The Multiple Voices of John Macarthur

John Macarthur (1766-1834) is easily identified as one of the leading characters of Australia's early invasion period. Percival Serle's Dictionary of Australian Biography (1949) called him 'the greatest personality of his time in Australia'. He might have been eclipsed since then, say, by Governor Lachlan Macquarie, but he is still among the leading few. Nevertheless, there is much still to be known about him. To underestimate his complexity is, I suggest, to misunderstand the main dynamic of events during the early invasion years. Some recent influential writing, fact and fiction, has tended, if anything to give new life to such underestimation.1 What follows is an attempt to make the case, or rather the beginnings of a case, for complexity.