Publications

Historians at UWS publish in leading national and international venues. Recent publications by UWS historians include monographs from Harvard University Press, Manchester University Press, Yale University Press, Cambridge University Press, the University of New South Wales Press, Columbia University Press, Chatto and Pickering, Sussex Academic Press, and Palgrave Macmillan. UWS historians have published in world-leading historical journals, such as Modern Asian Studies, The American Historical Review, Pacific Historical Review, The Journal of Contemporary History, International Review of Social History, and The Journal of the History of Sexuality, among many others. 

For recent publications by history staff, please see the School of Humanities and Communication Arts - Publications.

 Brett Bowden, Civilisation and War, 2013

 Civilization and war were born around the same time in roughly the same place—they have effectively grown up together. This challenges the belief that the more civilized we become, the less likely the resort to war to resolve differences and disputes. The related assumption that civilized societies are more likely to abide by the rules of war is also in dispute. Where does terrorism fit into debates about civilized and savage war? What are we to make of talk about an impending ‘clash of civilizations’? In a succinct yet wide ranging survey of history and of ideas that calls in to question a number of conventional wisdoms, Civilization and War explores these issues and more whilst outlining the two-way relationship between civilization and war.



Providing an alternative perspective to conventional thinking, this book will appeal to a wide interdisciplinary audience across all regions of the globe. The material is both original and highly topical and is written in a sharp, snappy style that makes it accessible to a wide readership, including upper-level undergraduates, postgraduates, academic specialists and informed general readers. Civilization and War makes important contributions to the fields of international relations, peace and conflict studies, political theory and the history of ideas, and will be of interest to people with a curiosity about world history and current affairs. 

 Milad Milani, Sufism in the Secret History of Persia, 2013

 Sufism formed one of the cultures of resistance which has existed in the social fabric of Persia since antiquity. Such resistance continues to manifest itself today with many looking to Sufism as a model of cooperation between East and West, between traditional and modern. Sufism in the Secret History of Persia explores the place of Sufi mysticism in Iran’s intellectual and spiritual consciousness through traditional and contemporary Sufi thinkers and writers. Sufism in the Secret History of Persia examines the current of spirituality which extends from the old Iranian worship of Mithra to modern Islam. This current always contains elements of gnosis and inner knowing, but has often provided impetus for socio-political resistance. The study describes how these persisting pre-Islamic cultural and socio-religious elements have secretly challenged Muslim orthodoxies and continue to shape the nature and orientation of contemporary Sufism. 

Tim Rowse, Rethinking Social Justice: From 'Peoples' to 'Populations', 2012

In the early 1970s, Australian governments began to treat Aborigines and Torres Strait Islanders as 'peoples' with capacities for self-government. Forty years later, confidence in Indigenous self-determination has been eroded by accounts of Indigenous pathology, of misplaced policy optimism and persistent socio-economic 'gaps'. In this collection of new and revised essays, Tim Rowse accounts for this shift by arguing that Australian thinking about 'Indigenous' is a continuing, unresolvable tussle between the idea of 'peoples' and 'population'.

Rowse's essays offer snapshots of moments in the last forty years in which we can see these tensions: between honouring the heritage and quantifying the disadvantage, between acknowledging colonisation's destruction and projecting Indigenous recovery from it. Rowse asks not only 'Can a settler colonial state instruct the colonised in the arts of self-government?', but also, 'How could it justify doing anything less?'

David Walton, Australia, Japan and Southeast Asia: Early Post-War Initiatives in Regional Diplomacy, published by Nova Science Publishers, 2012

Japan has loomed large in post-war Australian foreign and economic policies. At the regional level, the relationship with Japan has become since the 1960s Australia's longest, arguably most important and trouble-free bilateral relationship. The rapid improvement in bilateral relations by 1965, especially given the level of general hostility and suspicion towards Japan in Australia that had existed immediately after the Pacific War, represented a remarkable shift in policy thinking in Canberra. Yet surprisingly little has been written about the political dimension of the relationship and in particular, the level of dialogue between Australia and Japan from 1952 to 1965 on regional matters. This book examines the relationship between Australia, Japan and Southeast Asia in relation to early post-war initiatives in regional diplomacy.

Alison Moore and Peter Cryle, Frigidity: An Intellectual History (Genders and Sexualities in History), published by Palgrave Macmillan, 2012

This first major study of a curiously neglected term in the history of sexuality will intrigue students, scholars and enthusiasts alike. The authors take us through a journey across four centuries, showing how notions of sexual coldness and frigidity have been thought about by legal, medical, psychiatric, psychoanalytic and literary writers.

Brett Bowden, The Empire of Civilization: The Evolution of an Emperial Idea, published by University of Chicago Press, 2009

The term “civilization” comes with considerable baggage, dichotomizing people, cultures, and histories as “civilized”—or not. While the idea of civilization has been deployed throughout history to justify all manner of interventions and sociopolitical engineering, few scholars have stopped to consider what the concept actually means. Here, Brett Bowden examines how the idea of civilization has informed our thinking about international relations over the course of ten centuries.

Julie Thorpe, Pan-Germanism and the Austrofascist State, 1933-38, published by Manchester University Press, 2011

This book is about the ideas and policies that characterized the rightward trajectory of Austrofascism in the 1930s. It is the first major Anglophone study of Austrofascism in over two decades and provides a fresh perspective on the debate over whether Austria was an authoritarian or fascist state. The book is designed to introduce specialists, general scholars of fascism, and undergraduate students of interwar Austrian and Central European history, to the range of issues confronting Austrian policy and opinion makers in the years prior to the Anschluss with Nazi Germany. The author argues that Austrofascism not National Socialism was the political heir of pan-Germanism in the Habsburg Monarchy. The book makes an original contribution to studies of interwar Austria by introducing several new case studies, including press and propaganda, minority politics, regionalism, immigration and refugees, as the issues that shaped Austria's political culture in the 1930s. Case studies of the German-nationalist press reveal the relationship between ideas and policy in the Austrofascist period. The book argues for a transnational approach to fascism in Austria and situates the case studies within a broader context of Italian and German fascism. Placing the Austrian case against this backdrop of nationalism and fascism in Europe, the book makes the discovery that Austrofascism was the product of larger European processes and events in the interwar period. Its arguments and findings will be of value for scholars as well as students of interwar fascism and twentieth-century Austrian and Central European history.

Peter Mauch, Sailor Diplomat: Nomura Kichisaburo and the Japanese-American War, published by Harvard University Asia Center, 2011

As Japan’s pre–Pearl Harbor ambassador to the United States, Admiral Nomura Kichisaburo (1877–1964) played a significant role in a tense and turbulent period in Japanese-U.S. relations. Scholars tend to view his actions and missteps as ambassador as representing the failure of diplomacy to avert the outbreak of hostilities between the two paramount Pacific powers.

This extensively researched biography casts new light on the life and career of this important figure. Connecting his experiences as a naval officer to his service as foreign minister and ambassador, and later as “father” of Japan’s Maritime Self Defense Forces and proponent of the U.S.-Japanese alliance, this study reassesses Nomura’s contributions as a hard-nosed realist whose grasp of the underlying realities of Japanese-U.S. relations went largely unappreciated by the Japanese political and military establishment.

In highlighting the complexities and conundrums of Nomura’s position, as well as the role of the Imperial Navy in the formulation of Japan’s foreign policy, Peter Mauch draws upon rarely accessed materials from naval and diplomatic archives in Japan as well as various collections of personal papers, including Nomura’s, which Mauch discovered in 2005 and which are now housed in the National Diet Library.

Simon Burrows, A King's Ransom: The Life of Charles Théveneau de Morande, Blackmailer, Scandalmonger and Master-Spy, published by Continuum, 2010

If Charles Théveneau de Morande was a character in a novel, he would be considered the ultimate anti-hero. Morande's historical significance far transcends his success as a blackmailer and scandalous pamphleteer. Having extorted the French monarchy he turned coat and during the War of American Independence and throughout the 1780s was France's leading political spy in London. In addition, he was a highly successful police agent among his fellow exiles and one of the most influential journalists of his time. His enemies or victims - who invariably suffered intense damage to their reputations - included many of the most colourful figures of his day. Nevertheless, Morande survived the wrath of both Louis XV and the revolution, outlived his enemies, and died peacefully in his bed.

Morande's life story is a tale of intrigue, blackmail, espionage, duels, kidnap, murder, politics, conspiracy and crime. At the same time, it offers a chance to examine some of the most important issues of French history and revolution.