What does decolonisation mean as a field of historical inquiry — and what does it demand of the historians who work in it? Jon Piccini and Angela Woollacott approach these questions from different generations and starting points. Woollacott came to postcolonial thinking through the new imperial history in 1990s American universities, where the field felt genuinely revolutionary. Piccini came through the study of 1960s transnational activism, and found his way to decolonisation proper only when a supervisor’s question stuck with him long enough to send him back to sources he thought he’d already exhausted.

They discuss what a decolonial approach actually requires: taking positionality seriously, working across archives that are not equally preserved, and refusing to let the boundaries of the logo map define Australian history. The conversation moves through the historiography — Frantz Fanon, CLR James, the landmark work of Tracy Banivanua Mar on decolonisation as an oceanic movement — and into practical questions about how the history is made. Piccini describes working with Papua New Guinean archives and the irreducible privilege involved in that encounter, while Woollacott discusses the seminal work of Henry Reynolds and the influence of the Colonial Frontiers Massacres Map as presenting incontrovertible evidence of frontier violence.

Voices

Jon Piccini is a Senior Lecturer in History at Australian Catholic University in Brisbane/Meanjin. His work spans transnational activism, human rights history, and Australia’s colonial relationships in the Pacific. He is completing a book on Australia and decolonisation.

Angela Woollacott is Distinguished Professor Emerita in the School of History at the Australian National University, on Ngunnawal Country. Her books include Settler Society in the Australian Colonies (2015) and a biography of Don Dunstan. Her current project examines Australians who shaped the intellectual and political challenge to colonialism in the mid-twentieth century.

Credits

Recorded and edited by Lachlan D’Acourt. Executive producers: Michelle Arrow and Kate Fullagar. Executive producer, Impact Studios: Sarah Gilbert. History Lab is made by UTS Impact Studios and the Australian Centre for Public History. Field Notes is made in collaboration with the Australian Historical Association.

Further Reading

• Tracy Banivanua Mar, Decolonisation and the Pacific (2016)
• CLR James, The Black Jacobins (1938; rev. ed. 1963)
• Shannyn Palmer, Unmaking Angus Downs: Myth and History on a Central Australian Pastoral Station (2022) — Prime Minister’s History Prize winner
• Jessica Urwin, Contaminated Country (forthcoming, Melbourne University Press)
• Henry Reynolds, Looking from the North (2024)