About the Author

Sean Scalmer teaches at the University of Melbourne, where he is a Professor of History. He is the author of several works of political history, including the prize-winning On the Stump (2017), Gandhi in the West (2011), The Little History of Australian Unionism (2006) and Dissent Events (2002).

Reviews

"With his close attention to the repertoire of colonial politics, the language and rituals whereby statesmen gained and wielded power, Sean Scalmer has illuminated the history of settler democracy. Here he tackles that most audacious of all the democratic adventurers, David Berry, a self-made man who acquired an almost despotic authority on the condition, as he remarked, that I did not exercise it. But Berry used his popular following to plunge Victoria into its most profound constitutional crisis, and this book establishes his lasting legacy." -- Stuart Macintyre