The Brisbane line : an episode in capital history

The Brisbane Line remains one of the enigmas of Australian history. It is seen either as a military plan drawn up in 1908 to defend Australia from a possible Japanese invasion, or in terms of the unfounded allegations by Labor's Eddie Ward against the defeatism of the first Menzies government to boost the Curtin government's chances in the 1943 federal election. In a fading popular memory the Brisbane Line is recalled as scenes ofpanic and flight by North Queenslanders fleeing south in fear of a Japanese invasion. In his recent detailed study of the Brisbane Line, Paul Burns concluded that there was a plan to evacuate Australia north of a military line drawn from Brisbane to Adelaide and to defend that part of populated industrialised Australia south of the line from enemy attack. Bums saw Ward's charges of treachery as an electoral stunt without substance'! It might be presumed that the Brisbane Line enigma is no more. The Bums interpretation has seemingly utilised every available archival source on the topic. But Bums' conclusion is narrow and empirically limited. Like other studies of the Brisbane Line, the Burns view is bereft of historical context, class analysis and of dependent Australian capitalism's place both within the inter-imperialist rivalries of the inter-war period and the political economy of empire. Taken together these elements allow the Brisbane Line to be re-examined as a neglected episode of capital history. What, then, is capital history?