‘Elizabeth and John’ and ‘Te Motunui Epa’ joint 2023 Ernest Scott Prize winners
Elizabeth and John: The Macarthurs of Elizabeth Farm (Alan Atkinson, NewSouth) and Te Motunui Epa (Rachel Buchanan [Taranaki, Te Ātiawa], Bridget Williams Books) have jointly won the 2023 Ernest Scott Prize for History.
The $13,000 annual prize is awarded by the University of Melbourne’s Faculty of Arts and the Australian Historical Association to the most distinguished contribution to the history of Australia or New Zealand, or to the history of colonisation, based on original research. This year’s winners were chosen by Giselle Byrnes and Amanda Nettelbeck from 65 submissions, and a shortlist that also included My People’s Songs: How an Indigenous Family Survived Colonial Tasmania, (Joel Stephen Birnie, Monash University Publishing); Dreamers and Schemers: A Political History of Australia, (Frank Bongiorno, Black Inc.); Making Australian History (Anna Clark, Vintage); The English Text of the Treaty of Waitangi (Ned Fletcher, Bridget Williams Books.
Elizabeth and John: The Macarthurs of Elizabeth Farm is a ‘meticulously researched book’ that ‘tells a rich and wide-ranging social history of colonial Australia through the biographical portraiture of one of early New South Wales’ most influential couples, Elizabeth and John Macarthur’, said the judges. ‘Written with the author’s signature capacity to range across a large historical canvas with seemingly effortless grace, this deeply scholarly work exemplifies how a close, contextualised reading of family history can illuminate a much larger history of settler colonialism and Indigenous dispossession. In its intimate account of the Macarthurs’ lives—of the economic and social lives they sought to build in the settler colony, of the European Enlightenment sensibilities they brought with them, and of their only dimly-perceived consciousness of the Indigenous peoples they supplanted—this magisterial work asks us to see afresh how colonial culture was made in a particular time and place.’
Buchanan’s ‘beautiful book explores the journey of the Te Motunui Epa carved wooden panels across time, the meanings that have been attached to them, and the cultural continuity they represent’, said the judges. ‘Accessibly written and richly illustrated, the book tells an important story of colonial plunder and cultural restoration that will resonate in other geographical and cultural contexts. The story of the theft and then the repatriation of a set of precious panels, Te Motonui Epa also plays with conventional historical method; it gives voice to the taonga themselves to successfully weave a distinctly Māori approach to writing history alongside oral history and careful documentary analysis. This book is partly a detective story, partly a public history, and also a crime narrative. Most importantly, this book demonstrates a deep engagement with a Te Ao Māori worldview and challenges orthodox views of perspective, voice and the narrative form itself. This book is an exemplar of modern history writing in Aotearoa New Zealand; it is also elegant and sophisticated and a cracking good read.’
For more information on the winners and shortlisted works, see the University of Melbourne website here.
Category: Awards Local news
