Carl, Billy and Bert: Carl Bridge on Australian Politics and the British World

Abstract

As a historian of India, of Australia, and of the British World, Carl Bridge’s work was often biographical. Two Australian political leaders who occupied a good deal of his attention were the Labor prime minister and subsequent rene gade, Billy Hughes, and the Labor external affairs minister and later party leader, Bert Evatt. Both Hughes and Evatt were notorious as difficult men, inclined to unpredictable behaviour, and gifted at antagonising others. Yet Bridge brought to the study of each of them a framework that was able to account for both the patterned nature of their actions, and the mercurial aspects of their respective personalities. That patterning came from Bridge’s well-developed explaining of Anglo-Australian or British identity that he also applied successfully to figures such as Stanley Melbourne Bruce and Richard Casey. Bridge’s understanding of the British World has been a valuable framework for explaining why indi viduals on different sides of politics, and with quite diverse social backgrounds and ideological orientations, could think and act in strikingly similar ways. This chapter will examine what is captured in this approach, as well as considering its weaknesses. Show more