Outside of economics departments and labour history circles, the history of Australian capitalism was left largely moribund by mainstream academic historians between the 1990s and 2010s. Put simply, topics specifically relating to economics and political-economy were not popular for twenty-something years. Resultantly, this neglect now offers opportunities as well as challenges to historians interested in Australian capitalism. Over the past decade, Americanists have been actively revising the history of US capitalism. Australianists similarly have this opportunity and appear to be realising this.

At the same time, a re-examination of this history forces historians to confront questions of scale. This paper highlights some of those questions. Drawing from research projects I am presently involved in – a cultural history of BHP and a history exploring the rise of entrepreneurialism in Australia since the 1980s – it explores the following: the challenges of writing national histories while being fully aware of transnational influences and linkages; how historians of capitalism can negotiate between continuities and discontinuities; and whether historians that are experts in one field, place, and era are really suited to comment on others. By elucidating these issues I hope to generate discussion on how to write histories of Australian capitalism.