One of the most important developments in the production of history in the early twenty‐first century has been the capacity of ‘weird history’ or ‘pseudo history’ to have a large impact on the public sphere. Pseudo history mimics professional history in the way that it presents itself to the public but its arguments defy any reasonable assessment of the evidence. In this paper, we examine the phenomenon of pseudo history through a consideration of its origins in travellers’ tales and its current manifestation with particular reference to two practitioners: Anatolii Fomenko and Gavin Menzies. One can attribute much of their popular success to their capacity to appeal to both democratic principles and nationalism, and to make effective use of new media, especially the internet.
This article argues that the relationship between the religious and the secular in Australia is complex and that there has been no simple transition from a religious society to a secular one. It argues that the emergence of apparently secular moral orders in the second half of the nineteenth century involved what Steven D. Smith has termed the "smuggling in" of ideas and beliefs which are religious in nature. This can be seen clearly in the economic debates of the second half of the nineteenth century in Australia in which a Free Trade based on an optimistic natural theology battled with a faith in Protection which had powerful roots in a secular form of Calvinism espoused by David Syme. The article concludes with an analysis of twentieth-century historian W. K. Hancock's comparison of the medieval commonwealth and Machiavelli, concluding that Hancock found both the Free Trade and the Protectionist visions of moral order to be inadequate.
The relationship between religion and politics in Australia has in the past been conditioned by the peculiarities of Australian history. Traditionally religion was related to issues of moral reformation and sectarianism. Changes in Australia over the past forty years have changed this relationship as the public role of religion has waned. In recent times there has been somewhat of a religious comeback in Australian public life. This has been related to a new style of Christian politics, the presence of two strong Church leaders, Cardinal George Pell and Archbishop Peter Jensen, the presence of Islam, the election of a committed Christian Kevin Rudd as Prime Minister and the continuing importance of Australian and New Zealand Army Corps (ANZAC) as a civil religion.
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