Sir Matthew Nathan (QLD Governor and Civil Servant) 1976 First Edition

by Anthony Haydon

$43 · Offered by eBay

First edition

Sir Matthew Nathan (QLD Governor and Civil Servant) 1976 First Edition Hardcover This first biography of Sir Matthew Nathan, a typical Victorian careerist, provides a novel insight into the morality as well as the machinery of his times. A professional Jew and a professional soldier, Matthew Nathan achieved some fame as a troubleshooting governor of British colonies in Africa and the Far East during the Empire's era of consolidation. During a sojourn in the British civil service, he caught the eye of Prime Minister Herbert Asquith and was appointed as Undersecretary of Ireland to keep the peace there during the first world war. In Dublin at Easter, 1916, he at last ran head-on into the rebellion he dreaded and was dismissed. Nathan was rescued from obscurity by a grace-and-favour posting as governor of Queensland in the nineteen twenties, and found himself defending two symbols of a passing order - the privileged upper house and "imported" governors - against the assaults of them by Edward Theodore's Labor government. Ambitious but circumspect, perfectly attuned to the Empire's highest priorities in the consolidation phase, Nathan earned an initial reputation as a keeper of order and balanced books. But as the colonial service became increasingly professionalized, he emerged as an anachronism, one of the last of the breed of amateurs who ran the Empire. As the stifling Victorian code gave way to freer Edwardian views on decorum, so Nathan - a lifelong bachelor-moved hesitantl

• Year: 1976
• Binding: Hardcover
• Condition: Good

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