Lessons from Australia: Persia Campbell and the International Afterlives of Federation-Era Welfarism

This article uses the career of Australian-born economist and United Nations lobbyist Persia Campbell (1898–1974) to track the influence of Federation-era Australian welfarism into the postwar international sphere. I argue that Campbell, a pioneer of American consumer economics and an influential commentator on international development, derived her lifelong preoccupation with consumer welfare and living standards from a youthful immersion in Australian economic thought. Although she lived abroad from 1929, her worldview was indelibly shaped by this early training. Campbell’s example therefore points to the international afterlives of Australia’s foundational welfarism, and offers an Australian corrective to a development historiography dominated by the United States.