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Ben Wilkie: ‘A Scottish Chauvinist’ The Scots Influence on Robert Menzies’s Worldview

The Scottish Enlightenment was reaching its peak when European settlers and convicts first came to Australia, and the ideas formulated by men like Adam Smith would have a profound influence on how the country would develop. Scottish immigrants tended to be industrious and aspirational members of the working and particularly middle classes, and because of these values they have often taken up important roles of political leadership, particularly on the liberal side of politics. Important Scots-Australian leaders include Lachlan Macquarie, John Dunmore Lang, George Reid, Joseph Carruthers, Andrew Fisher, Joseph Cook and Stanley Bruce, to name just a few.

Robert Menzies is often derided for being ‘British to the bootstraps’, but there was a distinctively Scottish identity that was vitally important within his broader ‘Britishness’. Menzies was an admirer of Robert Burns, and celebrated Burns Night with a quasi-religious devotion. He was heavily involved in Scottish associations, including the Melbourne Scots and the Royal Caledonian Society of Melbourne. Notably Menzies was the only Australian ever knighted in the ‘Order of the Thistle’, an order of chivalry that was founded in 1687 by King James VII of Scotland. A Scots perspective underpinned Menzies’s love of education, and informed his liberalism based on a Presbyterian understanding of the importance of moral independence.

Joining us to discuss how this Scottish influence shaped Robert Menzies is Dr Ben Wilkie. Wilkie is a historian and an Honorary Associate in La Trobe University’s Centre for the Study of the Inland. He has broad experience in Australian and Victorian history, particularly the history of the Scots in Australia and the history of the Western District of Victoria. He has also worked on projects in the area of business and economic history. His first book was The Scots in Australia, 1788-1938 (Boydell Press 2017). Ben’s most recent book is Gariwerd: An Environmental History of the Grampians (CSIRO Publishing 2020), which won the Local History Small Publication Award in the 2020 Victorian Community History Awards.