The Australian Wars shortlisted for PM's Literary Award

The Australian Wars, edited by Rachel Perkins, Stephen Gapps, Mina Murray and Henry Reynolds, has been shortlisted for the Prime Minister's Literary Award for Australian History.

The judges of the PM's History Award (Angela Woollacott, Patrick Mullins and Lynette Russell) said this of the book:

‍The Australian Wars powerfully challenges assumptions that frontier conflict was not warfare. Bringing together a cohort of historians and experts, this edited collection covers the entire continent, Tasmania and the Torres Strait Islands to demonstrate that planned and coordinated warfare shaped the whole of Australia. First Nations warriors resisted British invaders in pitched battles and innumerable guerrilla skirmishes that, taken together, constituted war for control of the continent from the late 18th to the early 20th century.

Drawing on printed and private documents, photographs, drawings, maps, oral Indigenous knowledge and a large body of scholarship, the book makes an original and compelling case for publicly recognising and memorialising ‘the Australian Wars’ fought in establishing the nation. Many episodes are shocking. The book contributes to Australian history by showing how genocidal campaigns, unequal warfare, land dispossession, martial law and segregated reserves were interconnected components of British and Australian victory over First Nations warriors and communities who fought tenaciously and strategically.

Defending Country's review of the book with links to other reviews.

The winners of the PM's Awards will be announced on 10 September.

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Picture credit: detail of book cover