‘The most wonderful piece of machinery the world can boast of:’ The water‐works at Marly, 1680–1830

This article presents the changes in the perception of the famous pumping apparatus at Marly. Constructed in 1680–88 to deliver water to the fountains of the royal palaces, its complicated mechanism and the extraordinary costs involved were at first hailed as symbols for the absolutist splendour of Louis XIV. In the early 18th century, the machine entered the technical compendia of Bélidor, Leupold and Desaguliers, and subsequently became a preferred object for projectors and inventors of all kinds, among them James Watt and Matthew Boulton. During the French Revolution, a new ‘pastoral’ discourse on machines emerged, leading the inventor Trouville to propose his ‘natural hydraulics’ to replace the Marly machine. As an answer, engineers like Carnot and Prony developed a new general theory of machines, which led to an industrial conception of machines. The evaluation of technical devices in terms of efficiency meant that the apparatus at Marly was now perceived as a supreme waste of power.     

‘The Dirty Vat’: European Migration to Australia from Shanghai, 1946–47

At the end of World War II, European residents of Shanghai included Jewish displaced persons and ‘White’ émigrés. While the Jewish refugees were initially viewed by Australia as a humanitarian crisis, they then became a controversial sideshow to a planned mass resettlement of displaced persons from Europe. This article contextualises the actual and proposed Jewish and Russian migration from Shanghai with regard to Australian attitudes towards postwar European migrations from the East. This argument traces the anti-Semitic and anti-Russian sentiments that pressured Calwell into ultimately blocking Russian migration from Shanghai as well as placing a tight curb on the migration of Jewish displaced persons from both Asia and Europe.