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Among the many publications of 2018 were three books that focused on aspects of
South Australian history. Carolyn Collins and Paul Sendziuk's edited collection of
papers, titled Foundational Fictions in South Australian History; Robert Kearney and
Sharon Cleary's lavishly illustrated popular history, titled Valour & Violets: South
Australia in the Great War, and Don Longo's edited collection of First World War
letters, titled Pens and Bayonets: Letters from the Front by soldiers of Yorke Peninsula,
South Australia, during the Great War. These books come at a time when local and
state-oriented histories are of growing scholarly and public interest. National
histories can be problematic in their generalisations, their weighting of
metropolitan sources over regional sources, and in their focus on east coast
experiences over those of the rest of the country. Australia has a diverse history,
and the proliferation of state and locally-focused studies can help highlight that
diversity and shed light on the nuances in this history. However, as the following
discussion will demonstrate, while the three books reviewed here take a local/state
focus as a defining element of their construct, only one of the three, Foundational
Fictions, manages to sufficiently justify the value of that focus. |
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