What If?

Australian History as it Might have been

By: Sean Scalmer, Stuart Macintyre

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Paperback | 29 August 2025 | Edition Number 1

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What if key episodes in Australia's past had turned out differently?

If France had colonised part of Australia in the eighteenth century?

If the ANZACS had played only a minor role in the Gallipoli landing in World War I?

If Gough Whitlam's Labor government had been re-elected after its dismissal in 1975?

If Aborigines had been granted citizenship much earlier?

What new paths might our national history have followed? In this fascinating volume, leading Australian historians search for answers. Together, they reimagine Australia's environment, race relations, art, political life, and national identity, providing a play on actual and possible, action and result, result and consequence that is as rigorous as it is creative.

In the political realm, Jim Davidson asks What if Tasmania had become French?; Marilyn Lake wonders what would have happened had Alfred Deakin made a declaration of Australian independence; Helen Irving questions where we'd be if Federation had failed in 1900; James Walker asks What if Whitlam had won another opportunity to implement his program? The cultural questions include Peter Read asking What if Aborigines had never been assimilated?; Sean Scalmer examines the possible outcome if the attempted assassination of Arthur Calwell had been successful; and Ann Curthoys asks What if a men's movement had triumphed in the 1970s?

What If? asks how our history has been written, what our nation has become, and what it might yet be.

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Non-Fiction History Regional & National History Australasian & Pacific History Anzac History

Contributors	p. vii
Abbreviations	p. viii
Introduction	p. 1
Statecraft
What if Tasmania had become French?	p. 15
What if Alfred Deakin had made a declaration of Australian independence?	p. 29
What if Federation had failed in 1900?	p. 44
What if New South Wales had not paid parliamentarians until after Federation?	p. 67
What if the federal government had created a model Aboriginal state?	p. 89
What if Australia's baptism of fire had occurred at the Cocos Islands?	p. 115
What if Whitlam had won another opportunity to implement his program?	p. 138
Society and Culture
What if there had been a school of figure painting in colonial Sydney?	p. 163
What if Aborigines had never been assimilated?	p. 187
What if the attempted assassination of Arthur Calwell had been successful?	p. 212
What if the northern rivers had been turned inland?	p. 234
What if a men's movement had triumphed in the 1970s?	p. 255
Notes	p. 272
Index	p. 288
Table of Contents provided by Ingram. All Rights Reserved.

What If?

Australian History as it Might have been

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