Behind the glittering image of 'Marvellous Melbourne' there existed in the popular imagination another, very different, picture of the colonial metropolis. This was the city of 'low life', of crowded slums, poverty, disease and vice. The nine essays in The Outcasts of Melbourne attempt to reveal the social realities behind this picture. They include new accounts of the forces which created the city's physical environment. They show how perceptions of a city can be shaped by campaigning journalists, artists and writers. They present collective portraits of the poor and the 'criminal classes' - and of those who set out to save them. They describe how the city's guardians - the police, public health authorities and charity workers - responded to the challenge of the slums. By imaginative use of the rich deposits in the public records, these explorations in social history present new ways of documenting the lives of people whose daily activities were seldom reported in the popular press. In doing so, they also map the chains of causation which link the actions of individuals - appearing before a committee of a benevolent society, getting arrested, evangelising at a Salvation Army rally - to the social forces which have shaped the cities in which we live.

"Telling as much a social, educational, and cultural story as institutional history, this detailed account chronicles the ideological patterns, internal and countrywide conflicts, and student experiences at the University of Melbourne from 1850 to 1939. The daily life of staff, professors, and students are recounted during times of turmoil and peace in Australia, including the depression of the 1890s and World War I. The account offers a window into the pedagogical conflicts and research achievements of one of Australia's oldest continuing educational institutions."

Gangland Melbourne details the exploits of an unforgettable cast of villains, crooks and mobsters who have defined the criminal and gangland scene in Melbourne from the late 1800s to the present day. In this compelling book, Britain’s top true crime author James Morton and barrister and legal broadcaster Susanna Lobez track the rise and fall of Melbourne’s standover men, contract killers, robbers, brothel keepers and drug dealers, and also examine the role the police have played in both helping and hindering the growth of these criminal empires. In particular, Melbourne’s criminal past is explored through its famous villainous families, the Painters’ and Dockers’ union war of the 1970s and the more recent underworld gangland killings.Vivid and explosive, Gangland Melbourne is compulsive reading.

This volume provides an important new synthesis of archaeological work carried out in Australia on the post-contact period. It draws on dozens of case studies from a wide geographical and temporal span to explore the daily life of Australians in settings such as convict stations, goldfields, whalers' camps, farms, pastoral estates and urban neighbourhoods. The different conditions experienced by various groups of people are described in detail, including rich and poor, convicts and their superiors, Aboriginal people, women, children, and migrant groups. The social themes of gender, class, ethnicity, status and identity inform every chapter, demonstrating that these are vital parts of human experience, and cannot be separated from archaeologies of industry, urbanization and culture contact. The book engages with a wide range of contemporary discussions and debates within Australian history and the international discipline of historical archaeology. The colonization of Australia was part of the international expansion of European hegemony in the eighteenth and nineteenth century. The material discussed here is thus fundamentally part of the global processes of colonization and the creation of settler societies, the industrial revolution, the development of mass consumer culture, and the emergence of national identities. Drawing out these themes and integrating them with the analysis of archaeological materials highlights the vital relevance of archaeology in modern society.

Gangland Australia details the exploits of an unforgettable cast of villains, crooks and mobsters who have made up the criminal and gangland scene in Australia for over two centuries. In this fully updated and bestselling book, Britain's top true crime author James Morton and barrister and legal broadcaster Susanna Lobez track the rise and fall of Australia's talented contract killers, brothel keepers, club owners, robbers, bikers, standover men, conmen and drug dealers, and also examine the role of police, politicians and lawyers who have helped and hindered the growth of criminal empires. Vivid and explosive, Gangland Australia is compulsive reading.

In The People’s Zion, Joel Cabrita tells the transatlantic story of Southern Africa’s largest popular religious movement, Zionism. It began in Zion City, a utopian community established in 1900 just north of Chicago. The Zionist church, which promoted faith healing, drew tens of thousands of marginalized Americans from across racial and class divides. It also sent missionaries abroad, particularly to Southern Africa, where its uplifting spiritualism and pan-racialism resonated with urban working-class whites and blacks. Circulated throughout Southern Africa by Zion City’s missionaries and literature, Zionism thrived among white and black workers drawn to Johannesburg by the discovery of gold. As in Chicago, these early devotees of faith healing hoped for a color-blind society in which they could acquire equal status and purpose amid demoralizing social and economic circumstances. Defying segregation and later apartheid, black and white Zionists formed a uniquely cosmopolitan community that played a key role in remaking the racial politics of modern Southern Africa. Connecting cities, regions, and societies usually considered in isolation, Cabrita shows how Zionists on either side of the Atlantic used the democratic resources of evangelical Christianity to stake out a place of belonging within rapidly-changing societies. In doing so, they laid claim to nothing less than the Kingdom of God. Today, the number of American Zionists is small, but thousands of independent Zionist churches counting millions of members still dot the Southern African landscape.

This book compares consumer behavior in two nineteenth-century peripheral cities: Melbourne, Australia and Buenos Aires, Argentina. It provides an analysis of domestic archaeological assemblages from two inner-city working class neighborhood sites that were largely populated by recently arrived immigrants.The book also uses primary, historical documents to assess the place of these cities within global trade networks and explores the types of goods arriving into each city. By comparing the assemblages and archival data it is possible to explore the role of choice, ethnicity, and class on consumer behavior. This approach is significant as it provides an archaeological assessment of consumer behavior which crosses socio-political divides, comparing a site within a British colony to a site in a former Spanish colony in South America. As two geographically, politically and ethnically distinct cities it was expected that archaeological and archival data would reveal substantial variation. In reality, differences, although noted, were small. Broad similarities point to the far-reaching impact of colonialism and consumerism and widespread interconnectedness during the nineteenth century. This book demonstrates the wealth of information that can be gained from international comparisons that include sites outside the British Empire.

Alfred Felton, a bachelor of definite opinions and benignly eccentric habits, was one of the remarkable group of Melbourne merchants who dominated the economy of the Australian colonies in the decades after the gold rush. In 1904 he left his substantial fortune in trust, the income to be spent by a committee of his friends, half on charities (especially for women and children), and half on works of art for the National Gallery of Victoria, works calculated to 'raise and improve public taste'. The Gallery suddenly gained acquisition funds greater than those of London's National and Tate galleries combined, and between 1904 and 2004 more than 15 000 items were purchased for it by the Felton Bequest. 'Although the last quarter of the twentieth century saw a dramatic and exciting expansion of Australian art museums', Patrick McCaughey writes in the foreword of this book, 'no institution could hope to replicate the collection of the National Gallery of Victoria assembled under the aegis of the Felton Bequest.' How the Felton Bequests' Committee carried out its tasks, in cooperation and sometimes in conflict with the Trustees of the Gallery, is a human story of many triumphs and occasional follies, of decisions made and unmade amid changing notions of art, philanthropy and public taste. John Poynter's account of Felton's life and the story of his Bequests covers most of Melbourne's history, from the unusual view point of three themes, business, art and charity.

"Using the work of great Australian painters and poets as an entry point, this cultural study counters the popular myth that early colonial settlers were environmentally irresponsible and offers both aesthetic and historical evidence that suggests nature always figured prominently in the Australian national consciousness. Preserving endangered species, protecting forests, maintaining public land rights, and staving off climate change were at issue in the first environmental law of Australia enacted in 1788. Parlimentary debates, personal observations, and artistic renderings explore the texture and dimensions of early Australian environmentalism."

In an era of rapid urbanization, peri-urban areas are emerging as the fastest-growing regions in many countries. Generally considered as the space extending one hundred kilometres from the city fringe, peri-urban areas are contested and subject to a wide range of uses such as residential development, productive farming, water catchments, forestry, mineral and stone extraction and tourism and recreation. Whilst the peri-urban space is valued for offering a unique ambiance and lifestyle, it is often highly vulnerable to bushfire and loss of biodiversity and vegetation along with threats to farming and food security in highly productive areas. Drawing together leading researchers and practitioners, this volume provides an interdisciplinary contribution to our knowledge and understanding of how peri-urban areas are being shaped in Australia through a focus on four overarching themes: Peri-urban Conceptualizations; Governance and Planning; Land Use and Food Production; and Solutions and Representations. Whilst the case studies focus on Australia, they advance a variety of tools useful in discerning processes and impacts of peri-urban change globally. Furthermore, the findings are instructive of the issues and tensions commonly encountered in rapidly urbanizing peri-urban areas throughout the world, from landscape valuation and biosecurity concerns to functional adaptation and social change.