TRANSCRIPT: Conversations with the Dean: Stephen Dobson Ep 1 | Dr Ben Jones

Stephen Dobson (00:15):

Hello everybody. I'd just like to acknowledge that we're on the lands of the Darumbal People and we, uh, acknowledge that they are the custodians past, present, and emerging. My name is Steven Dobson, and today I'm talking to,

Ben Jones (00:36):

Oh, my name's Dr. Benjamin Jones. I'm a historian here at CQUniversity.

Stephen Dobson (00:40):

Yeah. And we're gonna discuss today and have a conversation about what it means to be a, a historian in the time when we don't always think historians are pouring over lots of old dusty books, but, we'll, we'll get to that in a moment. Maybe I'm wrong. So, so Ben, so tell me, so who are you?

Ben Jones (01:00):

Well, I'm a historian primarily of Australian political history. So my PhD actually looked at Colonial Australia, colonial Canada and how they, uh, slowly democratized in the 19th century. But my career since then has merged more into a general Australian. I'm really interested in Australian national identity, and particularly, I suppose if I'm known for one thing, it's for Republicanism. I'm very interested right back to the 19th century when the first, uh, Republicans were calling for Australia or for New South Wales to become a Republican. How that movement has, uh, evolved over the years in the years with leading up to federation. And then of course, in the 1990s, there was the most explicit and immediate, uh, example, an expression of Australian republicanism. And I suppose I was 17 when that, uh, vote happened. So I was just a few months too young actually to take part in it. And maybe that sparked an interest in the Republican. I wanted to know why my fellow citizens, uh, voted no on my behalf. And what was some of the historical background to the question and the corollary, I suppose, if that is, uh, where Australia might go in the future.

Stephen Dobson (02:22):

Mm, interesting. I'm, I'm just gonna unpack this. There's lots of history going on in what you just said there. So, um, you wanted to know the, you're a 17 year old. Were you interested in history then, or how did you become interested and make that kind of image into a reality to where you are now?

Ben Jones (02:43):

Uh, yes. I definitely was interested in history and always have been. And I suppose some of the advice I got as a, as a young man was to, uh, follow your passions and study the things that you genuinely care about. And so when I went to university, it seemed, uh, obvious enough that I should, uh, major in history, though I did enjoy taking, uh, philosophy and, uh, and English and some other topics as well. But of course, when you get to the stage of deciding to do an honors thesis, that's when the general history, as interesting as that, is stops. And you really have to focus right in on something. So by this stage, I'm in my early twenties and I, I didn't have a topic and then decided I wanted to do honors. I wanted to do honors, and then had to think, well, what is a topic I really care about? And, that got me thinking back about, well, I'm still struck. And so by this stage, it's a few years later about why a country that has such self-confidence, such a sense of self that seems to be this independent, progressive, multicultural nation in the Asia Pacific would look all the way to Great Britain and decide one of all of our citizens and all our natural resources and our human resources and our, uh, intellectual capacity and creativity that we still fall back on this very medieval notion that there is a royal family that who, who are just entitled to the position of being head of state.

Stephen Dobson (04:24):

And, um, you, you gradually became, let's call it a history teacher, or were you going to be one who was just a professional writing of histories? I mean, it's, it's not the old fashioned chronicling what the royals do, obviously. So, so tell us more. What, what is this being a historian, what what does it mean?

Ben Jones (04:49):

That's, uh, a really deep question and I'll, I'll start with what it's not. It definitely isn't a, just someone with a PhD, uh, looking over things in an archive. I'm very careful with my language with my students from the time they do their first assignment in their first year of university. I say, you are a historian. You are practicing history right now and think of yourself as such. And I think the profession is so much broader than academic historians. I think there's a wealth of, uh, high school teachers especially who have incredible value and insight, and in particular the local historical societies. And we've got about eight here in Rockhampton, and they're all over the country. And these are the real knowledge keepers of local stories. So I have a really broad interpretation that a historian is really anyone who's passionate about history and who applies the skills of a historian to try and keep these stories alive.

Stephen Dobson (05:56):

So, so do you go into the libraries in all these dusty books and things, or is it everything done differently now?

Ben Jones (06:03):

Oh, oh, absolutely. And that's, that's the fun stuff. Increasingly, of course, in this digital world, uh, we do have more and more online resources and the national archives, uh, gradually, uh, digitizing things. And trove is just a national treasure with, uh, millions of pages of digitized, uh, newspapers. But of course, it's still only a fraction of what's there. And it just depends what level you're at. Uh, that's fine for small projects. If you're doing a history PhD though, uh, you certainly can't do it all online. You need to get into the archives and it's, it's like detective work because it, it was only other humans with certain amount of time and skills who sometimes just throw things in a box, or sometimes people who may possess something and might just say to the archives, look, I know this is important, I don't really know what it is. But you preserve it. And sometimes the description in the National archives is very vague. Sometimes it's not even accurate. It really is only once you open it up that you can see what's in there and start piecing together what its significance is.

Stephen Dobson (07:13):

Uh, it, the, the image you create, it conjures up somebody who's got these old-fashioned, uh, metal, detect the machines walking across fields looking for little bits of metal. Um, I it that's a great metaphor, . I know. It's not that. So, so the other thing I've noticed for you, you are also quite active is, let's, let me call it a public intellectual. So I, is that unusual for historians, or, or are you unique in, in that part of your profession?

Ben Jones (07:43):

I think I've had a really good example set for me by, uh, some other historians. And I, I, I might name, I, I think Frank Bongiorno, for instance, um, is really fantastic and really generous in this space. I, there, there was a phase, I think in the seventies where it was more usual for historians also to wear this second hat as a public intellectual. And perhaps it's, it's workloads or it's just this desire to want to just have a very small topic that you know a lot about and be the master of it. And as more people do PhDs, uh, the idea of being a public intellectual probably scares some people off. But on my, uh, Twitter for what, for what that's worth, uh, one of my pinned tweets is that I, I think, not just historians, but I think academics in general should think of themselves, especially if they work at a public university and they're paid by the public that they have a duty to. And it may be grandiose to say public intellectual, but at least to be out there writing for the popular press as well, and to be on the radio as much as you can, because I think historians and academics are really well placed, not just to talk about things that happened hundreds of years ago, but also to join the dots about how that might be relevant for today. And, uh, just as I was speaking, I'm thinking to my colleague and friend, uh, Carolyn Holbrooks just published a wonderful book called The Lessons of History. I think sometimes historians are too scared to want to say, and here's a application for now. Mm. Uh, it, it's so much safer to say, here's my comprehensive understanding of what did happen. But I think there's a real space for historians and, and a real need because with there, there's always someone who's willing to have a loud voice mm-hmm. . And, and I think if people who really have done research and are passionate about an area are sort of brave enough to put their voice out there and realize, well, there may be some online trolls who attack whatever I say, but I'm gonna say it anyway cause I think it is for the, for the public. Good.

Stephen Dobson (09:53):

Fantastic. Uh, thank you, Ben. And, um, I'll invite all the, the young budding historians to read some of your, let's call it your public intellectual pieces, but also to dig into some of this very, uh, important debates about what should a nation be a republic or not.

Stephen Dobson (10:25):

Today, I'd like to talk about this great book, which, um, I've been dipping into, um, I'll just hold it there. And Australia on the world stage. It's, um, it's interesting, you know, every country will write, want to write their own history. What is interesting is what is that history on biggest stages or smaller stages? And Ben's put together this great book and we'll focus a little bit on, on his contribution to the book, uh, especially his chapter. Uh, and so I'll start, you know, it's a, a quite a wide ranging book. You're, you're talking from everything from the First Nations, um, to this kind of, you call it post federation history and foreign relations. And, um, you, you could kind of say, is this a book that is just for these hardcore historians?

Ben Jones (11:27):

Uh, I, I certainly hope it's not a book just for hardcore historians. Uh, the editors and I have tried to be deliberately, uh, interdisciplinary. Mm-hmm. , I think there are a lot of Australian histories that follow a general formula of having a small, sometimes even tokenistic mention of First Nations and then colonization, 19th Century Federation Australia in the 20th century, and sort of ticking a, a number of boxes along the way. So this book deliberately brings in international relations experts and historians because one, I think there's just value in general with peering over the disciplinary war and seeing what your colleagues are up to. But also because I think historians tend to ask different questions, and I ask scholars ask different questions, and they're both valuable. Historians sometimes are too concerned with not making a false analogy. And often when people say, oh, well this thing happening in history now, oh, this is just like, back then, historians jump up and down and say, no, I can tell you 10 different reasons why. But there may still actually be a lot of validity to the comparison. And I ask, scholars sometimes fall into the trap of anything, you know, more than a year old. It's, it's ancient history because the president has changed. Or in some cases the borders have changed, whereas historians approach it by saying, yes, but how did we get there? And we just had a really fruitful, uh, unofficial symposium with historians and IR scholars talking together about how Australia got to where it is now and where it might go in the future. And that really is the genesis of the book.

Stephen Dobson (13:18):

I love that. Um, and then you have this lovely opening question, which, uh, in a way it, it, it sets the agenda. Uh, when and where is Australia? Unpack that for me.

Ben Jones (13:32):

Well, I think these are questions that sometimes get simplified to our detriment, and people like to think, well, when is Australia? Well, obviously that was 1901, or sometimes obviously that was 1788. And that one in particular is problematic because if you asked, uh, Phillip and his fellow travelers starting a, a cony colony in Sydney, uh, are you founding Australia today? Of course they, they would've said no. And a question I throw to my students often is, when did Australia become independent? And sometimes they say, well, at Federation, surely I'm like, well, no, it's more complicated cause Britain still oversaw, uh, the, uh, foreign affairs. And they say, well, maybe the Statute of Westminster, but then why did Australia feel obliged to follow British directions and to enter wars that Britain did? And there are all these different dates, and the uncomfortable truth is there isn't really one set point when Australia becomes Australia. But that's all just talking about modern history. We also go back thousands of years before, uh, colonization in the book as well. And Ancient Australia has an incredible history as well. And we've got a wonderful Wiradjuri author, Lawrence Bamblett who talks a bit about that. And so, and, and where is Australia is one where people may think, well, that's obvious as well. But again, people conceptualized Australia really as just being the southeast corner. And New Zealand was probably part of that concept of Australia for most of the 19th century. And so if, if there's a point in this exercise, it's pushing against this idea that there's a teleological view of Australian history, that it's just set here's the clean starting point. Mm. And the evolution that a lot of the events that happened were by chance, by random Australia could have ended up, uh, having multiple European, uh, colonizers. It could have not been colonized at all. There all sorts of different Australia's that were possible. And the one that we have isn't predetermined. It's, uh, it's the result of various forces of history, but also where Australia may go in the future is and set either. And it's something that, uh, those who care about the future of Australia should think about deeply. Cause it is something we can change and we can shape.

Stephen Dobson (15:58):

I also think that that, that a key point in this book and that speaks to your chapter, is about this whole idea of foreign relations. And, um, you talk about it, it, that also is something which changes and everything. So talk me through, you know, did Australia suddenly have foreign relations as something, I mean, what, what, what is the evidence that you could fix that in a certain period that we gradually formed that?

Ben Jones (16:26):

Well, I think overwhelmingly, uh, certainly I, our scholars tend to only think of when Australia first started sending its own diplomats to, uh, to Washington and London and to, to Tokyo and various other places. But, uh, we, we mentioned in the introduction that the archeological record, we are learning more and more every year about how vast Australia's ancient history is. Mm-hmm. and how much indigenous and First Nations foreign relations were going on. And just one example we use in the introduction is that there are pottery shards off Lizard Island, uh, which is, uh, well over 30 kilometers off the Coasta Queensland. And so there were incredible sea voyages going on well before, uh, European seafaring managed to get here. It's already well known that the first nations of northern Arnhem Land, uh, had trade with the Makassans in what's now Indonesia. So Lawrence Bamblett's chapter unpacks some of that, but it also suggests maybe there's still something we could learn about First Nations best practice. And, uh, another ri author in the book, James Blackwell, is really a pioneer in this space of First Nations foreign relation. It's a question which I don't think many Australians have thought about, what a first Nations opinion or perspective. And it throws in interesting questions like, when Australia today sends trade delegations, should we as a matter of protocol, have a First Nations person with them? And to show the cultural practices of Australia's first nations?

Stephen Dobson (18:05):

The, it, it reminds me of an analogy of, uh, when the Renaissance came, uh, suddenly Europe woke up to the idea that they actually had to train people who could actually have conversations because they were doing trade. And before that, it implies people didn't train in this. So there's a whole, whole space here of how do you learn about what is acceptable international relations. And and I think that puts Australia very much in that space of we want to interact with other cultures, and that requires a change in our mindset. Which brings me to the next question is you talk here about a, a change almost in national identity, how we think of ourselves. And you, you talk about an old Australia and a new Australia in the second half of the 20th century. Is is this some kind of thinking differently about ourselves and how does that play in with your thoughts?

Ben Jones (19:01):

Yeah, well, I, I mean, I suggested is such a dramatic shift. You almost could think of it as two different countries. Mm. Every nation between 1901 and 2001 is different of course, because many, uh, many changes, uh, happened over that century. And of course, many nations, uh, didn't exist until the middle of the 20th century. But Australia is, is remarkable in the sense that the national identity itself changed from British, a Australian to just being a Australian. And, uh, the historian Keith Hancock put it beautifully in the thirties, which is still, when Australia had this, uh, British, Australian identity said, it's unusual, um, to be in love with two soils because patriotism is usually a jealous mistress. But that's seems to be what has happened in Australia. But then when you think about it from federation, you have a nation of people predominantly identifying as British Australian. And so they're gonna put a constitution together that reflects that. They're gonna create a flag that reflects that. They're gonna put all of these, uh, symbols, statues, the names of roads and things. And then in the 20th, uh, second half the 20th century when Australian national identity had this complete evolution to now just see Britain as an ally, as a country we are close with, but not as, uh, we don't think of ourselves as British unless we happen to, you know, actually be British as well. The question is, well, should we go back to the Constitution then? Do we go back and look at the flag and some of these symbols? And do we want to have, uh, national symbols that better reflect who we are now, not who we were in 1901.

Stephen Dobson (20:46):

You've got this lovely phrase, which I think, um, summons up some of these kind of dilemmas and challenge about who we are and who we identify with. And, um, it, it goes along the lines of the language of Britishness is gone, but the privileging of Britishness remains. What does that mean?

Ben Jones (21:08):

I think what I'm trying to get across there is that no Australian politician would say, I'm British to the bootstraps as our most successful prime minister, Bob Menzies said. But there still is something in our psyche, or at least in some of us, when people suggest something like maybe we shouldn't have a British flag in the position of honor in our flag, that makes them just halt for a minute. And sometimes because that language of singing Royal Britannia and having Empire Day is gone, they don't quite know how to articulate why they're opposed to that or why they're opposed to cutting the final tie with the British monarchy. But there's just this sense that even if we're multicultural, that Britain is still the first of all the other immigrant groups to come here. And that's something, uh, the book challenges or I hope challenges and something, uh, I hope people consider, I suppose especially people who might instinctively think, well, I like things the way they are to think about, well, why is that? Is it just because that's the tradition I grew up with, and that is the Australia of 1901, but is that the Australia I want to see in, you know, for the next hundred years?

Stephen Dobson (22:24):

So, so if you were looking at your chapter and the book as a whole, um, would, would you be challenging or prompting, um, nude debates about the future direction of Australia?

Ben Jones (22:36):

Well, I, I hope so. I mean, that's a lofty goal, and I don't want to presume it for myself, but certainly with my chapter, if it's titled from, uh, it's titled to Almost Republic, and that's sort of where Australia left itself in 1999 with a vote where even though it failed, 45% of people said they wanted to become a republic then, which at least means that the British royal family is no longer a unifying, uh, just universally loved. There's significant dissent and a lot of, uh, polls before and since then have said a majority of Australians, uh, particularly, uh, now with King Charles, uh, would prefer Australia to become a republic. So, uh, I certainly don't make a case for a republic, uh, in that chapter. I try to as, uh, honestly and objectively as I can chart the national mood in that second half of the century. But it, if, if it ends with people or readers thinking, well, what's the next step now, then, then, then I'll be satisfied with that.

Stephen Dobson (23:42):

Thank you. I think that's, uh, an excellent, excellent, uh, introduction to, uh, let's call it some of the opportunities of where the nation goes, but also about the identities we create. Thank you very much.