Captain Cook is arguably one of the most celebrated commoners in the world, with over 50 monuments and memorials in Australia alone, and dozens more in New Zealand, Britain and North America. Most belong to the nineteenth century tradition of memorial to “great men”. Monuments of this type are increasingly contested for their silencing of indigenous voices and privileging of a particular history.
However, this is not a new phenomenon. Recent vandalism of such monuments, and the late-twentieth/early-twenty-first century attempt to create a more inclusive public history, has its roots in monumental symbolism in the ancient world.
Looking at the use of statues and monuments as expressions of public history, this paper delves into the historiography of the statue and the very nature of how history is manufactured, and asks where does public history go next?