Throughout Australian States and territories, History students often study the 1954 Petrov affair in Australian history, as they do the 1975 Whitlam dismissal. How might teachers add some historiographical zest to these studies? How can alternate history, or allohistorical narratives, assist?

An Australian example

The recent publication of Nicholas Hasluck's Dismissal (2011) is timely in these regards. Alternate histories are usually set amidst the great events of world history — Napoleon, Hitler and Nazism, and so on. Indeed, as Croome (2011) has stated, in what might amount to a throwaway line, alternate history is ‘a genre often undermined in Australia by the sense that nothing vital happens here, that nothing is at stake’. Indeed, for Croome, ‘Hasluck is on the front foot in this respect, not least because his well-structured set piece hinges on the Whitlam dismissal, one of the handful of events in Australian history capable of stirring genuine emotion and debate’.

The central character in Hasluck's novel is Roy Temple, a romantic and a left-winger, but with a successful career at the Sydney bar.