Click on a thumbnail to go to Google Books.
|
Loading... Australia's Great Depression: How a nation shattered by the Great War survived the worst economic crisis it has ever facedby Joan Beaumont
None No current Talk conversations about this book.  shelleyraec | Nov 13, 2022 |  no reviews | add a review
Some generations are born unlucky. Australians who survived the horrors of the Great War & the Spanish flu epidemic that followed were soon faced with the shock of the Great Depression. Today we remember long dole queues, shanty towns and destitute men roaming the country in search of work. With over a third of the workforce unemployed in 1932, Australia was one of the hardest hit countries in the world. Yet this is not the complete story. In this wide-ranging account of the Great Depression in Australia, Joan Beaumont shows how high levels of debt and the collapse of wool and wheat prices left Australia particularly exposed in the world's worst depression. Threatened with national insolvency, and with little room for policy innovation, governments resorted to austerity and deflation. Violent protests erupted in the streets and paramilitary movements threatened the political order. It might have ended very differently, but Australia's democratic institutions survived the ordeal. Australia's people, too, survived. While many endured great hardship, anger, anxiety and despair, most 'made do' and helped each other. Some even found something positive in the memory of this personal and communal struggle. Australia's Great Depression details this most impressive narrative of resilience in the nation's history. No library descriptions found. |
Current DiscussionsNonePopular covers 
 Google Books — Loading...GenresMelvil Decimal System (DDC)994.042History and Geography Oceania and elsewhere AustraliaLC ClassificationRatingAverage: (4)
Is this you?Become a LibraryThing Author. |
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Wikipedia in English
2
Australia’s Great Depression by Jean Beaumont is a comprehensive examination of the global crisis’s impact on the nation, particularly between the years of 1929 and 1932. Australia was amongst the hardest hit nations, with the economic crash triggered by a combination of wartime and repatriation spending, the collapse of export markets like wheat and wool, the rising price of imports, and high overseas debts.
I have to admit that I found some of the economic and political detail to be tedious, but I do feel it was explained clearly.
Of more interest to me was the impact on the population. Unemployment in Australia ranged between 25 and 30 per cent, and was at its highest in 1932. Beaumont shows that not all sectors of the economy equally affected, and hence the impact of the Great Depression varied according to location, age, marital status, gender, ethnicity, class and former military service. I found the specifics of the variables to be intriguing , though none were too surprising.
I also found the brief discussion of the parallels between the behaviour of political parties and politicians around the Depression and the current economic downturn post-CoVid to be of interest. It was also interesting to note, given current woefully low unemployment payments, that the ‘susso’ payment introduced during the Great Depression, was similarly set at a meagre rate, and for almost the same reasons that the government uses to justify it today.
There is a collection of photographs and other images included at the end of the book. So too are Beaumont’s extensive lists of References and Notes for anyone interested in further reading.
At nearly 600 pages I wouldn’t recommend Australia’s Great Depression. to a casual reader unless the topic is of specific interest, but I feel I learnt a lot about the nation’s socioeconomic history and the complexity of the Great Depression experience by reading it. (