Taming the Great South Land: A History of the Conquest of Nature in Australia by William J Lines

Book Description

Secondhand. Very good. A minor dent to front cover tail edge and introductory pages. Otherwise near new.

1999 edition includes a new afterword by the author.

This book examines the ways European society rapidly, radically transformed Australia's physical and human landscapes. William J Lines writes of repeated environmental devastation - from the early slaughter of seals and whales to the destructive spread of sheep, through gold rushes and land settlement to British nuclear tests and the modern mining and timber industries.

Lines shows how Enlightenment ideas of progress, economic growth and development were reconstructed on Australian soil, and how the promise of the conquest of nature became a mockery, in fact, resulting in the mass dislocation and destruction of indigenous populations.