Events

The coastal port city of Nagapattinam in Tamil Nadu, southeastern India served the medieval Chola dynasty as their principal international port, and in southern China, Quanzhou fulfilled the same role for the Mongols rulers of Yuan China. They were linked by a long history of maritime exchanges served by an international host of traders, Malays, Persians, Arabs and Tamils of southern India. The presence of Tamil-speaking merchants is attested from early in the first millennium CE and their ongoing engagement in maritime Asia is witnessed archaeologically and through inscriptions throughout the following millennium. They are witnessed at sites spanning from the Red Sea to insular Southeast Asia, to southern China. Southeast Asia was especially favored as the Suvarnabhumi - Suvarnadvipa of early Indian sources, the Lands and Islands of Gold, and India’s hunger for gold was undoubtedly a significant factor in these ventures. This presentation will explore the role of Tamil merchants in this commercial quest and the legacy – cultural as well as human – that their presence left in the region, from Brahmins who secured positions of ritual and political influence at the courts of the emerging Hindu-Buddhist states, to the traders who built their places of worship in peninsular Southeast Asia and in the great mercantile entrepots of south China, Guangzhou and Quanzhou. The medieval sculptural programmes that once adorned the Hindu temples at Quanzhou bear witness to a process of acculturation and adaptation across the Sino-Indian world and will be a special focus of this lecture. Our understanding of the complexities of these exchanges has recently been enhanced by the discovery of several late first millennium shipwreck cargoes in Southeast Asian waters which reveal significant luxury exchange alongside a burgeoning trade in utility objects.

Book Launch and 2022 Sir George Turner Public Lecture
Join us from 5pm to 6pm to celebrate the Melbourne book launch of Commercial Arbitration in Australia Under the Model Law (3 ed) written by Professor Doug Jones AO and Professor Janet Walker CM. The Book Launch will feature an address by Professor Richard Garnett (Melbourne Law School), as well as the co-author of this third edition Professor Janet Walker CM. Drinks and canapes will be served.

Followed by the 2022 Sir George Turner lecture presented by Professor Doug Jones AO at 6pm to 7pm.

About the Lecture
Australia – The Very Model of a Modern Arbitration Law presented by Professor Doug Jones AO
With the adoption of the Model Law as both our domestic and international arbitration Law, Australian courts have gained a new vista of opportunities for guidance on world-class best practice in arbitration, guidance to which they have now begun to contribute. This lecture takes a look at some examples of our finest jurisprudence and the recognition that it is receiving in leading courts in major centres of arbitration, highlighting the important role we are playing in advancing the practice of arbitration both in Australia and around the world.

About the Book
Commercial Arbitration in Australia Under the Model Law by Professor Doug Jones AO and Professor Janet Walker CM is an annotated guide to the domestic commercial arbitration legislation in Australia under the uniform commercial arbitration Acts.
It provides analytical commentary on the growing body of case law applying the Model Law in Australia and around the world, discusses innovations in institutional rules and offers practical guidance.

The book launch is supported by CIArb Australia. This launch follows an event in Sydney hosted by ACICA on 22 June 2022.

Invitees to the event are entitled to a 15% discount when purchasing the book. Please use the promo code CAA15 when ordering online from the Thomson Reuters eStore.

The Sir George Turner Lecture is named in honour of Sir George who was born on 8 August 1851, completed the articled clerks’ course and was admitted to practice in 1881. He was Mayor of St Kilda from 1887 to 1888, elected to the Legislative Assembly in 1889 and became Solicitor-General for Victoria in 1892. In 1894 he became Premier of Victoria. In 1897 he was appointed KCMG and a Privy Councillor, also receiving honorary degrees from Oxford and Cambridge Universities in that year. He resigned in February 1901 to enter Federal politics, becoming Treasurer and presenting the first four Commonwealth budgets. He later resumed legal practice in partnership with a son, George John, and their firm merged with the firm of Corr and Corr in 1907. From 1906 he was Chairman of Commissioners of the State Savings Bank of Victoria. He died on 13 August 1916.

This 2022 Sir George Turner lecture will be delivered in-person and recorded. The recording will be available via the Melbourne Law School website.