The retreat of Britain and America from the region at the end of the East Asian Cold War caused Australia to redefine itself in relation to Britain and to reassess it relations with the US. As a result Australia, recognising the limits of the American alliance began to focus its energies on the Asia Pacific region in a new way. This episode will look first at the foundations of Australia’s new approach to Asia which the Whitlam and Fraser governments laid down from 1972 to 1983.

Voice Actor: Associate Professor Nick Eckstein

 This episode explores how in response to changes in America’s East Asia policy and the course of the Vietnam war, Australian governments, particularly that of Labor Prime Minister Gough Whitlam, sought to redefine Australia’s relations with the US.

Voice Actor: Associate Professor Nick Eckstein

Now comes the reassessment. In this episode, I begin to explore the breakdown of the bi-polar ideological world and the decision of Australia’s ‘Great and Powerful Friends’ to withdraw from Asia. Today, the “new nationalism”, or how Australia began to redefine its relations with Britain for a new era.

Voice Actors: Associate Professor Nick Eckstein, Dr. Vanessa Witton.

Following on from the previous episode, this episode looks at the Indonesian Confrontation with Malaysia over the future of the British territories in Borneo, Sarawak and British North Borneo; and the Communist led Vietnamese nationalist movement and the Vietnam War.

Voice Actor: Associate Professor Nick Eckstein

This episode is about Australia and the National Independence movements in Southeast Asian region, the issue which above all dominated Australian defence and foreign policy during the 1950s and 1960s. There is a particular focus on Indonesia’s independence and the fate of West New Guinea.

Voice Actor: Associate Professor Nick Eckstein

This episode explores how Australia responded to the two great defining developments which dominated its international environment from the end of World War Two until the end of the 1960s. The first of these was the coming of the Cold War to Asia and the second the Asian and African peoples struggle for national independence.

Voice Actor: Associate Professor Nick Eckstein

Following on from the last episode,  the tensions over Britishness that arose for Australia from geopolitics, from the tension arising from on the one hand belonging to an Empire whose centre was in Europe and on the other being itself located in the Asia Pacific region.

Voice Actor: Associate Professor Nick Eckstein

This episode provides a historical context to Australian foreign policy and in particular, how Australians responded to the age of nationalism. The form of Britishness in Australia is  discussed, and how that helped Australia to perceive Asian in racial terms.

Voice Actors: Associate Professor Nick Eckstein and Dr Vanessa Witton.

This episode explores the origins of the world system and the key concepts which policy-makers and scholars use to explain its nature, and the forces which shape it, control change and produce conflict. Australia as a nation state belongs to this system and its policymakers and scholars use these historically derived terms and ideas to make sense of the world and to explain the government’s actions.

Voice Actor: Associate Professor Nick Eckstein

How has Australia thought about and acted in the world beyond its shores?  What are the the policies it has shaped, pursued and enacted to make sense of the world and the region of which it is a part, and what is the relationship of those policies to culture, ideas and identity?