Federation, Democracy and the Struggle against a Single Australia
Abstract One of the essential characteristics of modern nationhood is singularity. There is one Australia, with one story, one foundation, one destiny and one face to the world at large. However, singularity limits good history. It makes a particularly strong impact on our understanding of those episodes which seem to be crucial turning points in the history of the nation, including in Australia's case the period of federation and World War One. Good accounts of that period, and thus of the whole Australian experience, depend on avoiding the seductions of singularity, and the impact on scholarship of ‘the lethal chimera of the modern nation-state’.