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Among the three academics first appointed to the University was William Jethro Brown, his field law and modern history. Brown, born in South Australia in 1868, proved a brilliant student at Cambridge. He became a protégé of FW Maitland, whose studies in legal history had rare success in revealing human and social dynamics of change. Brown upheld that heritage, and was further notable in seeking positive interaction with students. The history he taught was overwhelmingly British, imperial and constitutional aspects strong; modern European history had its place, while Brown also offered courses in ‘political science’ and ‘political economy’. His A New Democracy (1899) argued for Federation and proportional representation as capable of driving a vital, creative Australia. A I Clark was an intimate of Brown’s, and his best student, AE Solomon, became Premier of Tasmania 1912-14. Solomon was first, and long the only, student to proceed (by further coursework) to Honours in History.
Brown departed Hobart in 1900, to be succeeded by Dugald Gordon McDougall, boasting high credentials from Melbourne and Oxford. His dominant interest was in law, but he continued teaching to Brown’s pattern until the coming in 1917 of Herbert Heaton, a young Briton. Heaton taught both economics and history within the University, and—via the Workers’ Educational Association—beyond it. That outreach chimed with Heaton’s radicalism, which led him to challenge patriotic opinion concerning the War. In 1917 Heaton left Hobart, duly to win international repute. Such was also the lot of his successor, New Zealander D B Copland, but altogether as an economist. Under this pair economic history gained its separate course, while imperial history became a history of the colonies—even unto Tasmania.
Copland carried the history-economics load until appointment in 1920 of Charles Stanley King—a local graduate (in Classics) who as Rhodes Scholar gained an Oxford history degree, a sportsman in peace and hero in war. King spent the next thirty-seven years teaching history; ever assiduous and scholarly - yet pursuing no research - he achieved Professorial rank in 1935. The established courses were broadened, thus including Japan and the USA. First-class achievers among King’s twenty or so Honours/MA students were Irene Kerslake and Joyce Eyre Phillips, both otherwise distinguished. Phillips and a very few others qualified in part with research essays on Tasmanian topics.
King had no full-time assistance until 1945-6 when joined by New Zealander George Wilson and Yorkshireman Wilfred Townsley. By 1947 courses were re-structured, with European history expanded and Britishness reduced to its imperial outreach, while Townsley developed Political Science (which had ever retained some place in the Department) and Wilson fostered Asian studies. This last development then had few Australian counterparts; Wilson’s students included Stephen FitzGerald, Australia’s first ambassador to communist China. Townsley established an autonomous Department in the mid-1950s and from 1960 Wilson became Warden of Hytten Hall, while continuing part-time within History. Meanwhile (1950) a third dynamic newcomer, local graduate Malcolm McRae, had joined the Department, from 1958 teaching an Australian history course that supplanted British imperialism. (McRae died, aged 47, in 1974.) The 1950s saw several students presenting fine theses for new-style MA qualification; most were on Tasmanian topics with women (Shirley Franks Eldershaw, Anne McKay Rand, Barbara Richmond Hamilton) dominant, but including Lloyd Robson, of future eminence; aside that loop stood Peter Reeves whose Indian studies (first with George Wilson) led him to a chair at the University of Western Australia. The late-1950s introduction of a fourth, ‘honours’ year in the Arts degree, deepened special studies. Then too was appointed a Departmental Research Assistant, first Janet McRae Pretty, then Anne McKay Rand and Mary Nicholls. Townsley and McRae were active in establishing the Tasmanian Historical Research Association (1951), thereby linking academic concerns with the recently-established Tasmanian State Archives and broader community interest.
Appointed to the chair of History on King’s retirement in 1956 was John McManners, an Oxford man with abilities that were to elevate him to a Regius chair there, his specialty ‘early modern’ France. McManners stayed in Hobart only until 1960, one reason for departure being University Council’s obstructing, on political grounds, a particular appointment to his staff. European history now became a central part in course offerings. The years ahead saw two further short-term Professorial tenures—of Douglas Pike (1961-3) and Gordon Rimmer (1964-9). These were years of greatly accelerating enrolments, and so of lecturing staff. As was ever to continue, some newcomers left relatively soon, but others stayed until far-off retirement: Michael Roe, primarily an Australianist but to publish and teach more widely, with repeated terms as Department head—and now marking fifty-five years’ attachment; Kit Liew, first coming to the University as a Colombo Plan student and proceeding to an Australian National University doctorate, duly a book, in early twentieth-century Chinese radicalism; Richard Davis, whose prolific and impressive publications echoed his Irish background and included much Tasmaniana, one item being the University’s centenary history; Richard Ely, particularly interested in historiography and secular radicalism, his heroes including Inglis Clark and Lionel Murphy; Frank Wilcox, of North American background, deeply read across many areas and selfless in commitment; and Asim Roy, author of a profound work on medieval Islam, who won further acclaim for latter-day Islamic studies. Of ever-growing impact up to her resignation in 1987 was Kay Daniels, an enthusiast for ‘history from below’ and for feminism; she established the Centre for Tasmanian Historical Studies within the Department.
In 1971 the Department at last achieved long-term Professorial leadership in Barrie Rose, his French Revolutionary studies to include a surpassing biography of Gracchus Babeuf. Rose came immediately from the University of Sydney, as did Maida Coaldrake—but she was a Tasmanian graduate from Charles King’s middle years, while now having an enthusiasm for Japanese history that suffused her teaching and made her (like Richard Ely) an early PhD from the Department. In the mid-seventies too Peter Chapman, another local graduate, began his enduring contributions to Tasmaniana. By then medieval history had entered the syllabus, its chief teachers Rodney Thomson and Michael Bennett. The semester system adopted in the later 1970s prompted a continuing trend for courses, especially beyond first year, to pursue specialised depth rather than overview.
Thomson temporarily left the Department further to embellish his international fame, especially as editor of medieval texts, but all others now mentioned were stayers until retirement. Bennett emulated Charles King’s length of service, including long spells as Departmental head, while in teaching and publication achieving rare breadth and quality. Roe, Thomson, Davis, and Bennett joined Rose in Professorial status (new rules facilitating promotion), and all five won election to the Australian Academy of the Humanities. These scores, in ratio to the Department’s size, were probably unique nation-wide. They witnessed scholarship of highest order, a supreme pride of the University.
Among erstwhile students was Neal Blewett, Rhodes Scholar, Professor of Political Science at Flinders University, and then acclaimed federal Minister of Health. Further to achieve academic distinction were not only Lloyd Robson and Peter Reeves but Stephen Alomes, Maurice French, Philip Hart, Beverley Hooper, Peter Howell, Marilyn Lake, Henry Reynolds, and Grant Rodwell. Alison Alexander re-cast her Honours thesis (on Mary Grant Bruce) as the first book in a mighty richness of free-lance writing, while Richard Flanagan fused history into his powerful fiction. George Nichols and Ross Gibbs each became Director of National Archives. Distinguished school teachers included Ross Butler, Alison Grant, Bruce Poulson, Rodney Radford, and John Williamson. Several erstwhile students joined the post-1970 surge of white-collars into State Labor governments: two such ‘honours’ people were Neil Batt and Fran Bladel, while ‘majors’ included Premiers Harry Holgate and Michael Field. Another ‘honours’ graduate, Christine Milne, led the federal Greens.
Turn-of-century years saw major changes. Chief among these was decline in enrolments and staffing. Bennett’s retirement in early 2014 marked an era’s close and left staff numbers much as fifty years before. The 1991 amalgamation entailed problems, northern historians sometimes feeling that southern colleagues resisted change. History also had a place at Cradle Coast campus. As Peter Davis’s chapter further tells, History and Classics coalesced in 1996, duly becoming a ‘School’. Asim Roy and Kit Liew contributed in the University’s Asia Centre from 1989, Roy its achieving director 1993-98, but subsequently Asian history withered. A recent decree has ended School secretaryships, and so a tradition burnished for History by Joan Thorpe, Oenone Grange, June Baldwin, Diane Caulfield, Kati Thomson, Lyn Rainbird, and Lyn Richards ended.
Fear arises that humanist study can have but marginal place in the post-modern University, yet brighter passages offered. Regional tensions eased, and northerner Tom Dunning proved an effective head of School 2007-13. Another northern appointee (initially) was Hamish Maxwell-Stewart, notable for researches into convictism. Socio-economic historian Pamela Sharpe added to the Professorial Academicians 2007-13. Joining staff in 2000 was Stefan Petrow, another local graduate, who began ever-burgeoning contributions to Tasmaniana before taking a Cambridge doctorate—on morals-policing in Victorian Britain, duly published by Oxford University Press. Gavin Daly and Elizabeth Freeman wrote major monographs (The British Soldier in the Peninsular War; Narratives of a New Order: Cistercian Historical Writing in England, 1150-1220), while respectively teaching modern and medieval Europe. Although undergraduate numbers declined, more students pursued research degrees, especially on Tasmanian and medieval subjects. The future awaits, comprehensible only after becoming history.
About the author: Emeritus Professor Michael Roe, MA (Melbourne and Cambridge); PhD (ANU), was born and bred in suburban Melbourne. He spent the years 1949-60 in tertiary education and seeing the wider world. From 1960-96 he taught history at this University, and then and thereafter published various works, probing such matters as the role of ideas in shaping Australian society, populist politics in Victorian England, British-Australian relations between the wars, and various Tasmanian topics.
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