John Bradley Hirst, was an Australian historian and social commentator. He taught at La Trobe University from 1968 until his retirement in 2006, edited Historical StudiesAustralia's leading historical journalfrom 1977 to 1980, and also served on the boards of Film Australia and the National Museum of Australia. He has been described as an "historian, public intellectual, and active citizen". He wrote widely on Australian history and society, publishing two well-received books about colonial New South Wales. Hirst also frequently published opinon pieces in the media.
Biography
Born in Adelaide, Hirst attended Unley High School and undertook his undergraduate and postgraduate study at the University of Adelaide. Abandoning an early desire to become a Methodist minister, in 1968 he was appointed a lecturer at Melbourne's new La Trobe University, where he remained until the end of his career. His wife and fellow-student Christine accompanied him to Melbourne. They had two children, Catherine and David. Hirst was subsequently head of department and Reader in History at La Trobe. He retired in 2006, and was an Emeritus Scholar at La Trobe until his death. Hirst was seconded to the University of Melbourne to edit Historical Studies, Australia's leading historical journal, from 1977 to 1980. In retirement, he travelled regularly to Sydney to instruct, without remuneration, groups of post-graduate students in thesis writing. Hirst died on 3 February 2016 at the age of 73.
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". 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 and The Strange Birth of Colonial Democracy . 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. Hirst's study of Federation, The Sentimental Nation, was also a ground-breaking work, arguing that national sentiment was more important than economics in uniting the nation. Alan Frost has described Hirst's shorter analyses as notable: "Distance in Australia: Was It a Tyrant?", his response to Geoffrey Blainey's most famous concept, "deserves much more attention than it now receives"; "Egalitarianism" challenges "received wisdom about colonial life". Many of his best shorter pieces were collected in Sense and Nonsense in Australian History. A major achievement of Hirst's was a project to index the Melbourne Argus newspaper. In addition to those concerning Australian history, there was his pioneering course designed to inform students about Australia's European cultural heritage. This was published as The Shortest History of Europe and has been translated into twelve languages. 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 "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.
