E.H. Carr’s highly influential 1961 lecture series-turned-monograph What is History? submitted a relativist’s answer to its titular question: that history, in the form we commonly understand it, is an endless dialogue between historians and the facts of the past. This isn’t to say that there’s such a thing as a singular ‘true’ set of events behind any given version of history; instead, the process through which history is made is a complex game of telephone stretching back to the very first fireside stories.
Black Inc.’s popular Shortest History series takes this millennia-long collect call and condenses it into snappy chunks without sacrificing the nuance of a lengthier tome. From India to Scandinavia, music to AI, the Shortest Histories have sparked curiosity on a diverse range of countries and topics. Now, after 13 years of publication, the series is homeward-bound with Mark McKenna’s The Shortest History of Australia.
Divided by theme rather than recounted chronologically, McKenna’s approach to writing the past, present and future of Australia is deeply considered and precisely crafted. Where a weaker version of this book would shunt Indigenous voices and histories into a single self-conscious chapter, McKenna demonstrates that the violence of colonialism and the endurance of the world’s longest continuous cultures are foundational to our modern national narrative. Undoubtedly there are people, places and events McKenna compresses or skips entirely; the beauty of a Shortest History book, however, is its ability to encourage its readers to embark on their own research journey. With academic rigour and storytelling flair, McKenna’s accessible volume braids infamous and little-known threads of the continent’s vast historical landscape into an intricately detailed unfinished tapestry – and leaves just enough for us to tug on and unravel for ourselves.
