The Empire was a bar of soap: Life stories and race identity among British emigrants travelling to Australia, 1945-1971

More fashionable than political, social, or economic history, cultural history has become the predominant kind of history produced in Australia today. Celebrates the diversity of cultural history but also asks hard questions about its popularity and assesses the ways in which it is practised. Leading Australian historians reflect on the theoretical assumptions from which cultural history draws, and its strategies and methodologies. As well as considering cultural history as an approach to history, they consider it as a source of subjects for historical examination. Thus some essays reflect an author’s own specialty, while demonstrating the agendas and problems discussed elsewhere in the book, showing how an author tackles them in his or her own work.