Two Different Histories: Same Place? Manilla, NSW
Abstract
A close study of a particular place’s several histories—spaced out over the twentieth century—may well offer a sort of paradigm for the ‘revisionist’ interpretation of regional history writing. Regional history mediates between the public and the private, and it probably needs to be written with imagination, rather than bias, to achieve wider sympathy.
Slewings must come from rank-class, local politics, styles of business featured, the absence/presence of an historical perspective, an awareness of/tolerance for ethnic presences and differences. Later histories have more news/perspectives from the outside world, yet, and paradoxically, more local identity rather than national/ international materials. Later histories have more references to women and aborigines, but then a moving away of the younger members, and so that group not being ‘news’. While all forms of local history are valid, they must correlate now to the given community’s/paper’s readership.
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