, as the British Empire expanded into Asia and the Pacific, its rulers proposed that certain peoples could be understood, and privileged, as a separate ?Aryan? race. Aryanism suggested that this whole region had originally been peopled by successive waves of vigorous Aryans, culminating in British colonisation. Ballantyne traces how this idea ?was used to naturalise, justify and celebrate British colonisation of South Asia.?

Chapters 1 and 6 look at imperial notions of India, which were used as a template for understanding other colonised societies. Chapters 2 to 5 examine how the Empire used these to try to control New Zealand?s Maori society. As ever, the empire exploited existing social divisions, to divide and rule, while claiming that it freed the most exploited from bonds of caste and priestly power. It called its domination ?liberation?, its exploitation ?development? and its wars ?pacifications?.

Unfortunately, Ballantyne commits what we may call the scholarly fallacy, asserting that the empire was woven together by webs of relationships, modes of discourse, rather than hammered into place by the capitalist mode of production. Only in passing does he note that the East India Company, the revenue manager for Bengal, collected increased revenues while famine killed a third of the people. Under Empire, rule, regular famines, in 1770, 1783 and throughout the 19th and early 20th centuries, killed tens of millions.

Ballantyne does not challenge the imperial myth that settlers, both military and missionary, benefit the host country, not their own individual gain. This is now transmuted into the liberal myth that immigrants benefit the host country.

He claims that there was a ?progressive? side of Aryanism, inclusive, globalising and non-racist. He praises the imperial policies of free flows of labour and products and ideas, and he opposes all forms of nationalism as exclusive and racist. This fits neatly into the Empire?s hostility to ?backward-looking? nationalism, and it also suits US imperial policy today.

But empire is always undemocratic, because it is based on rule by one class over other nations. Empire benefits its rulers, never the peoples, whatever the forms in which people think.

I learnt of this book from a friend in London -- it is an excellent history of race and British imperialism. The author has a very impressive breadth of knowledge and writes clearly. I really liked the material on India, especially on Sikhism. It is nice to read a British historian who takes religion seriously and who read Indian sources. The final chapter of the book on Indian nationalism shows the ways in which Hindu nationalists used this Aryan idea for their own Nazist needs agains Muslims and Sikhs.