Humanities and Social Sciences

History Program

Honorary Staff Profiles

Research interests: Australian history, political biography, institutional history, Second World War, supplanting societies

Projects in Progress: A biography of Andrew Fisher.

Selected Publications:
Books:
Menzies and Churchill at War, Angus and Robertson, Sydney, 1986; Paragon Press, New York, 1987; Oxford University Press, 1993; Simon and Schuster, Sydney, 2001, 253 pp.
Smugglers and Sailors, AGPS Press, Canberra, 1992
Contraband and Controversy, AGPS Press, Canberra, 1996
Brave New World: Dr. H.V. Evatt and Australian foreign policy, 1941-1949, University of Queensland Press, St Lucia, 1996.
Claiming a Continent: A new history of Australia, HarperCollins, Sydney, 1996; second edition, 1997; third edition, 2001 and reprinted several times; republished as a Harper Perennial, July 2005. 346 pp; Danish translation published by Roskilde University Press, 2003.
Australian Identities, Australian Scholarly Publishing, Melbourne, 1998
John Curtin: A Life, HarperCollins, Sydney, 1999; reissued as a Harper Perennial, 2006
Chifley, HarperCollins, Sydney, 2001
The Politics of War, HarperCollins, Sydney, 2003
Conquest: A new history of the modern world, HarperCollins, Sydney, 2005; published in Spanish by Critica, Barcelona, 2006

Chapters in Books:
'Pearl Harbor to Nagasaki', in Carl Bridge (ed.), Munich to Vietnam:
Australia's relations with Britain and the United States since the 1930s,
Melbourne University Press, Carlton, 1991.
'The end of Australia's complacency' in David Horner (ed.), The Battles that Shaped Australia, Allen and Unwin, Sydney, 1991.
'Dr H.V. Evatt and the Search for a Sub-Empire in the Southwest Pacific', in Day (ed.), Brave New World: Dr. H.V. Evatt and Australian foreign policy, 1941-1949, University of Queensland Press, St Lucia, 1996.
'The Demise of the Digger: Australian Identity in a Post-colonial World', in Day (ed.), Australian Identities, Australian Scholarly Publishing, Melbourne, 1998.
‘The White Australia Policy’, in Carl Bridge and Bernard Attard (eds.), Between Empire and Nation: Australia’s external relations from Federation to the Second World War, Australian Scholarly Publishing, Melbourne, 2000.
'Gallipoli, Embezzlement and a Death in the Bush: John Curtin's first war', in John Curtin's Legacy: A series of public lectures from the John Curtin Prime Ministerial Library, JCPML, Perth, 2000.
'John Joseph Curtin' and 'Paul John Keating' in Michelle Grattan (ed.), Australian Prime Ministers, New Holland Publishers, Sydney, 2000.
'One damn thing after another: the Great Depression, the Second World War and the transformation of Australia', in P. Bastion and R. Bell (eds), Through Depression and War: the United States and Australia, Australian-American Fulbright Commission, Canberra, 2002.
‘Hawke and the Labor Tradition’, in Susan Ryan and Troy Bramston (eds.), The Hawke Government: A Critical Retrospective, Pluto Press, Melbourne, 2003.

Journal Articles:
'Anzacs on the run: the view from Whitehall, 1941-2', Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History, May 1986.
'Promise and Performance: Britain's Pacific pledge, 1943-45', War and Society, September 1986.
'P.G. Taylor and the alternative Pacific air route, 1939-45', Australian Journal of Politics and History, Vol. 32, No. 1, 1986.
'An undiplomatic incident: S.M. Bruce and the moves to curb Churchill, February 1942', Journal of Australian Studies, November 1986.
'H.V. Evatt and the "Beat Hitler First" strategy: scheming politician or an innocent abroad?', Historical Studies, October 1987.
‘Loosening the Bonds: Britain, Australia and the Second World War’, History Today, February 1988.
'Aliens in a hostile land: a reappraisal of Australian history', Journal of Australian History, November 1988.
‘Customs and the Cambodians’, Australian Customs History Journal, June 1990.
‘Churchill and his War Rivals’, History Today, April 1991.
‘Has Britain Let Us Down? A Reconsideration’, Royal Historical Society of Queensland Journal, May 1992.
‘A State in Search of a Nation: Australian Nationalism and the Second World War’, Royal Historical Society of Queensland Journal, November 1993.
‘Alien Shores: Writing a new history of Australia’, Trevor Reese Memorial Lecture, Menzies Centre for Australian Studies, London, 1995.
‘Cabinet table and Kitchen table’, Meanjin, 1/2002.

Personal website: www.davidday.com.au