Australia, Britain and Migration, 1915-1940: A Study of Desperate Hopes

by Michael Roe

Overview

This book is the first systematic study of assisted emigration from Britain to Australia during the inter-war years. It looks at the British and Australian politicians and bureaucrats involved in the program and the half-million migrants who uprooted themselves. Both governments used migration to meet their different needs, with little regard for the migrants themselves. Not only is the book an important study of imperial relations in the 1920s and 1930s, it describes an important and overlooked aspect of Australian political and social history.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780521465076
Publisher:	Cambridge University Press
Publication date:	07/28/1995
Series:	Studies in Australian History
Pages:	322
Product dimensions:	5.98(w) x 9.02(h) x 0.75(d)

Table of Contents

Introduction; Background; 1. The Great War's impact; 2. The whirl of Hughes: 1920–3; 3. S. M. Bruce and Empire: 1923–5; 4. The modest zenith of hope: 1925–6; 5. Ambiguities: 1926–7; 6. Through confusion to doom: 1928–9; 7. Nadir: 1929–35; 8. Toward the wheel's return: 1932–40; 9. Emigration; 10. Immigration; Afterword.

Editorial Reviews

"Well documented and well written..." Choice

"...a prodigious work of scholarship and one which all historians of Australia will find of immense and lasting value." Times Literary Supplement

"This book is another in the excellent series Studies in Australian History produced under the aegis of Cambridge University Press, and with it MIchael Roe makes a major contribution to the history of Australia in the early decades of the twentieth century....it is a tour de force of scholarship and the metjodical application of the historian's craft....admirable piece of work....Roe commands such respectful attention amongst Australian Historians." F.G. Clarke, American Historical Review

"Michael Roe is an eminent Australian historian who has chosen to study the neglected subject of immigration to Australia between the wars. ...this a very detailed analysis of British-Australian diplomacy on the issue of migration which also illuminates wider social attitudes among the policy-making elites. ...[Roe's] book will remain definitive for a long time." Erik Olssen, Labor History

From the Publisher