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{{Short description|Australian historian}}{{Use Australian English|date=November 2016}}{{Use dmy dates|date=August 2014}}{{lead too long|date=April 2024}}

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| image = | imagesize = | alt = | caption = | birth_name = Geoffrey Norman Blainey193011|df=yes}}Melbourne, Victoria (Australia)>Victoria, Australia| death_date = | death_place = | residence = | era = | region = | workplaces = University of Melbourne| alma_mater = University of Melbourne| thesis_title = | thesis_url = | thesis_year = | doctoral_students = | notable_students = Janet McCalmanStuart MacintyreFrank Bongiorno| school_tradition = | main_interests = Australian historyWorld history| principal_ideas = The Peaks of Lyell (1954)(The Tyranny of Distance: How Distance Shaped Australia's History>The Tyranny of Distance) (1966)The Causes of War (1972)A Short History of the World (2000)ALS Gold Medal>Australian Literature Society Gold Medal (1964)Royal Historical Society of Victoria (1967)Fellow of the Australian Academy of the Humanities (1969)Fellow of the Academy of the Social Sciences in Australia (1970)Captain Cook Bicentenary Literary Award (1970)Officer of the Order of Australia (1975)Britannica Award for Disseminating Knowledge (1988)Honorary Fellow of the Australasian Institute of Mining and Metallurgy (1988)Australian National Living Treasures>Australian National Living Treasure (1997)Companion of the Order of Australia (2000)Mining Hall of Fame (2009)Tucker Medal (2013)Prime Minister's Literary Awards for History (2016)| influences = | influenced = (present)}}| website = | footnotes = }}{{Conservatism in Australia|Intellectuals}}Geoffrey Norman Blainey, {{postnominals|country=AUS|size=100%|sep=,|AC|FAHA|FASSA}} (born 11 March 1930) is an Australian historian, academic, best selling author and commentator. Blainey is noted for his authoritative texts on the economic and social history of Australia, including (The Tyranny of Distance: How Distance Shaped Australia's History|The Tyranny of Distance).ENCYCLOPEDIA, Geoffrey Blainey, Encyclopedia Britannica Online,weblink 17 July 2021, 7 March 2021, 28 September 2018,weblink live, He has published over 40 books, including wide-ranging histories of the world and of Christianity. He has often appeared in newspapers and on television.WEB, Professor Geoffrey Blainey,weblinkweblink" title="web.archive.org/web/20130511010859weblink">weblink 11 May 2013, 22 April 2013, BBC Entertainment, WEB, Professor Geoffrey Blainey AC,weblinkweblink dead, 6 February 2022, Australian of the Year Honour roll, 6 February 2022, WEB, A Short History of Christianity – Geoffrey Blainey (Penguin Group),weblinkweblink" title="web.archive.org/web/20130426210609weblink">weblink 26 April 2013, Prime Minister's Literary Awards 2012 shortlists, Australian Office for the Arts, Blainey held chairs in economic history and history at the University of Melbourne for over 20 years. In the 1980s, he was visiting professor of Australian Studies at Harvard University, and received the 1988 Britannica Award for 'exceptional excellence in the dissemination of knowledge for the benefit of mankind', the first historian to receive that awardEncyclopædia Britannica,"Book of the Year, 1988", Chicago, p. 15 and was made a Companion of the Order of Australia in 2000.WEB, 2000, Award Citation,weblink live, 2020-09-13, Prime Minister and Cabinet – Australian Honours Search Facility, 29 January 2019,weblink Blainey was once described by Graeme Davison as the "most prolific, wide-ranging, inventive, and, in the 1980s and 1990s, most controversial of Australia's living historians".ENCYCLOPEDIA, 2003, Blainey, Geoffrey Norman (1930–), The Oxford Companion to Australian History, Oxford University Press,weblink Davison, Graeme, 74, 9780191735165, 17 July 2021, 17 July 2021,weblink live, He has been chairman or member of the Australia Council, the University of Ballarat, the Australia-China Council, the Commonwealth Literary Fund and the Australian War Memorial. He chaired the National Council for the Centenary of Federation. Blainey has appeared in lists of the most influential Australians, past or present.NEWS, 22 January 2001, The most influential Australians, Sydney Morning Herald,weblink registration, 17 July 2021,weblink 6 November 2020, The Bulletin, Sydney, 26 June 2006 NEWS, 27 June 2006, The Bulletin's top 100 – Reprint, Sydney Morning Herald,weblinkweblink 10 December 2018, "Australia's 100 Living National Treasures", National Trust of NSW, 1997, 2004, 2012 WEB, 10 January 2017, Geoffrey Blainey,weblink live, 17 July 2021, AustLit, 24 January 2021,weblink The National Trust lists Blainey as one of Australia's "Living Treasures"."Our Living Treasures" {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20131114022802weblink |date=14 November 2013 }}, The Age, 18 November 2003. He served on the boards of philanthropic bodies, including the Ian Potter Foundation (1991–2014) and the Deafness Foundation Trust since 1993, and is patron of others.{{Citation needed|date=July 2021}}Biographer Geoffrey Bolton in 1999 argues that he has played multiple roles as an Australian historian: In 2006, the Melbourne historian John Hirst made his assessment: "Geoffrey Blainey, the most prolific and popular of our historians".BOOK, Hirst, John, Looking for Australia: Historical Essays, Black Inc., 2010, 9781863954860, 7-8, 57, 136, Where Best to Look? The First XI Books, Alan Atkinson, author of a three-volume history of Australia, called Blainey "our most eminent living historian" in a long review that mixes criticism with praise.NEWS, Atkinson, Alan, 18 April 2015, Triumph of Unity, Review, The Australian,weblink subscription, 13 September 2020, 17 July 2021,weblink live,

Early life

Blainey was born in Melbourne and raised in a succession of Victorian country towns before attending Wesley College and the University of Melbourne. While at university he resided at Queen's College and was editor of Farrago, the newspaper of the University of Melbourne Student Union.After graduating, Blainey took a freelance writing assignment and travelled to the Mount Lyell mining field in Tasmania to research and write the history of the Mount Lyell Mining and Railway Company, at Queenstown. In the 1950s, many older residents could remember the beginnings of the community. The resultant book, The Peaks of Lyell (1954), achieved six editions.St. David's Park Publishing in Hobart acquired the rights from Melbourne University Press in 1993 and produced two more editions, the last of which sold out in 2011. See 1993 edition for full details. He then wrote a history of his university: The University of Melbourne: A Centenary Portrait (1956). He married Ann Warriner Heriot in 1957, who as Ann Blainey has become an internationally regarded biographer.WEB, 2020-09-12, Ann Blainey,weblink live, Willy Lit Fest, 11 September 2020, 26 November 2020,weblink WEB, 2009-03-31, Ann Blainey,weblink 2021-07-17, Black Inc., en, 22 January 2021,weblink live, Blainey has published over 40 books,WEB, Geoffrey Blainey,weblink live, 11 September 2020, Penguin Books Australia, 9 August 2020,weblink including his highly acclaimed A Short History of the World. His works have ranged from sports and local histories to interpreting the motives behind the British settlement of Australia in (The Tyranny of Distance: How Distance Shaped Australia's History|The Tyranny of Distance); covering over two centuries of human conflict in The Causes of War (1973); examining the optimism and pessimism in Western society since 1750 in The Great See-Saw; Aboriginal Australia in Triumph of the Nomads (1975) and A Land Half Won (1980); and his exploration of the history of Christianity in A Short History of Christianity (2011). He has also written general histories of the world and the "tempestuous" 20th century.Triumph of the Nomads is "a book which has done more than any other to open Australian minds to the pre-European past of their land" , according to Ken Inglis of the ANU. Blainey was also "the first writer to make that daring comparison that Aboriginal societies differed as much from one another as do the nations of Europe".JOURNAL, Inglis, Ken, 1987, Triumph of the Nomads, Overland, 106, 7, The Causes of War has become one of the most cited works in founding modern scholarship on international conflict (as at Sep 2020 – 2095 citations on Google Scholar). It is commonly cited by the Hoover Institution as a foundation work in the field.WEB, Schake, Kori, 23 January 2014, War: The Gambling Man's Game,weblink live, 13 September 2020, defining ideas, Hoover Institution, 12 December 2018,weblink He has revisited some of his earlier successes to take into account new discoveries and scholarship – Triumph of the Nomads and A Land Half Won were revised as The Story of the Australia's People Vol 1 : The Rise and Fall of Ancient Australia and The Story of the Australia's People Vol 2: The Rise and Rise of a New Australia .Throughout the course of his career, Blainey has also written for newspapers and television. The Blainey View (1982) was a history of Australia shown in ten episodes on ABC television.

Academia

In 1961, he began teaching economic history at the University of Melbourne, was made a professor in 1968, and was given the Ernest Scott chair in history in 1977. In 1982 he was appointed dean of Melbourne's Faculty of Arts. From 1994 to 1998, Blainey was foundation Chancellor of the University of Ballarat.WEB, Wickham, Dorothy, November 2005, Professor Emeritus Geoffrey Blainey (1930–); Historian and author; Foundation Chancellor of the University of Ballarat,weblink live,weblink" title="web.archive.org/web/20060914193821weblink">weblink 14 September 2006, 6 April 2020, UB Honour Roll, Federation University, dmy-all, He was visiting professor of Australian Studies at Harvard University.In the academic field, he was on the board of the Melbourne University Press in the early 1960s, deputy dean of the Economics Faculty in the early 1970s, president of the council of Queen's College in the University of Melbourne from 1971 to 1989, and on the national selection committee for the Harkness Fellowships from 1977 to 1989 (chairman 1983–89).Who's Who in Australia, 2013, p. 287

Philanthropy and public service

Blainey was invited by Prime Minister Harold Holt in 1967 to sit on the advisory board of the Commonwealth Literary Fund, serving until its abolition in 1973 (chairman 1971–73). He then became inaugural chairman of the Literature Board of the Australia Council for the Arts (Later called Australia Council), set up by the Whitlam government. He served on the Council from 1977–1981. Following Whitlam's election promise to introduce a Public Lending Right Scheme for authors, Blainey was appointed chairman of the committee representing authors, publishers and librarians that, in 1973, recommended the scheme adopted by the government a year later. Australia's scheme differed from the pioneering scheme adopted in Denmark in 1946. Blainey represented writers on the small group instructed to find the new national anthem that Whitlam had promised. From that initiative came a public poll supporting the long-standing Australian patriotic song, "Advance Australia Fair".REPORT,weblink Annual Report, 1973, Australian Council for the Arts, 29–30, 17 July 2021, 17 July 2021,weblink live, In December 1973, Blainey was an Australian delegate to the first UNESCO conference held in Asia, in Yogyakarta, Java; it recommended cultural policies for Asia.BOOK, Department of Foreign Affairs, Australia,weblink Australian foreign affairs record, Australian Government Publishing Office, January 1974, 45, 1, 35–36, 473047184, Blainey was deputy chairman in 1974 and 1975 of the Whitlam government's Inquiry into Museums and National Collections, whose report ultimately led to the completion in Canberra, in 2001, of the National Museum of Australia with its emphasis on indigenous history.Who's Who in Australia, various editions since 1965 Most of the Inquiry's report had been drafted by Blainey and his colleague, Professor JD Mulvaney.{{Citation needed|date=July 2021}} In 1976, he became an inaugural commissioner on the Australian Heritage Commission, set up by the Fraser government to decide on conservation and environmental matters. On the first council of the National Museum set up by the Hawke government in 1984 he was a short-term member.{{Cn|date=July 2021}}He was chairman of the Australia Council for four years and Chairman of the Australia-China Council from its inception in 1979 until June 1984. In 2001, he was the Chairman of the National Council for the Centenary of Federation. From 1994 to 1998, he was the Foundation Chancellor of the University of Ballarat.He was an inaugural member and later the chairman of the National Council for the Centenary of Federation and spoke at the centenary celebration of the opening of the federal parliament in May 1901.He was an inaugural member and later the chairman of the National Council for the Centenary of Federation and spoke at the centenary celebration of the opening of the federal parliament in May 1901.{{Cn|date=July 2021}}In 2001, Blainey presented the Boyer Lectures on the theme This Land is all Horizons: Australian Fears and Visions.WEB, 2001,weblink This Land is all Horizons: Australian Fears and Visions, Boyer Lectures, Australian Broadcasting Corporation, 11 February 2007, 23 November 2007,weblink" title="web.archive.org/web/20071123085901weblink">weblink live, Under the Howard government, he served as a member of the council of the Australian War Memorial in Canberra from 1997 to 2004, an appointment initially criticised in parliament by Laurie Brereton of the Labor opposition but approved in other circles. There was no opposition when his first three-year term was renewed.{{Cn|date=July 2021}} At the Constitutional Convention, held in Canberra for 10 days in February 1998 to debate and vote on whether Australia should become a republic (and if so what kind of a republic), he was a non-elected delegate. He argued that Australia was already a "de facto republic" and that any further change should be made only if the case was very powerful. With his ally, George Mye from the Torres Strait Islands, he was the leading critic of the adopted proposal that any citizen whose name was on the general electoral roll, even a migrant of only two years' standing, should automatically be eligible to be president of the proposed republic of Australia.{{Citation|title=Constitutional Convention – Transcript of Proceedings Wednesday 4 February 1998|url=http://www.dpmc.gov.au/convention/hansard/CON0402.pdf |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/19980625144140weblink |archive-date=1998-06-25 |pages=221–223, 380, 382, 400–401, 419–420}} After the decisive failure in 1999 of the referendum to make Australia a republic, Blainey and the constitutional lawyer, Professor Colin Howard, were singled out by the Australian republicans' leader, Malcolm Turnbull, as deserving a special share of the blame. He alleged that the pair had unduly shaped the official information posted to all electors. In their defence, it was contended that their influence was fair, for they operated in an official committee chaired by the neutral Sir Ninian Stephen, lawyer and former governor general.BOOK, Turnbull, Malcolm, Fighting for the Republic: The Ultimate Insider's Account, Hardie Grant Books, 1 January 1999, 978-1864981070, Blainey served on the National Council for the Centenary of Federation from 1997 to 2002 (chairman from May 2001, succeeding Archbishop Peter Hollingworth), and chairman of the Council of the Centenary Medal from 2001–03. Later appointments included membership of the History Summit in Canberra in 2006 and the federal committee set up in 2007 to recommend a national curriculum for teaching Australian history.{{Citation needed|date=April 2013}} He sat, from 1997 to 2004, on the Council of the Royal Humane Society of Australasia which recommended awards for acts of civilian bravery.{{Cn|date=July 2021}} In the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s, he was a weekly or fortnightly columnist for The Australian, the Melbourne Herald, or the Melbourne Age; he also wrote often for the Sydney Bulletin, the Australian Business Monthly and other national journals.{{Cn|date=July 2021}} Booklets listing these articles and other works have been published by the library of Monash University. The latest booklet was last updated in about 2001.{{Cn|date=July 2021}} As a book reviewer, he has written for many Australian, UK and US publications. His ten-part series on Australian history, "The Blainey View", appeared on ABC television in 1982–83, the ABC's most ambitious venture so far on Australian history. Graham Kennedy, the television star, narrated the continuity script.Graeme Blundell, King: The Life and Comedy of Graham Kennedy, Pan Macmillan, 2003, pp. 124, 356–70 {{ISBN|9781405035668}}Blainey is well known for speeches, often without notes, on historical and contemporary topics.{{Cn|date=July 2021}} In most anthologies of notable Australian speeches, present and past, one of his addresses is reprinted."Great Australian Speeches", edited by Pamela Robson, Murdoch Books, 2009, pp. 180–90 On television and stage in later years, Max Gillies the comedian cleverly mimicked some speeches.{{Cn|date=July 2021}}He has served on the boards of philanthropic bodies, including the Ian Potter Foundation from 1991 to 2015 and the Deafness Foundation Trust since 1993, and is patron of others.{{Cn|date=July 2021}}Blainey has, at times, been a controversial figure too. In the 1980s, he queried the level of Asian immigration to Australia and the policy of multiculturalism in speeches, articles and a book All for Australia.{{Citation needed|date=April 2013}} He was said by leftist critics to be closely aligned{{Citation needed|date=April 2013}} with the former Liberal-National Coalition government of John Howard in Australia, with Howard shadowing Blainey's conservative views on some issues, especially the view that Australian history has been hijacked by social liberals. As a result of these stances, Blainey is sometimes associated with right-wing politics.WEB, McKenna, Mark, 10 November 1997, Different Perspectives on Black Armband History,weblink live,weblink" title="web.archive.org/web/20090404113845weblink">weblink 4 April 2009, 19 August 2018, Research Papers 1997–98, Australian Parliamentary Library, dmy, Blainey himself is a member of no political party.{{Cn|date=July 2021}}

Views on Asian immigration

On 17 March 1984, Blainey addressed a major Rotary conference in the Victorian city of Warrnambool. He regretted that the Hawke Labor government in "a time of large unemployment" was bringing many new migrants to the areas of high unemployment, thus fostering tension. He blamed the government, not the migrants themselves. Criticising what he viewed as disproportionately high levels of Asian immigration, then running at 40 per cent of the annual intake, he added: "Rarely in the history of the modern world has a nation given such preference to a tiny ethnic minority of its population as the Australian Government has done in the past few years, making that minority the favoured majority in its immigration policy".The Age, and Warrnambool Standard, 19 March 1984Three days later, in response to the prediction of the "increasing Asianisation" of Australia made by Labor's Immigration Minister Stewart West, Blainey argued: "I do not accept the view, widely held in the Federal Cabinet, that some kind of slow Asian takeover of Australia is inevitable. I do not believe that we are powerless. I do believe that we can with good will and good sense control our destiny.... As a people, we seem to move from extreme to extreme. In the past 30 years the government of Australia has moved from the extreme of wanting a white Australia to the extreme of saying that we will have an Asian Australia and that the quicker we move towards it the better".Source: The Age, 20 March 1984Blainey's speech, along with subsequent articles and a book on the subject, ignited nationwide controversy, especially in the Australian federal parliament, which had not debated the principles of the immigration policy for many years. Some critics argued that Blainey's views were moderate and not racist, citing the idea that "All peoples of the world are worthy and deserve respect" was the 'prime principle' of Blainey's book, All for Australia, which he wrote on the topic. However, in All for Australia he criticised the belief that "immigration policy should primarily reflect the truth that all 'races' are equal.Blainey, Geoffrey. All for Australia, Sydney, 1984, p.164 On the contrary, an immigration policy should not, any more than a trade or tariff policy, be designed primarily to reflect that fact". According to Blainey, the Australian government's immigration policy was increasingly being influenced by multicultural ideology to the detriment of the national interest and the majority of Australians. He argued: "We are surrendering much of our own independence to a phantom opinion that floats vaguely in the air and rarely exists on this earth. We should think very carefully about the perils of converting Australia into a giant multicultural laboratory for the assumed benefit of the peoples of the world". Blainey also warned that the "crimson thread of kinship" invoked by Sir Henry Parkes was being undermined, stating: "The cult of the immigrant, the emphasis on separateness for ethnic groups, the wooing of Asia and the shunning of Britain are part of this thread-cutting."His views were to receive the support of a majority of Australian voters, both Labor and non-Labor voters, as a national Gallup poll confirmed in August.Melbourne Herald, 27 August 1984 citing an Australian Public Opinion Polls survey of 2182 voters Victorians especially disapproved of the University of Melbourne's conduct in this matter.In contrast, while Blainey was briefly in Europe in May, a professor and 23 other history teachers from the University distributed a public letter distancing themselves from what they called his "racialist" views.Letter to the Age of 19 May 1984 signed by 24 historiansMorgan, Hugh (2006). "Can Australia Survive the 21st Century?". The Wilfred Brookes Memorial Lecture. Deakin University Other historians, including lecturers in Asian history, refused the request to sign the letter.{{cn|date=July 2022}}After a crowd of left-wing students and marchers broke into the heavily guarded building where Blainey was conducting a tutorial in historical research, he was advised by the university on security grounds that it must cancel all his future addresses within the University for the rest of 1984.Melbourne Sun News PictorialABC TV, 19 June 1984 In Brisbane on 5 July, when he gave a memorial address in honour of a deceased Queensland businessman in the Mayne Hall at the University of Queensland and chaired by the chancellor Sir James Foots, noisy protesters tried to dislocate the meeting.Courier Mail 6 July 1984 These and similar protests were major items in the national television news. Blainey continued to express his views periodically on television, radio and his own newspaper columns but not in his own university. He retained his main position as Dean of the Faculty of Arts.Blainey and his family were subject to threats of violence, prompting him at the police's request to remove his name and address from the public telephone book and organise security for his home. According to fellow historian Keith Windschuttle: "The immediate consequence of all this was that Blainey, easily Australia's best and most prolific living historian, was effectively silenced from speaking at his own university.... This violation of academic freedom, clearly the worst in Australian history, provoked no protest at all from the university's academic staff association, nor from the university council, let alone his own departmental colleagues."Windschuttle, Keith. Stuart Macintyre and the Blainey affair {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20150410221229weblink |date=10 April 2015 }}. Quadrant, v.52, no.10, Oct 2008: 30–35.On the so-called "Blainey affair", Australian prime minister John Howard would remark: "Nowhere, I suggest, have the fangs of the left so visibly been on display as they were in a campaign based on character assassination and intellectual dishonesty through their efforts to trash the name and reputation of that great Australian historian Geoffrey Blainey."In December 1988, Blainey resigned from the University of Melbourne and resumed his former career as a freelance historian.Blainey's comments in interview with Frank Devine of Quadrant published in October 2006 In 1994, the Victorian government appointed him to the honorary position of foundation chancellor of the new University of Ballarat.Subsequently, in December 2007, the University of Melbourne granted a Doctor of Laws to BlaineyPress Release from University of Melbourne WEB, Smith, Katherine, 2007,weblink University of Melbourne honours Geoffrey Blainey's contribution to Australian history, University of Melbourne, 14 December 2007,weblink" title="web.archive.org/web/20071227220630weblink">weblink 27 December 2007, dmy-all, and declared that he was, in Australia, probably a unique professional historian, noting that he had fostered wide public interest in history. The citation observed that "few graduates of this University have exerted greater influence on national life".

Blainey and the "History Wars"

Blainey has been an important contributor to the debate over Australian history, often referred to as the History Wars.In his 1993 Sir John Latham Memorial Lecture, Blainey coined the phrases "Black armband view of history" versus the contrasting "three cheers" view (see History wars). The phrase "Black armband view of history" began to be used, pejoratively or otherwise, by some Australian commentators and intellectuals about historians and journalists, judges and clergymen, whom they viewed as having presented an unfairly critical portrayal of Australian history since European settlement.{{Citation needed|date=April 2013}}Blainey coined the term the "Black armband view of history" to refer to those historians and academics, usually leftist, who denigrated Australia's past to an unusual degree and accused European Australians of genocide against Aborigines. Former Liberal Prime Minister Malcolm Fraser described the Australian history wars as a branch of the "culture wars" and attributed Blainey with having initiated the wider wars in his immigration speeches of 1984.Malcolm Fraser and Margaret Symons, Fraser: the Political Memoirs, Melbourne University Publishing, 2011, see index and pp. 616–7Reflecting on the Australian Bicentenary in 1988, Blainey accused some academics and journalists of depicting Australian history since European colonisation as essentially a "story of violence, exploitation, repression, racism, sexism, capitalism, colonialism, and a few other 'isms'." Blainey also accused supporters of multiculturalism of having "little respect for the history of Australia between 1788 and 1950," claiming that in their eyes "Australia was a desert between 1788 and 1950 because it was populated largely by people from the British Isles and because it seemed to have a cultural unity, a homogeneity which is the very antithesis of multiculturalism."Blainey, Geoffrey. Eye on Australia : Speeches and Essays of Geoffrey Blainey, Schwartz Books, Melbourne, Vic., 1991, 272 pp.Blainey referred to the contrasting positive histories as the "three cheers" school.NEWS, Michael, Gordon,weblink Going down in history, The Age, 6 September 2003, 11 February 2007, 3 September 2007,weblink" title="web.archive.org/web/20070903204719weblink">weblink live, {{quotation|To some extent my generation was reared on the Three Cheers view of history. This patriotic view of our past had a long run. It saw Australian history as largely a success. While the convict era was a source of shame or unease, nearly everything that came after was believed to be pretty good. There is a rival view, which I call the Black Armband view of history. In recent years it has assailed the optimistic view of history. The black armbands were quietly worn in official circles in 1988. The multicultural folk busily preached their message that until they arrived much of Australian history was a disgrace. The past treatment of Aborigines, of Chinese, of Kanakas, of non-British migrants, of women, the very old, the very young, and the poor was singled out, sometimes legitimately, sometimes not.... The Black Armband view of history might well represent the swing of the pendulum from a position that had been too favourable, too self congratulatory, to an opposite extreme that is even more unreal and decidedly jaundiced.|Geoffrey Blainey, In Our Time, Melbourne, 1999}}Critics of Blainey's article claimed that it was anti-Aboriginal. However, Blainey applauded the "many distinctive merits" of the traditional Aboriginal way of life.Blainey, In our Time, p. 11 Moreover, Blainey's earlier book Triumph of the Nomads,Triumph of the Nomads, Macmillan, Melbourne, 1975, and Outlook Press, NY, 1976 and subsequent Sun Books editions was highly sympathetic to Aboriginal people, as the title indicates. It is still said to be the only narrative history of Aboriginal Australia before 1788, and a pioneering work. It was listed by the National Book Council in 1984 as one of the ten most significant Australian books of the previous 10 years.Annual Report of National Book Council, 1985. Blainey has been critical of Bruce Pascoe's work, Dark Emu, regarding Aboriginal life prior to 1788 stating that there existed "no evidence that there was ever a permanent town in pre-1788 Australia with 1000 inhabitants who gained most of their food by farming" as claimed by Pascoe.WEB, 2021-06-12, Best-selling Aussie book 'debunked',weblink 2021-07-02, NewsComAu, en, 2 July 2021,weblink live, During the launch of his 2015 book The Story of Australia's People Volume 1: The Rise and Fall of Ancient Australia, Blainey predicted the History Wars would continue in the public arena for some time as "it is in the nature of history and of most intellectual activities, and the more so in a nation where the main strands of history — Aboriginal and European — are utterly different."NEWS, Geoffrey, Blainey,weblink Geoffrey Blainey: "I can see parts of our history with fresh eyes", The Australian, 21 February 2015, 13 June 2015, 22 May 2015,weblink" title="web.archive.org/web/20150522231701weblink">weblink live, In June 2020, Blainey was critical of iconoclast destructions of historical monuments and public statues following the George Floyd protests.WEB, 2020-06-18, Geoffrey Blainey on the vandalism of historic statues, and the geopolitics of Coronavirus conspiracies,weblink 2021-04-23, ABC Radio National, en-AU, 17 July 2021,weblink live, Blainey viewed the destructions as rallying against Western civilization, calling for a tempered approach to acknowledging the West's "virtues", in addition to its shortcomings.

Awards

Geoffrey Blainey was made a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society of Victoria in 1967. In 1975 he was made an Officer of the Order of Australia for his contribution to Australian literature. He was awarded a Companion of the Order of Australia in the Australia Day Honours list of 2000 for his service to academia, research and scholarship.It's an Honour {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20190129123002weblink |date=29 January 2019}} – Companion of the Order of Australia The following year he was awarded a Centenary Medal for his services to the Centenary of Federation, of which he was Council chairman in 2001 and previously a member.It's an Honour {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20081013220444weblink |date=13 October 2008 }} – Centenary MedalAt the United Nations in New York in 1988, he was one of five intellectuals, including the American economist John Kenneth Galbraith and the Mexican poet Octavio Paz, who were awarded gold medals for "excellence in the dissemination of knowledge for the benefit of mankind". Blainey's book The Causes of War, much read in military academies and American universities, was said to be one reason for the award.He is an emeritus professor of the University of Melbourne, and a fellow of the Australian Academy of the Humanities and of the Academy of Social Sciences in Australia.WEB, Academy Fellow – Emeritus Professor Geoffrey Blainey AC, FASSA, FAHA,weblink 2023-11-24, Academy of the Social Sciences in Australia, en-AU, In 2002 the degree of Doctor of Letters was conferred on Professor Blainey in recognition of his contribution to the University of Ballarat and the community in general.In 2010, Blainey was Victorian State finalist for Senior Australian of the Year.In 2016 Blainey's The Story of Australia's People Volume 1: The Rise and Fall of Ancient Australia won the Prime Minister's Literary Awards for History.The University of Melbourne has established "The Geoffrey Blainey Scholarship for Honours in Economic History" for students undertaking academic study in 'economic history' in honour of Blainey's academic contributions.WEB, Collier, Peter, 2021-04-20, The Geoffrey Blainey Scholarship for Honours in Economic History,weblink 2021-04-23, Scholarships, en, 23 April 2021,weblink live,

Bibliography

{{Incomplete list|date=August 2015}}

• BOOK, Blainey, Geoffrey, The Peaks of Lyell, The peaks of Lyell, Carlton South, Vic., Melbourne University Press, 1954,
• BOOK, Blainey, Geoffrey, 1, With illustrations by N. H. Oliver, The University of Melbourne : a centenary portrait, Carlton, Vic., Melbourne University Press, 1956,
• Johns and Waygood, 1856–1956, Caulfield & Sons, Melbourne, 1956.
• A Centenary History of the University of Melbourne, Melbourne University Press, Carlton, Vic.; London, Cambridge University Press, 1957.
• Gold and Paper: A history of The National Bank of Australasia, Georgian House, Melbourne, Victoria (Australia) 1958.
• (Mines in the Spinifex: The Story of Mount Isa Mines), Angus and Robertson, Sydney, NSW, 1960.
• (The Rush That Never Ended: A History of Australian Mining), Melbourne University Press, Melbourne, Vic., 1963.
• A History of Camberwell, Jacaranda Press in association with the Camberwell City Council, Brisbane, 1964.
• (The Tyranny of Distance: How Distance Shaped Australia's History), Sun Books, Melbourne, Vic., 1966.
  • Winner of the C. Weickhardt award for Australian literature
• Wesley College: The First Hundred Years, Robertson & Mullens, Melbourne, 1967 (with J.H. Morrissey and S.E .K. Hulme )
• The Rise of Broken Hill, Macmillan of Australia, Melbourne, Vic., 1968.
• Across a Red World, Macmillan, Melbourne, Vic., 1968.
• The Steel Master: A Life of Essington Lewis, Macmillan of Australia, South Melbourne, Vic., 1971, {{ISBN|9780333119624}}.
• The Causes of War, Macmillan, London, 1973.
• (Triumph of the Nomads: A History of Ancient Australia), Macmillan, South Melbourne, Vic., 1975. SBN 333 17583 2
• BOOK, Blainey, Geoffrey, 1, A land half won, South Melbourne, Vic., Macmillan, 1980,
  • BOOK, Blainey, Geoffrey, 1, A land half won, Revised, South Melbourne, Vic., Macmillan, 1982,
• The Blainey View: Book of the ABC Television Series, Macmillan, South Melbourne, Vic., 1982
• Gold and Paper 1858–1982: A History of the National Bank of Australasia, Macmillan, South Melbourne, 1983.
• (Our Side of the Country: The Story of Victoria), Metheun Haynes, North Ryde, N.S.W., 1984.
• All for Australia, Methuen Haynes, North Ryde, N.S.W., 1984.
• Making History, McPhee Gribble & Penguin, Ringwood, 1985 (with CMH Clark and RM Crawford).
• (The Great Seesaw: A New View of the Western World, 1750-2000), Macmillan, South Melbourne Vic., Basingstoke, 1988.
• A Game of Our Own: The Origins of Australian Football, Information Australia, Melbourne, Vic., 1990.
• Odd Fellows: A History of IOOF Australia, Allen & Unwin, Sydney, N.S.W., 1991.
• Blainey, Eye on Australia: Speeches and Essays of Geoffrey Blainey, Schwartz Books, Melbourne, Vic., 1991.
• Sites of the Imagination: Contemporary Photographers View Melbourne and Its People, National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne, 1992 (with Isobel Crombie).
• Jumping Over the Wheel, Allen & Unwin, St. Leonards, N.S.W., 1993.
• The Golden Mile, Allen & Unwin, St. Leonards, 1993.
• A Shorter History of Australia, William Heinemann Australia, Port Melbourne, Vic., 1994.
• White Gold: The Story of Alcoa of Australia, Allen & Unwin, St. Leonards, N.S.W., 1997.
• In Our Time, Information Australia, Melbourne, Vic., 1999.
• A History of the AMP 1848–1998, Allen & Unwin, St Leonards, N.S.W., 1999.
• A Short History of the World, Penguin Books Australia Ltd., Vic., 2000.
• This Land is All Horizons: Australia's Fears and Visions, (Boyer Lectures) ABC Books, Sydney, 2001.
• A Very Short History of the World, Penguin Books Australia Ltd., Vic., 2004.
• (Black Kettle & Full Moon: Daily Life in a Vanished Australia), Penguin Books Australia Ltd., Vic., 2004.
• A Short History of the Twentieth Century, Penguin Books Australia Ltd., Vic., 2006. {{ISBN|9780143006145}}
• A History of Victoria, Cambridge University Press, New York, 2006.
• (Sea of Dangers: Captain Cook and His Rivals), Penguin Books Australia Ltd., Vic., 2009.{{ISBN|9781742282336}}
• A Short History of Christianity, Penguin Books Australia Ltd., Vic., 2011. {{ISBN|9780670075249}}
• (The Story of Australia's People, Volume 1: The Rise and Fall of Ancient Australia), Penguin Books Australia Ltd., Vic., 2015 {{ISBN|9780670078714}}
• "Australian Exceptionalism. A Personal View" in Only in Australia. The History, Politics and Economics of Australian Exceptionalism, Oxford University Press, 2016.
• (The Story of Australia's People, Volume 2: The Rise and Rise of a New Australia), Penguin Books Australia Ltd., Vic., 2016.{{ISBN|9780670078028}}
• Before I Forget: An Early Memoir, Hamish Hamilton, 2019. {{ISBN|9781760890339}}
• Captain Cook's Epic Voyage, (revision of Sea of Dangers), Viking, 2020. {{ISBN|978-1-76089-509-9|}}

Book reviews{|class'wikitable sortable' width'90%'

!|Date!class='unsortable'|Review article!class='unsortable'|Work(s) reviewed|1995TITLE=A PRE-EMINENT VICTORIAN VOLUME=39 PAGES=78–79, PUBLISHER=MELBOURNE UNIVERSITY PRESS, 1995, |2013TITLE=BOOK OF RELICS: A KIND OF SECULAR FAMILY BIBLE VOLUME=350, 47–48, LOCATION=MILLERS POINT, NSW DATE=2012,

Biography

• BOOK, Allsop, Richard, Geoffrey Blainey: writer, historian, controversialist, December 2019, 2019, Monash University Publishing, 978-1-925835-62-5,
• BOOK, Deborah Gare, Geoffrey Bolton, Stuart Macintyre, Tom Stannage, 2003, The Fuss that Never Ended: The Life and Work of Geoffrey Blainey, Melbourne University Press, Melbourne, Victoria, 0-522-85034-0,

References

{{Reflist|30em}}

Further reading

• Bolton, Geoffrey. "Geoffrey Blainey" in Kelly Boyd, ed. Encyclopedia of Historians and Historical Writing, vol 1 (1999) pp 93–95
• BOOK, Allsop, Richard, Geoffrey Blainey: Writer, Historian, Controversialist, Monash University Publishing, 2020, 9781925835625, Australian History,

External links

• weblink" title="web.archive.org/web/20050404052809weblink">Works by Geoffrey Blainey
• weblink" title="web.archive.org/web/20060911062219weblink">Works about Geoffrey Blainey
• ABC Interview with audio
• Interview with John Anderson

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