John Hirst (historian)

Academic contribution

Hirst's career included "teaching, supervision and research. He developed new subjects and methodologies to teach them." He produced a large number of articles, chapters and books on Australian history. His academic interests were wide-ranging, including social, cultural and political history. Jeremy Sammut has described him as "an elegant and outstanding stylist, as adept at clarifying complex issues by reducing them to their essentials as he was at crafting the pithy line that eliminated all doubt his interpretation was true and correct". In his historical work, Hirst's colleague at La Trobe University, Alan Frost, has noted that Hirst "challenged orthodoxies and produced many new insights". A major achievement of Hirst's was a project to index the Melbourne Argus newspaper (1860–1909).

Hirst wrote two seminal books on colonial New South Wales which Frank Bongiorno has described as displaying "a raw intellectual power": Convict Society and its Enemies (1983) and The Strange Birth of Colonial Democracy (1988) (both reprinted as Freedom on the Fatal Shore in 2008). Convict Society and its Enemies was particularly influential, arguing that rather than being a brutal slave society, early New South Wales was a place where rights and freedoms were well-established from the beginning and where the British convicts had opportunities for advancement.

Hirst's study of Australian Federation, The Sentimental Nation, was also a ground-breaking work, arguing that national sentiment was more important than economics in uniting the Australian colonies. Alan Frost has described Hirst's shorter analyses as notable: "Distance in Australia: Was It a Tyrant?" (1975), his response to Geoffrey Blainey's most famous concept, "deserves much more attention than it now receives"; "Egalitarianism" (1986) challenges "received wisdom about colonial life". Many of his best shorter pieces were collected in Sense and Nonsense in Australian History (2009).

In addition to those concerning Australian history, Hirst developed a pioneering course designed to inform students about Australia's European cultural heritage. Hirst argued that:

"Since Australia is an outgrowth of England, European civilisation is also the field of study for an intelligible history of Australia. This does not mean that every history of Australia has to begin with Charlemagne. It does mean that Australian history not set within European civilisation will convey a very poor understanding of Australian society."

Hirst turned his series of lectures on European history into a book, The Shortest History of Europe. First published in 2009, the book has been translated into twelve languages (Italian, Finnish, Swedish, Greek, Chinese, Arabic, Spanish, German, Portuguese, Russian, Turkish and Korean). His last work was a similar encapsulation of Australian history in one short volume, Australian History in Seven Questions.

Public intellectual

Historian Frank Bongiorno described Hirst as a "creative historian capable of engaging a wide audience, as well as a public intellectual who delighted, infuriated and provoked". He contributed many opinion pieces and commentaries to Australian newspapers and journals. Jeremy Sammut has noted that Hirst was motivated by an independent mind and a distaste for unthinking conformity. He "defied simplistic categorisation as a partisan because his politics were idiosyncratic". Sammut wrote Hirst was committed to "the rigorous pursuit of historical truth that drove him to explore the deeper patterns and meanings of the past, and the contemporary implications, that others had missed or misled us about". Hirst described himself as an old-fashioned social democrat.

Public appointments

Hirst held a number of appointments during his career. He was a member of the Prime Minister's Republic Advisory Committee, the chair of the Commonwealth Civics Education Group, a member of the Film Australia Board, a council member of the National Museum of Australia, and a member of the board of Old Parliament House in Canberra. He wrote the official history of Australia for new citizens and took a prominent part in the history summit convened by Prime Minister John Howard in 2006. Hirst advised the Victorian Government on the school history curriculum and was history adviser to the National Curriculum Authority. He was elected to the Academy of the Social Sciences in Australia in 1986. A committed republican, Hirst was the Convenor of the Republican Movement in Victoria.