Medici Matriarchs. "The Medici Women: Gender and Power in Renaissance Florence" by Natalie Tomas [review]

The origins of Tomas’ study of the Medici women in a doctoral thesis are evident in the scholarly apparatus that accompanies, but does not interrupt, her narrative. Over a third of the book consists of footnotes and a bibliography, which provide a truly splendid resource for anyone interested in the history of women not only in Renaissance Florence but also in medieval and early modern Europe.Australia Council, La Trobe University, National Library of Australia, Holding Redlich, Arts Victori

Least of the Dictators? "Mussolini", by R.J.B. Bosworth. [review]

Richard Bosworth, in this superb biography of Italy’s Duce, is critical of ‘the great man in history’ and intentionalist approaches that vest all power, initiative and control in leaders, particularly in the case of Mussolini, a leader more driven by, and adaptive to, events than driven by them. Unlike Hitler, the Duce was impelled by no credo, his Fascism was vague, undefined and opportunistic, his politics governed not by ideology but by compromises and deals, by short-term tactics not long-term strategies and goals. Thus the man whose only consistent position until he came to power may have been virulent and vociferous anti-clericalism signed the Lateran Pact with the papacy in 1929. Bosworth would, however, agree with the young Robert Menzies that Mussolini was a charismatic leader

Universal Nomads. "The Cambridge Companion to Travel Writing" by Peter Hulme and Tim Youngs (eds) and "Venus in Transit: Australia's Women Travellers 1788-1930" by Douglas R.G. Sellick. [review]

In our Postmodern age, when everything travels and travel is a metaphor for everything, travel and travel writing have become the subject of intense scholarly interest and debate. Travel, once largely the domain of geographers, and travel writing, previously relegated to the status of a sub-literary genre, now engage attention from literary studies, history, anthropology, ethnography and, most fruitfully, from gender and post-colonial studies. Conferences and publications abound.Australia Council, La Trobe University, National Library of Australia, Holding Redlich, Arts Victori

White already to harvest: South Australian women missionaries in India

In 1882, the South Australian Baptist Missionary Society sent off its first missionaries to Faridpur in East Bengal. Miss Marie Gilbert and Miss Ellen Arnold were the first of a stream of missionary women who left the young South Australian colony to work in India. Scores of women from other Christian denominations and from other Australian colonies also went to India and indeed to other mission fields in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. As with other western women missionaries, these women intended to save souls and to bring India's daughters to Christ, often by means of medical work. But unlike their British sisters, these women came from the edge of empire to intervene in another, but different, colonial site. These missionary ventures coincided with efforts of the Australian settlers to elaborate for themselves an identity separate from and against that of the metropolitan centre. Within these debates, contestations over the meaning of ‘the colonial girl’ and ‘the Australian girl’ played a key role. The article explores why the women were drawn to India rather than to working with Aboriginal people in Australia. It begins to investigate how in seeking to reconstruct Indian womanhood they elaborated for themselves a separate colonial, Australian identity and how much in their missionary endeavours they affirmed an identity as white, Christian and ultimately British. </jats:p