Vesna Drapac

Peter McPhee and Charles Sowerwine, internationally renowned historians of modern France, are both professors of history at the University of Melbourne. Their latest books are what might be termed generalist surveys that provide an extensive overview of modern French history, but in ways that are never predictable and always highly readable. The events of the French Revolution are familiar to many ... (read more)

France in 1914 was in many ways almost completely different from how it was in 1789. In the 1780s France was an ‘agrarian pre-capitalist society’ in which the ‘location of most industry and the sources of power and most wealth were rural’. By the turn of the twentieth century, it was a capitalist society in which ‘an urban, bourgeois and republican culture had become as hegemonic as had ... (read more)

In this book, Colin Dyer draws on the writings of French explorers from ten expeditions spanning the years between 1772 and 1839. His aim is ‘to enable readers to make as close an acquaintance as possible directly with the French explorers and the Aboriginal Australians during their encounters’. He presents the material with little contextual information or analysis, maintaining that he has ... (read more)