Federation: The Secret Story by Bob Birrell

Book Description

Secondhand. Very good condition. Minor wear to book corners and edges. Pages have started to sun.

The first edition was published in 1995 as A Nation of Our Own.

The story of Federation has been muddied by the influence of the republican movement. As a result, many people today think that Federation was only a half-hearted, and half-successful, attempt to break our links with Britain.

Bob Birrell's book explodes this myth. He shows that Federation resulted from an enormous popular movement based on intensely nationalistic feelings about what it meant to be an Australian. He tells a story about the highly successful formation of a new, politically and culturally distinct nation.

His book is a deliberate and important attempt to destroy the myth of Australian dependency on Britain, which has dominated historical writing here since the 1980s.