Monday, November 25, 2024

The Lucky Country - Wikipedia

The Lucky Country - Wikipedia


The Lucky Country

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
For the EP, see The Lucky Country (EP).
For the unrelated 2009 film, see Lucky Country (film).
The Lucky Country
First edition
AuthorDonald Horne
LanguageEnglish
GenreNon-fiction
Publication date
1964
Publication placeAustralia
Media typePrint (hardback)
Pages288
ISBN978-0143180029

The Lucky Country is a 1964 book by Donald Horne. The title has become a nickname for Australia[1] and is generally used favourably, although the origin of the phrase was negative in the context of the book. Among other things, it has been used in reference to Australia's natural resources, weather, history, its early dependency of the British system, distance from problems elsewhere in the world, and other sorts of supposed prosperity.

Horne's intent in writing the book was to portray Australia's climb to power and wealth based almost entirely on luck rather than the strength of its political or economic system, which Horne believed was "second rate".

 In addition to political and economic weaknesses, he also lamented on the lack of innovation and ambition, as well as a philistinism in the absence of art, among the Australian population, viewed by Horne as being complacent and indifferent to intellectual matters. He also commented on matters relating to Australian puritanism, as well as conservatism, particularly in relation to censorship and politics.

Overview

[edit]

The title of Horne's book comes from the opening words of the book's last chapter:[2]

Australia is a lucky country run mainly by second rate people who share its luck. It lives on other people's ideas, and, although its ordinary people are adaptable, most of its leaders (in all fields) so lack curiosity about the events that surround them that they are often taken by surprise.

Horne's statement was an indictment of 1960s Australia. His intent was to comment that, while other industrialised nations created wealth using clever means such as technology and other innovations, Australia did not. Rather, Australia's economic prosperity was largely derived from its rich natural resources and immigration. Horne observed that Australia "showed less enterprise than almost any other prosperous industrial society".[3]

In his 1976 follow-up book, Death of the Lucky Country, Horne clarified what he had meant when he first coined the term:

When I invented the phrase in 1964 to describe Australia, I said: "Australia is a lucky country run by second rate people who share its luck." I didn't mean that it had a lot of material resources … I had in mind the idea of Australia as a [British] derived society whose prosperity in the great age of manufacturing came from the luck of its historical origins … In the lucky style we have never "earned" our democracy. We simply went along with some British habits.

In the decades following his book's publication, Horne became critical of the "lucky country" phrase being used as a term of endearment for Australia. He commented, "I have had to sit through the most appalling rubbish as successive generations misapplied this phrase."[4]

Legacy

[edit]

The book became a phenomenon at its publication, despite some initially critical reviews. One commentator remarked that the release of the book was like "A bucket of cold saltwater emptied onto the belly of a dreaming sunbather".[5] Writing in 2007, Raewyn Connell called it "the first pop-sociology best-seller" in Australia.[6]

It was published at a time when criticism of Australia, which had experienced an ascension to wealth and prosperity in a relatively short history (the country was federated in 1901), was rife. It is not the only book to shine an unfavourable light on the country: Robin Boyd's The Australian Ugliness was released four years earlier in 1960 and is considered a seminal work on Australian architecture. Boyd's book was an indictment on the taste of Australian suburbanites, and the aesthetic of the Australian suburbs, which he lamented was in a deplorable state, full of European imitation styles fused together to make one whole.

Horne's book was given an unofficial sequel in 2016, with Ian Lowe's The Lucky Country? Reinventing Australia. Lowe's book addresses Horne's stance, and states that due to poor leadership, little has changed since The Lucky Country.

With regard to economic innovation, Australia still ranks low: in 2014 The Economist's Economic Innovation Index ranked Australia 22nd, behind Japan, the US, Germany and Sweden.[5]

See also

[edit]

References

[edit]
  1. ^ "Australia second best place to live: UN", 774 ABC Melbourne, 3 November 2011
  2. ^ The Lucky Country – Introduction to the sixth edition by Hugh Mackay (extract), Penguin Modern Classics
  3. ^ "The Lucky Country". Retrieved 2013-02-25.
  4. ^ "Forever misquoted, Donald Horne dies". The Sydney Morning Herald. 9 September 2005.
  5. ^ Jump up to:a b "Is Australia still the Lucky Country?". BBC News. 31 October 2014. Retrieved 27 June 2018.
  6. ^ Connell, Raewyn (2007). Southern theory: The global dynamics of knowledge in social science. Cambridge, U.K.: Polity Press. p. 82. ISBN 978-0-7456-4248-2.
[edit]

===
Foreword
HAVING A GO AT THE

WHOLE THING
All histories have a bias. The bias of this history is to tell the story in a way that may suggest some answers to the question: How did Australians become what they are? Some histories leave this as a puzzle, perhaps because their authors wanted Australians to be something else. When Australian society is judged by the standards of some other society parts of it may seem irritatingly unfamiliar, even perverse: it is almost recognizable, but some things are missing and others are in the wrong places. It might help the understanding of contemporary Australia to accept that what happened in its history did happen; we can't go back over it all again and undo its peculiarities.
Looking for first signs of trends towards modern Australia does not mean, of course, that one ignores events that seem to move in some other direction. As in a novel, a small early incident later becomes more significant. But in many cases contradictory trends can all move towaids the present society. Like any other nation, Australia is a society of contradictions. This is why it is possible to aglee with practically all the contradictory interpretations given by Australian historians: almost all of them are right—to some extent.
Private analysis and self-argument stretching, on and off, over six years went into writing this book, but I hope all this has been cleared away so that the flow of narrative is not interrupted. It is meant to be a story. There are disadvantages in this approach: you can't argue your case, not even in footnotes. But you can't have everything. I have tried to provide a general history in which matters like education, living styles, religion, economic activity, politics, leisure pursuits, art, ideas, attempts at self-definition, are all woven together into 'the whole cloth". I have had a go at the whole thing.
It is a story about people, but not about personages. The


names of individuals crop up where they are part of the narrative, but the real participants are types of people, not individuals. I have tried to turn these types of people into the kind of "characters" who make up the biography of a nation. Perhaps one of the functions of history-writing is to bring new types of people onto the stage and describe the interplay.
The book is composed of overlays of themes. It is chopped up into chronological divisions, but within each division one theme is developed right through the period, then another, then another. The cumulative effect is intended to provide a memory rather like the kind of memories we have of our own lives: we know that we go on year by year, but we also know that the themes of our lives have histories other than those suggested by the calendar.
There was a particular difficulty in writing the last two chapters, covering the period 1950 to 1970. Once it would have been possible to end twenty years earlier: now it is fashionable to try to give closing scores at the end of the day's play. This can't be done with quite the same apparent detachment as can be summoned for the earlier part of the story: as he packs the puppets away the puppeteer shows his hand.
There was a different difficulty in writing the first chapter, on the period 1788 to 1820, because this period is usually the one most familiar to the general readers. (For some time historians found it difficult to get past it.) I have tried to deal with it lightly and quickly, sketching a general framework that gets the story going without too much detail and, I regret to say, without going into too much argument.
Not having footnotes has one embarrassment. It is not possible to make acknowledgments. In the case of the direct quotations this doesn't matter. They don't come from historians. They are merely contemporary voices chattering away, and who they are (or whether they are right or wrong) is of no significance; they are just conversation. Some are named. Some are not. Since the writing of this kind of book necessarily depends on exploiting the devoted work of a great number of historians, it seems unfair not to be able to acknowledge them. But to do so in the text would impede the book's narrative style. The best I can do in individual tribute is the bibliography at the back; and in general I can add the observation that history-writing seems well in advance of most other aspects of investigation into Australia. If that were not so, this book co'v.ild not have been written.
ydney, 1972 DONALD HORNE


===
CONTENTS

Part 1 THE AGE OF AUTHORITY 1788-1850

PROLOGUE: TWO BEGINNINGS xv

Brown beginnings xv
White beginnings xvi

1) NEW WORLD—OLD WORLD (1788-1820) 1

A European city 1
The sardonic frontier 5
The rebels and the respectable 9

2) THE NOBS (the 1820s and early 1830s) 19
A second England 19
The new "Natives" 23
A seaport civilization 25

3) THE IMPROVERS (1830 to early 1850s) 28
Aljfe of his own 29
Holding things together 35
The faith of the improvers 38
The black hats 42

4) THE LAND GRABBERS (1830 to early 1850s cont'd) 45
The rush to the grasslands 45
The destruction of the blacks 52
The squatters take over 55

5) THE AUSTRAL-ASIATICS (1830 to early 1850s cont'd) 60
4,000 miles of the Southern Hemisphere 60
The rise of "the people" 69


Part 2  THE AGE OF IMPROVEMENT 1851-1910

6) AUSTRALIA UNLIMITED (1851-1885) 79
The diggers 79
The New rork of Australia 84
The blast of the trumpet 88
No class too poor to play 92

7) ALMOST EVERYONE A LIBERAL (1855-1885) 97
The liberals 97
The war on the squatters 104
The perils of the liberals 109

8) LOOKING FOR AUSTRALIA (1870-1885) 117
Members of the Empire 117
The gum-suckers 118
The pride of the colonies 121

9) THE NORMAL MARCH OF PROGRESS (1885-1910) 124
The fall of Melbourne 124
The commonplace rich 126
An exemplar to the old lands 129
Every worker a gentleman? 131
Every farmer a yeoman? 134

10) THE MODERN AGE (1885-1910 cont'd) 137
The rise of the professionals 137
The rise of the employees 140
The New Imperialism 142
The syndicalists 145
The coming of the parties 148

11) THEORIES ABOUT WHO THEY WERE (1885-1910 cont'd) 152
The other side of the range 152
Australia for the Australians 156

12) BIRTH OF A NATION (1885-1910 cont'd) 160
Coming together 160
The new protection 164
Part 3 THE AGE OF IMPERIALISM 1910-1970

13 BLOOD SACRIFICE (1910-1919) 173

14 THE END OF IMPROVEMENT (1919-1939) 186
The Returned Men 186
The first suburban nation 188
"Development", not Improvement 193
The improvisers 198
"The greatest Test Match of them all" 202

15 TUNING IN TO BRITAIN (1919-1939 cont'd) 206
The creed of the black hats 206
A nation without a mind 209
Yot like lost time 215

16) THE ORPHANS OF THE PACIFIC (the 1940s) 218

17) THE LUCKY COUNTRY (1950-1970) 230
The Australian style 230
An industrial society 236
The rise of the executives 240
The rise of the intellectuals 242

18) THE END OF IMPERIALISM (1950-1970) 248
The failure of politics 248
The afterglow of Britishry 252
Ten minutes to midnight 254
Becoming something 258
BIBLIOGRAPHY 262
INDEX 276



==
Posted by at
Labels:

No comments:

Post a Comment

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)