| Review of: | An Historian's Life: Max Crawford and the Politics of Academic Freedom by Fay Anderson |
|---|---|
| Reviewed By: | Paul Crook |
| Reviewed in: | Australian Journal of Politics and History |
| Date accepted online: | 14/01/2008 |
| Published in print: | Volume 53, Issue 03, Pages 465-504 |
Book Reviews
Max Crawford's life had some intriguing transitions. Coming from radical working-class origins (about which he conveniently developed amnesia) he became a respected public intellectual. He built up an impressive (if sometimes over-mythologised) school of history, founded on scrupulous scholarly values and research, but his own output was disappointing (not least to himself). A libertarian-leftist in the 1930s and 40s, a staunch defender of civil liberties and academic freedom, he suffered a failure of nerve in the repressive McCarthyist atmosphere of the Menzies era, and ended up veering to the right.
Anderson's meticulous research into Crawford's life throws much new light on the subject, although, like all biography, it ultimately cannot fully fathom the demons and emotions of his inner being. After gaining firsts at Sydney, Crawford in 1927 won a scholarship to Balliol College, Oxford, which famously produced the higher echelons of officials for the British Empire. He took out a first class honours degree in history and was to wield his Balliol influence for many years. The shy young man became an assured, even cocky, scholar, although the difficult years of the Depression meant that he scrabbled away at various jobs for years - teaching in Sydney and England, tutoring at Oxford, a stint at Sydney under Stephen Roberts - before the great windfall of his life, appointment to Ernest Scott's chair of history at Melbourne University in 1936, despite a lack of publications. The department he shaped over the next twenty years was a fine one and undeniably influential, although, as Anderson hints, there were rival schools, not least in Sydney and Brisbane. For instance, the charismatic Gordon Greenwood was to build up a formidable department at the University of Queensland that arguably surpassed Melbourne in areas such as international relations and Asian studies. (Anderson makes a rare mistake in suggesting that Greenwood was part of "the Oxford old boys' club". He did his doctorate at Harold Laski's LSE, a far different cry). However Crawford certainly mentored a great list of people (mostly male) who came to dominate history in Australia, including Manning Clark, Hugh Stretton, Ken Inglis, Alan McBriar, Inga Clendinnen, John Poynter, John Mulvaney, Alan Shaw, Geoff Serle, Greg Dening and Geoffrey Blainey: "By the end of the 1960s over a third of history professors in Australian universities were products of the Melbourne School" (p. 373). Oddly, Anderson decided not to interview people involved in retrospectives of Crawford and his legacy edited by Stuart Macintyre and Peter McPhee in 2000.
The main theme of the book is as a case-study of progressive liberalism and the limits of intellectual autonomy on Australian campuses during a time of Cold War intimidation and anti-intellectualism - certainly a wholly pertinent issue in our own time. Crawford's activities in bodies such as the Australian Council of Civil Liberties, Australia-Soviet House, his secondment as First Secretary to the Australian Legation to the USSR (1942-3), and his association with politically suspect people (such as Brian Fitzpatrick) brought him to the attention of the security service. He had problems getting a visa to the US and in 1951 (unbeknownst to him) ASIO operatives followed him to London. (Anderson gives fascinating excerps from his extensive ASIO file. One is surprised at just which academics were informants then). Crawford's retreat from activism is subtly narrated. The fiasco of the