Editing Manning Clark (section)

==''The History of Australia''==
[[File:Manning Clark office.JPG|thumb|250px|Manning Clark's desk in his Canberra home, where he wrote the six volumes of ''A History of Australia'']]
In the mid-1950s Clark conceived a new project: a large multi-volume history of Australia, based on the documentary sources but giving expression to Clark's own ideas about the meaning of Australian history. In late 1955, he received a research grant from the Rockefeller Foundation to study the first visits by Europeans to Australia in the 17th century.{{Sfn|Hughes-Warrington|2000|p=35}} He took leave from Canberra in 1956 and visited [[Jakarta]], [[Burma]] and various cities in India, fossicking in museums and archives for documents and maps relating to the discovery of Australia by the Dutch in the 17th century, and also the possible discovery of Australia by the Chinese or the Portuguese. He then visited London, Oxford and the [[Netherlands]], where he combed through the archives for more documents relating to the Dutch explorers and the founding of New South Wales in 1788 – Dymphna Clark did most of the research work in the Dutch archives. An immediate result of this research was ''Sources of Australian History'' (Oxford University Press 1957).{{Sfn|Holt|1999|p=107}}

During his time in London, the nature of the project radically changed as he recalled: "It was going to be very academic, very careful, very much a 'Yes' and 'No' performance, with genuflexions in the direction of Mr. 'Dry-as-Dust', and anxious looking over the shoulder at people I liked, hoping they were not as bored or lost as I was. It was all hopeless, lifeless, meaningless and false. I was in England, writing about Australia, writing about a country I did not really know, and about a country which I had a love-hate relationship".{{Sfn|Hughes-Warrington|2000|p=35}} After some reflection, Clark decided that what he really wanted to do was write a vivid narrative of Australian history with a focus on the impact on the Australian environment on European colonists in the 18th and 19th centuries, marking the genesis of the book series that became ''The History of Australia''.{{Sfn|Hughes-Warrington|2000|pages=36-37}}   

On his return to Australia, Clark began to write ''The History of Australia'', which was originally envisioned as a two-volume work, with the first volume extending to the 1860s and the second volume ending in 1939. As Clark began to write, however, the work expanded dramatically, both in size and conception. The first volume of ''History'', subtitled "from the earliest times to the Age of [[Lachlan Macquarie|Macquarie]]" appeared in 1962, and five more volumes, taking the story down to 1935, appeared over the next 26 years. In his autobiographical memoir ''A Historian's Apprenticeship'' published after his death, Clark recalled that his models were Carlyle, [[Edward Gibbon]] and [[Thomas Babington Macaulay, 1st Baron Macaulay|T. B. Macaulay]] – two conservatives and a [[Whigs (British political party)|Whig]] – and that he was inspired by the belief that "the story of Australia was a bible of wisdom both for those now living and, I hoped, for those to come after us".{{Sfn|Clark|1992|p=2}} By this time he had rejected all the notions of progressive or Marxist historiography: "I was beginning to see Australian history and indeed all history as a tragedy. Failure was the fate of the individual: success could be the fate of society. If that was a contradiction, I could only reply that it was but one of the many contradictions we must accept as soon as we can as part of the human condition".{{Sfn|Clark|1992|p=4}}

The dominant theme of the early volumes of Clark's history was the interplay between the harsh environment of the Australian continent and the European values of the people who discovered, explored and settled it in the 18th and 19th centuries. In common with most Australians of his generation, he had little knowledge of, or interest in, the culture of [[indigenous Australians]], though this changed in his later life. He saw Catholicism, Protestantism and the [[Age of Enlightenment|Enlightenment]] as the three great contending influences in Australian history.{{Sfn|Hughes-Warrington|2000|p=36}}  He was chiefly interested in colourful, emblematic individuals and the struggles they underwent to maintain their beliefs in Australia; men like [[William Bligh]], [[William Wentworth]], [[John Macarthur (wool pioneer)|John MacArthur]] and [[Daniel Deniehy]]. His view was that most of his heroes had a "tragic flaw" that made their struggles ultimately futile.

Clark largely ignored the 20th century historiographic preoccupation with economic and social history, and completely rejected the Marxist stress on class and class struggle as the driving force of social progress. He was also not much interested in detailed factual history, and as the ''History'' progressed it became less and less based in empirical research and more and more a work of literature: an [[Epic poetry|epic]] rather than a history.<ref>J.S. Ryan, "''A History of Australia'' as epic," in Bridge, ''Manning Clark'', 61</ref> Clark's colorful writing style with its allusions to the Bible, apocalyptic imagery, and a focus on the psychological struggles within individuals was often criticised by historians, but made him popular with the public.{{Sfn|Hughes-Warrington|2000|p=37}} Clark argued that the defining struggle between Protestantism, Catholicism and the Enlightenment world views ultimately ended not with the triumph of the "lucky country", but rather a spiritual decline into a "kingdom of nothingness" and an "age of ruins", as Australians became in Clark's view a nation of materialistic petty, petit-bourgeois property owners.{{Sfn|Hughes-Warrington|2000|p=36}} Despite his pessimistic conclusions, Clark wrote he still had hope for Australia's future, writing:<blockquote>"Australians have liberated themselves from the fate of being second-rate Europeans and have begun to contribute to the neverending conversation of humanity on the meaning of life and the means of wisdom and understanding. So far no one has described the phoenix that will arise from the ashes of an age of ruins. No one has risked prophesying whether an age of ruins will be the prelude to the coming of the barbarians or to taking a seat at the great banquet of life. The life-deniers and the straiteners have been swept into the dustbin of human history. Now is the time for the life-affirmers and the enlargers to show whether they have anything to say, whether they have any food for the great hungers of humanity".{{Sfn|Hughes-Warrington|2000|pages=36-37}}</blockquote>

His inattention to factual detail became notorious, and was noted even in the first volume, which drew a critical review from [[Malcolm Ellis]] titled "History without facts".<ref>[[M.H. Ellis]], "History without facts," ''The Bulletin'', 22 September 1962 – see also [[Andrew Moore (historian)|Andrew Moore]] (1999)''History without facts'': M. H. Ellis, Manning Clark and the origins of the Australian Dictionary of Biography, Journal of the Royal Australian Historical Society, Dec, 1999:( http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_hb4817/is_2_85/ai_n28745196/)</ref> Ellis, who had a history of personal hostility with Clark,{{Sfn|Clark|1992|p=8}}{{Sfn|Holt|1999|p=139}} was the first of many critics who took Clark to task for too much speculation about what was in the hearts of men and too little description of what they actually did. The historian [[A. G. L. Shaw]], who had been best man at Clark's wedding, said that while most of Clark's errors were trivial, together they created "a sense of mistrust in the work as a whole".<ref>Stuart Macintyre, "Manning Clark's critics," ''Meanjin'', Vol 41 No 4, 1982, 442</ref> There was also criticism that Clark relied too heavily on his own interpretation of primary sources and ignored the secondary literature. In contrast, many historians, including Max Crawford, [[Bede Nairn]], [[Kathleen Fitzpatrick (Australian academic)|Kathleen Fitzpatrick]] and [[Allan Martin (Australian historian)|Allan W. Martin]] the official biographer of [[Robert Menzies]], praised the book.{{Sfn|Holt|1999|pages=138-145}}

The ''History'' thus met a mixed critical response – "praise, misgivings and puzzlement in varying proportions"<ref>Macintyre, "Manning Clark's critics," 443</ref> – but a generally positive public one. Most readers warmed to Clark's great gift for narrative prose and the depiction of individual character, and were not troubled by the comments of academic critics on his factual inaccuracies or their doubts about his historiographic theories. The books sold extremely well and were a major earner for [[Melbourne University Press]] (MUP) and its director, Peter Ryan.<ref>Ryan confirms this several times in his ''Quadrant'' article of 1993.</ref> Even critics who found fault with the ''History'' as history admired it as literature. In ''[[The Age]]'', [[Stuart Sayers]] hailed it as "a major work, not only of scholarship... but also of Australian literature".{{Sfn|Holt|1999|p=137}} Some reviewers complained that Clark was "too pre-occupied with tragic vision" or condemned his "Biblical and slightly mannered style", but "recognised that Clark's very excesses gave the ''History'' its profundity and distinctive insight". The respected historian [[John La Nauze]], author of a highly regarded biography of [[Alfred Deakin]], wrote that the importance of Clark's work "lies not in the apocalyptic vision of our history... which I do not understand, and which I am sure I would disagree with if I did," but in "the particular flashes of interpretation" which gave "a new appearance to familiar features".<ref>Quotes as given by Macintyre in Bridge, ''Manning Clark'', 24</ref> Alastair Davidson stated in a review in the magazine ''Dissent'' in 1968: "The astonishing savaging of volume one of ''A History of Australia'', when it appeared in 1962, seems almost symbolic. What is important is that such pettiness did not harm such as Gibbon and Taine. Manning Clark will not go into the dustbin of history because of Ellis' quibbling about the precise time this or that event happened. Nor will McManners's more gentle questioning about whether he had really understood the nature of the Enlightenment correctly really be important. Great history is not determined by the precision of the facts it contains. What will decide this is the meaningfulness of the vision of Man which it has".<ref>Alastair Davidson in ''Dissent'' Summer 1968 cited in Brian Matthews. Manning Clark. A Life Allen and Unwin. Crows Nest Sydney, 2008, pp269-270.</ref>