National and Imperial Belonging in Wartime: The Tangled Knot of Australians and New Zealanders as British Subjects during the Great War

Abstract

The Great War is considered nationally foundational in both Australia and New Zealand. Yet, as critics of this view point out, British subjecthood remained important and sometimes central to identity at this time. This article pulls two threads from this tangled knot of belonging at a time when identifying and regulating loyal populations was critical. Looking at evidence of those Australians and New Zealanders who served in imperial forces and organisations, and the implications of passport control from 1915, I suggest that the relationship between British subjecthood and national identification was not always easily managed, and was often cut across by gender. Indeed, there is evidence that one's identification as a British subject or an Australasian citizen was not always a matter of choice or positive, and sometimes these identities were antagonists. The significant tensions between British subjecthood and being an “Australian” or a “New Zealander” were especially heightened by the increasingly intimate relationship between governments and their people during the First World War.