Conquest: A New History of the Modern World

Front Cover
HarperCollins, 2005 - Colonies - 370 pages
Bestselling author and prize-winning historian David Day′s controversial new history of the modern world. Conquest is a groundbreaking new book that challenges the context of Australian history as well as the history of the rest of the world. In this follow-up to his highly acclaimed book, Claiming a Continent, David Day questions popular ideas about society and re-examines history ranging from Cortes in the 16th century to Hitler in the 20th century. Conquest explores the prolonged and bloody process that societies use to make other nations′ land their own. Whether it is the English in Australia or the Normans in England, the Spanish in Mexico or the Muslims in Spain, the Japanese in Korea or the Chinese in Tibet, the process of claiming conquered lands has shaped the nature of these societies as well as the nature of the present world. David Day examines the way societies across the world have secured their claims of ownership on lands occupied by other people. With its far-reaching implications, Conquest is certain to provoke widespread debate both in Australia and internationally.

About the author (2005)

David Day was born in Melbourne, Victoria, Australia on June 24, 1949. He received first-class honours in history and political science from the University of Melbourne and a PhD from the University of Cambridge. He has been a junior research fellow at Clare College in Cambridge, founding head of history and political science at Bond University, official historian of the Australian Customs Service, Keith Cameron Professor of Australian History at University College Dublin, and professor of Australian studies at the University of Tokyo. He is the author of several books on Australian history and the history of the Second World War. His books include Menzies and Churchill at War, Smugglers and Sailors, and John Curtin: A Life. Claiming a Continent won the non-fiction prize in the 1998 South Australian Festival Awards for Literature.

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