John Perkins

Cattle theft, primitive capital accumulation and pastoral expansion in early New South Wales, 1800–1850∗

The key role of cattle (as against that of sheep) in the settlement and economic development of colonial Australia has been neglected. This species of livestock made possible the opening up of the interior of the continent, where, until the later nineteenth century, they occupied more grazing land than sheep, to enable wool production to become the export staple. Cattle functioned as a surrogate for capital, otherwise in critically short supply. Cattle theft, in two of the three forms analysed,was a motive for the perpetrators to push the frontier of settlement beyond the expanding settled districts.

THE TECHNOLOGY OF OPEN-RANGE CATTLE FARMING IN EARLY EUROPEAN AUSTRALIA

The technology of open-range cattle-farming in early European Australia was notable for a simplicity that bordered on the primitive. It was far less sophisticated than contemporary farming in the British Isles. Some of the techniques used were identical with and may have been borrowed from New Spain. Others, in particular the use of the stockwhip and the development of an effective cattle dog were Australian innovations.

Continuity in modern German history? The treatment of gypsies

In the historiography of modern Germany a persistent theme is the search for, and the denial, of continuity from Imperial Germany, through Weimar and the Third Reich to the Federal Republic of today. It is argued here that the treatment of Gypsies furnishes an element of continuity. Obviously, the mass slaughter of Gypsies at Auschwitz and other concentration camps possesses a certain uniqueness. However, the basis for that action was laid during the Imperial and Weimar eras. In the approach to the “Gypsy problem”, other than the gassings in Auschwitz in 1944 that could be related to evolving war situation, the Nazi Machtergreifung of 1933 does not mark a radical new departure. The persecution of Gypsies resumed very soon after the collapse of the Nazi regime.

Australian Governments and Automotive Manufacturing, 1919‐1939

In recent years the progressive lowering of tariff barriers in Australia has produced a predictable backlash from those who are directly affected. The reaction, however, extends to academics and others who have no pecuniary interest in the outcome, and who have argued that the tariff represented a policy consciously designed to promote the economic development and defence capacity of this country. On the basis of experience in the motor vehicle industry, we argue that these factors had very little to do with interwar tariff policy. Rather, it was the outcome of an interplay between the Commonwealth government’s need for revenue, the activities of “the lobby” in seeking rents, and the practices of the Customs bureaucracy.

THE EVOLVING TECHNOLOGY OF VERMIN CONTROL IN COLONIAL AUSTRALIA

Settlers in colonial Australia resorted initially to traditional methods of vermin control inherited from Europe, namely, trapping and hunting. The magnitude of the problem required eventually the development of novel, more sophisticated and considerably more costly technologies.

Reviews : Eric Dorn Brose, The Politics of Technological Change in Prussia: Out of the Shadow of Antiquity, 1809-1848, Princeton, NJ, Princeton University Press, ISBN 0-691-05685-4, 1993; xiii + 290 pp.; £30.00

conservatism survived into the Federal Republic. After 1945, political parties were not ‘national’, and they formally subscribed to the principles of democratic politics. Still, the story of German conservatism did not end with the ’zero hour’ at the end of the war. The forceful re-emergence in the 1980s and 1990s of right-wing conservatives who are unabashedly ’national’ and openly critical of democratic institutions underscores the need to extend the ’full chronological sweep’ (x) of German conservatism beyond National Socialism. Anyone who wants to pursue that larger project will of necessity start with the essays in this volume.

Reviews : John Breuilly, ed., The State of Germany: The National Idea in the Making, Unmaking and Remaking of a Modern Nation-State, London, Longman, ISBN 0-582-07864-4, 1992; xii + 243 pp.; £22.00 hardback, £8.99 paperback

a collection of essays, arranged in chronological order, which in various ways consider aspects of the political history of Germany between the later eighteenth century and the present day. A diversity of viewpoints is, of course, to be expected and indeed welcomed in any collective scholarly effort. In this case, however, lack of any precision in the definition of the theme imparts a lack of coherence to the volume as a whole, which is not overcome by the editor’s synoptic introduction. Understandably in the circumstances, each contributor has followed his or her nose, generally in a direction determined by their specialist knowledge. Such criticism does not detract from the scholarship displayed in the individual contributions. Michael Hughes, an authority on the legal institutions of the Holy Roman Empire, employs that expertise to suggest that before its demise, in 1806, the Empire was far from the moribund organization the tradition of nineteenth-century Prusso-German historiography would have us believe. On the other hand, contrary to some

Reviews : Uwe Backes et al., eds, Die Schatten der Vergangenheit. Impulse zur Historisierung des Nationalsozialismus, Berlin, Verlag Ullstein, 1990; 655 pp.; DM 48,-

hand, von Bflow had to obtain majority support in a fractious Reichstag for the conduct of His Imperial Majesty’s business. The Chancellor’s response to the latter problem consisted in part of minimizing the number of legislative proposals presented to the German parliament and avoiding contentious issues as far as possible. (He had no choice with the grain tariff bill, enacted in 1902.) Apart from his personality traits, von Bflow’s background as a diplomat, which is only examined cursorily in this work, obviously stood him in good stead as Chancellor. During his early years in office he devoted considerable effort to bringing the (Catholic) Centre Party within the fold of supporters of the Prusso-German state, to counter the perceived threat of the SPD. Dr Lerman convincingly shows that his downfall dates from 1907 with his decision, reluctantly taken, to abandon the Centre

Reviews : K.A. Lerman, The Chancellor as Courtier: Bernhard von Bülow and the Governance of Germany, 1900-1909, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1990; xiii + 350 pp.; £32.50

Germanand the English-speaking worlds, which remains evident to this day, is the neglect of political biography in the former and its prominence in the latter. The subjects Bismarck and Hitler are exceptions to this dictum. Even these personalities, however, have occupied centre stage mainly in works produced by historians outside the mainstream of the discipline in Germany. Between the ’Pilot’ and the Ffhrer, a number of individuals occupied the position of Chancellor of the Reich who have yet to merit political biographies from the pens, or rather PCs, of German historians. Some of them held office for lengthy periods of time, even during the Weimar era, and pursued policies that were of considerable signifiance for Germany and Europe. Yet we have to thank the American historian Konrad Jarausch for what remains the definitive political biography of Bethmann Hollweg, which appeared nearly twenty years ago. Now the British historian Katherine Lerman has produced a study of the predecessor in office of the ’enigmatic Chancellor’. The result is a very important contribution to our understanding of the political process in Wilhelminian Germany. One cannot endorse Dr Lerman’s suggestion that the neglect of von Bulow is partly attributable to his ’oleaginous qualities’, to his being ’an ambitious, egotistical, vain schemer’, noted for cowardice and deception. George MacDonald Fraser has demonstrated that Flashman has more appeal to the twentieth-century mind than Tom Brown. The neglect of

Nazi Autarchic Aspirations and the Beet-Sugar Industry, 1933-9

German agricultural economists and has not been gainsaid since. It is, however, a matter of debate whether the Hitler regime, from its attainment of power on 30 January 1933, had the objective of achieving national self-sufficiency in food supply, at least within the frontiers of the Germany of 1933. On the one hand, it is questionable that such a goal was realistically achievable. On the other, Hitler’s intention to obtain Lebensraum for the German