Entering the Arid Zone: Australian Development Diplomacy and UNESCO, 1945–1960

This article examines the response of Australian governments toUNESCO’s agenda of conducting scientific research in “arid zones”to explore the role of the nation in the liberal internationalism ofthe postwar world order. UNESCO’s first director-general, JulianHuxley, and its first head of the Natural Sciences Section, JosephNeedham, both positioned science as critical to aninternationalist agenda. Australian botanist Bertram ThomasDickson and his contemporaries shared this belief in thenecessary role of science in postwar reconstruction and thebetterment of humanity. However, as Dickson’s hithertounexamined correspondence with Canberra and UNESCO shows,national interests still mattered, as did empire, to the movementof scientific ideas during the first decades after the war. Theinterwar rise of applied science and its contributions to ruralAustralia, as historical geographer J. M. Powell argues, had “won”scientists like Dickson and the CSIR official support, whichsustained their importance to postwar reconstruction anddevelopment efforts. Australia’s contribution to the UNESCOinitiative therefore followed Canberra’s assessment of thestrategic value of the organisation to its regional ambitions anddevelopment diplomacy.