Republicanism is not a creature of the last ten years, but it has a long history of people who believed in democracy.

This book is a highly readable history of republicanism from the earliest settlers in Australia, the two major periods of republican debate in the 1800s, and into the post-Federation acceptance of the monarchy. Whereas some observers pinpoint Keating's passion or Whitlam's dismissal as marking the rebirth of republicanism, it was really the writings of Donald Horne and Geoffrey Dutton that started it all in the 1960s. This book helps place the themes of republicanism into a historical perspective and reminds the reader that a republic has been 'inevitable' for a long time, bit it takes real commitment to make it happen.