The Book of Marriage: Histories of Muslim Women in Twentieth‐Century Australia

From 1860 to the 1920s, Muslim merchants and workers from across British India and Afghanistan travelled to Australian shores to work in the extensive camel transportation network that underpinned the growth of capitalism in the Australian interior. Through marriage, South Asian women in addition to white women and Aboriginal women became part of families spanning the Indian Ocean. Yet, the life‐worlds of these women are absent from Australian historiography and the field of Indian Ocean studies alike. When women do appear in Australian histories of Muslim communities, the orientalist accounts work to condemn Muslim men rather than shed light on women's lives. Leading scholars of Indian Ocean mobilities on the other hand, have tended to equate masculinity with motion and femininity with stasis, omitting analyses of women's life‐trajectories across the Indian Ocean arena. In this article, I rethink the definitions of ‘motion’ that underpin Indian Ocean histories by reading marriage records as an archive of women's motion. Using family archives spanning from Australia to South Asia, this article examines five women's marriages to South Asian men in Australia. Challenging the racist accounts of gender relations that currently structure histories of Muslims in Australia, I turn to the intellectual traditions of colonised peoples in search of alternatives to orientalist narratives. Redeploying the Muslim narrative tradition of Kitab al‐Nikah (Book of Marriage) to write feminist history, this article proposes a new framework to house histories of Muslim women.     

Commemoration,Memory, and Forgotten Histories: The Complexity and Limitations of Australian Army Biography

Abstract

Military biography in Australia raises questions about the specific historiography more generally, and about the commemorative and celebratory tendencies in Australian military writing. Recent advances in the field illustrate the continuing tensions within the writing of military history in Australia, and reflect some of the same tendencies elsewhere in the English-speaking world.     

Herbert Vere Evatt and British Justice: The Communist Party Referendum of 1951

Abstract

Through his role in the early United Nations, Herbert Vere Evatt is often credited with having advanced the cause of international human rights. But in 1951, Evatt articulated an alternative understanding of the roots of liberty, one centred on the role of British justice in checking ‘tyranny’ and ‘totalitarianism’. This neo-Roman conception of freedom had long competed in Evatt's thought with a belief in the need for an unfettered executive to achieve desirable social and economic goals. Although inconsistent in defence of liberty across his career, Evatt succeeded in this campaign because his case harmonised with contemporary understandings of freedom and its enemies in a post-war British-Australian community.     

Party Democracy: An Audit of Australian Parties

Competition between candidates representing political parties is usually regarded as a central feature of a liberal democracy. However, where competition between parties fails to provide the public with an effective choice of candidates, the real competition between candidates is displaced to a competition for party endorsement within particular parties. The paper examines the democratic implications of this displacement, and reports the findings of an audit of candidate-selection procedures within the principal Australian parties. The paper argues inter alia that the closed nature of electoral competition and the public status of Australian political parties imply that their internal affairs should be conducted democratically. The paper defines internal party democracy in structural and procedural terms. It applies realistic standards - realistic, because too much internal democracy could render a party ineffective and restrict electoral competition - in conducting an audit of the candidate-selection rules and the composition of candidate-selection voting panels for the principal Australian parties. The paper concludes with a suggestion for policy reform.     

论日本共产党的在野党外交

随着全球化趋势的加强,政党外交成为国际政治中不可忽视的现象。上世纪90年代后期开始,日本共产党力图通过积极开展外交活动彰显其生命力。本文认为日本外交的困境和共产主义运动面临的现实压力是日共推动在野党外交的主要原因。在野党外交作为日共的一种政策和理论,有其形成过程,在实践中也取得了很多成果。然而,在野党外交的成功并不能从根本上改变日共在日本政坛的地位。     

Dealing with the King's Enemies: The Drafting of the Communist Party Dissolution Bill 1950

Abstract

The lawyers called upon to draft a Bill which, if enacted, could validly give effect to the promise of the successful Liberal–Country Party coalition in the 1949 federal election to outlaw the Communist Party of Australia, faced a difficult assignment. Their political instructors faced a dilemma: should the new government take a less confrontational approach to communist disruption of the economy and risk undermining the government's popular support, or should it press ahead with the promised ban and risk having the High Court of Australia invalidate it? In a process in which the politics of pragmatism gave way to Cold War ideology, the choice of the latter path led to failure.     

The Politics of Party Leader Survival and Succession: Australia in Comparative Perspective

The processes of replacement of party leaders are well-published events in media outlets across the world's democracies, but are scarcely analysed by political scientists. In this article we examine the extent to which incumbent party leaders are able to control their own fate in the face of various types of challenges that herald a possible end to their rule. It discusses three related research questions derived from this main objective: (1) what makes incumbents quit? (2) How do incumbents respond to various types of triggers heralding a possible end to their rule? (3) To what extent does incumbent behaviour prior to and following succession affect the fortunes of their successors and their party? We draw on a four-country–eight-party data set of leadership successions between 1945 and 2005, and on findings of in-depth studies of Australian cases to show that not only do Australian leaders get challenged and replaced more frequently than do other leaders, but they are also forced to combat more internal rivalry than their counterparts elsewhere.     

共产国际与中国共产党早期苏维埃政权的执政实践

大革命失败后,中国共产党在共产国际的指导下确立了实行土地革命和武装起义的方针,也从此走上了建立苏维埃政权的革命道路。然而在这一时期,受共产国际"左"的教条主义和"城市中心论"思想的影响,中国苏维埃革命运动一开始就照搬苏俄革命的经验,致使各地城市暴动接连遭到失败。也正是在这一时期,经过多次城市武装起义失败教训的洗礼,越来越多的革命者开始认识到,到农村中去,到那些受过大革命风暴影响的农村中去,会有革命发展的广阔天地。这是以毛泽东为代表的中国共产党人勇敢突破共产国际的理论模式,开始探索适合中国实际的"农村包围城市、武装夺取全国政权"革命道路的实践基础和理论来源。"任何国家的革命道路问题,都要由本国的共产党人自己去思考和解决。"这段历史无疑是最鲜活的案例,折射了共产国际与中国共产党对中国苏维埃政权道路的认识歧异;同时也彰显了我们党为了救国救民,不怕任何艰难险阻,在革命斗争中坚持独立自主、一切从实际出发的伟大革命精神。     

中国共产党百年国际战略的世界情怀

中共十九届六中全会通过的《中共中央关于党的百年奋斗重大成就和历史经验的决议》(以下简称《决议》),全面总结了中国共产党的百年奋斗重大成就和历史经验。在总结中国共产党的百年奋斗十个方面的历史经验时,《决议》强调:中国共产党坚持胸怀天下,"始终以世界眼光关注人类前途命运,从人类发展大潮流。     

中国共产党与中国电影文化运动

以成立中国电影文化协会为标志的中国电影文化运动,是20世纪30年代中国左翼文化运动的重要组成部分,这一运动从兴起到抗战全面爆发,始终得到中国共产党的积极支持和直接领导,无论是电影创作与生产,还是电影理论批评,都显示出中国电影发生了巨大转变.很多本身即为共产党人的左翼文艺工作者,通过与电影界的交往、合作,广泛吸纳电影界人士加入左翼阵营;而当时的电影演员也大多直接或间接参与了这一运动,他们通过发表电影评论,开展电影创作,使左翼电影深入社会各阶层,大大传播了中共的主张,发扬了进步电影艺术,推动了中国早期电影的发展,显示了中共夺取新的文化阵地的力量.