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As Australia's premier historian turns eighty, Richard Allsop assesses the legacy of Geoffrey Blainey.
In his desire to restore the balance between white man and black man and to make up for our scandalous neglect of the Aboriginal heritage, he has at times swung too far the other way.'
That is the Sydney Morning Herald criticising Geoffrey Blainey for being too sympathetic to Australia's indigenous population.
Yes - criticising Blainey for being too sympathetic. These words were published in 1975 and were contained in a review of Blainey s landmark work Triumph of the Nomads.
In the early 1970s, Blainey had been the first academic historian in the country to include Aboriginal history in a general Australian history subject. Blainey had come to the then unusual view that the ninety-nine per cent of Australia's history prior to European settlement was worth studying. Triumph of the Nomads brought this radical premise to a much wider audience. An integral part of Blarney's argument was rejecting the existing assumption that Aboriginal society had been static. Blainey also believed that previous writers had underestimated Aboriginal economic success. Turning conventional thinking on its head, Blainey suggested that 'by the standards of the year 1800 ... the aboriginals' material life could be compared favourably with many parts of Europe'.
For some, such as the Sydney Morning Herald reviewer, he had gone 'too far' in redressing the historical imbalance, but most welcomed the fact that 'radical thinking, long overdue, characterises almost every chapter'.
As well as many positive aspects of pre- 178 8 Aboriginal life, Blainey also drew attention to some of the less pleasant characteristics of their society such as infanticide and the extent of their in ter- tribal wars. These aspects of his work were seized on by certain critics; however, a lot of this seizing did not occur until after 17 March, 1984. This was the day when, at the height of his prestige and influence, Blainey's life changed irreversibly. He concluded a talk to a Rotary conference in Warrnambool with some comments about Asian immigration that sparked a furore.
Blainey had been involved in controversies before, but debates about whether flax and pine were factors in the British decision to colonise Australia, or whether the Literature...