Teaching & Learning Guide for: Whose War Was It Anyway? Some Australian Historians and the Great War

IntroductionThey shall grow not old, as we that are left grow old; Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn. At the going down of the sun and in the morning We will remember them.Recited at many Anzac and Remembrance Day services, ‘The Ode’, an excerpt from a poem by Laurence Binyon, speaks of a timelessness within the inexorable march of time. When we memorialise those for whom time no longer matters, time stands still. Whether those who died in service of their country have finally “beaten time” or been forced to acknowledge that “their time on earth was up”, depends on your preference for clichés. Time and death are natural bedfellows. War memorials, be they physical or digital, declare a commitment to “remember them”. This article will compare and contrast the purpose of, and community response to, virtual and physical war memorials. It will examine whether virtual war memorials are a sign of the times – a natural response to the internet era. If, as Marshall McLuhan says, the medium is the message, what experiences do we gain and lose through online war memorials?Physical War MemorialsDuring and immediately after the First World War, physical war memorials were built in almost every city, town and village of the Allied countries involved in the war. They served many purposes. One of the roles of physical war memorials was to keep the impact of war at the centre of a town’s consciousness. In a regional centre like Bathurst, in New South Wales, the town appears to be built around the memorial – the court, council chambers, library, churches and pubs gather around the war memorials.Similarly, in small towns such as Bega, Picton and Kiama, war memorial arches form a gateway to the town centre. It is an architectural signal that you are entering a community that has known pain, death and immense loss. Time has passed, but the names of the men and women who served remain etched in stone: “lest we forget”.The names are listed in a democratic fashion: usually in alphabetical order without their rank. However, including all those who offered their service to “God, King and Country” (not just those who died) also had a more sinister and divisive effect. It reminded communities of those “eligibles” in their midst whom some regarded as “shirkers”, even if they were conscientious objectors or needed to stay and continue vital industries, like farming (Inglis & Phillips 186).Ken Inglis (97) estimated that every second Australian family was in mourning after the Great War. Jay Winter (Sites 2) goes further arguing that “almost every family” in the British Commonwealth was grieving, either for a relative; or for a friend, work colleague, neighbour or lover. Nations were traumatised. Physical war memorials provided a focal point for that universal grief. They signalled, through their prominence in the landscape or dominance of a hilltop, that it was acceptable to grieve. Mourners were encouraged to gather around the memorial in a public place, particularly on Anzac Day and Remembrance Day each year. Grief was seen, observed, respected.Such was the industrial carnage of the Western Front, that about one third of Australia and New Zealand’s fatal casualties were not brought home. Families lost a family member, body and soul, in the Great War. For those people who subscribed to a Victorian view of death, who needed a body to grieve over, the war memorial took on the role of a gravesite and became a place where people would place a sprig of wattle, poke a poppy into the crevice beside a name, or simply touch the letters etched or embossed in the stone (Winter, Experience 206). As Ken Inglis states: “the statue on its pedestal does stand for each dead man whose body, identified or missing, intact or dispersed, had not been returned” to his home town (11).Physical war memorials were also a place where women could forge new identities over time. Women accepted, or claimed their status as war widows, grieving mothers or bereft fiancés, while at the same time coming to terms with their loss. As Joy Damousi writes: “mourning of wartime loss involved a process of sustaining both a continuity with, and a detachment from, a lost soldier” (1). Thus, physical war memorials were transitional, liminal spaces.Jay Winter (Sites 85) believes that physical war memorials were places to both honour and mourn the dead, wounded, missing and shell-shocked. These dual functions of both esteeming and grieving those who served was reinforced at ceremonies, such as Anzac or Remembrance Day.As Joy Damousi (156) and Ken Inglis (457, 463) point out, war memorials in Australia are rarely sites of protest, either for war widows or veterans campaigning for a better pension, or peace activists who opposed militarism. When they are used in this way, it makes headlines in the news (Legge). They are seldom used to highlight the tragedy, inhumanity or futility of war. The exception to this, were the protests against the Vietnam War.The physical war memorials which mushroomed in Australian country towns and cities after the First World War captured and claimed those cataclysmic four years for the families and communities who were devastated by the war. They provided a place to both honour and mourn those who served, not just once, but for as long as the memorial remained. They were also a place of pilgrimage, particularly for families who did not have a grave to visit and a focal point for the annual rituals of remembrance.However, over the past 100 years, some unmaintained physical war memorials are beginning to look like untended graves. They have become obstacles rather than sentinels in the landscape. Laurence Aberhart’s haunting photographs show that memorials in places like Dorrigo in rural New South Wales “go largely unnoticed year-round, encroached on by street signage and suburbia” (Lakin 49). Have physical war memorials largely fulfilled their purpose and are they becoming obsolete? Perhaps they have been supplanted by the gathering space of the 21st century: the Internet.Digital War MemorialsThe centenary of the Great War heralded a mushrooming of virtual war memorials. Online First World War memorials focus on collecting and amassing information that commemorates individuals. They are able to include far more information than will fit on a physical war memorial. They encourage users to search the digitised records that are available on the site and create profiles of people who served. While they deal in records from the past, they are very much about the present: the user experience and their connection to their ancestors who served.The Imperial War Museum’s website Lives of the First World War asks users to “help us build the permanent digital memorial to all who contributed during the First World War”. This request deserves scrutiny. Firstly, “permanent” – is this possible in the digital age? When the head of Google, Vint Cerf, disclosed in 2015 that software programming wizards were still grappling with how to create digital formats that can be accessed in 10, 100 or a 1000 years’ time; and recommended that we print out our precious digital data and store it in hard copy or risk losing it forever; then it appears that online permanency is a mirage.Secondly, “all who contributed” – the website administrators informed me that “all” currently includes people who served with Canada and Britain but the intention is to include other Commonwealth nations. It seems that the former British Empire “owns” the First World War – non-allied, non-Commonwealth nations that contributed to the First World War will not be included. One hundred years on, have we really made peace with Germany and Turkey? The armistice has not yet spread to the digital war memorial. The Lives of the First world War website missed an opportunity to be leaders in online trans-national memorialisation.Discovering Anzacs, a website built by the National Archives of Australia and Archives New Zealand, is a little more subdued and honest, as visitors are invited to “enhance a profile dedicated to the wartime journey of someone who served”.Physical and online war memorials can work in tandem. In 2015, the Supreme Court of Victoria created a website that provides background information on the military service of the 159 members of the legal profession who are named on their Memorial board. This is an excellent example of a digital medium expanding on and reinvigorating a physical memorial.It is noteworthy that all of these online memorial websites commemorate those who served in the First World War, and sometimes the Boer or South African War. There is no space for remembering those who served or died in more recent wars like Afghanistan or Iraq. James Brown and others discuss how the cult of Anzac is overshadowing the service and sacrifices of the men and women who have been to more recent wars. The proximity of their service mitigates against its recognition – it is too close for comfortable, detached remembrance.Complementary But Not ExclusiveA comparison of their functions indicates that online memorials which focus on the First World War complement, but will never replace the role of physical war memorials. As discussed, physical war memorials were sites for grieving, pilgrimage and collectively honouring the men and women who served and died. Online websites which allow users to upload scanned documents and photographs; transcribe diary entries or letters; post tribute poems, songs or video clips; and provide links to other relevant records online are neither places of pilgrimage nor sites for grieving. They are about remembrance, not memory (Scates, “Finding” 221).Ken Inglis describes physical war memorials as “bearers of collective memory” (7). In a sense, online war memorials are keepers of individual, user-enhanced archival records. It can be argued that online memorials to the First World War tap into the desire for hero-worship, the boom in family history re

In the inter-war years, the Australian War Memorial was one of the nation's premier cultural institutions, its displays addressing Australia's fundamental nation-building experience up until that time, the First World War. However, these displays have not before been fore-grounded in interpretations of the institution in this period. The study that follows seeks make inter alia a contribution compensating for this lacuna in our knowledge, offering a new understanding of the Memorial obtained through a fresh methodology. It also adds our understanding of the Anzac Legend and Australian commemoration in the inter-war years, as well as Australian nationalism.Envisioned and guided by Australian Official War Correspondent and Historian C.E.W. Bean, the Memorial's inter-war displays (1922-35) offered a heroic vision of the Australian war experience, with a narrative of test, ordeal and triumph at their heart. Integrated into this was an interpretation of why the Australians had come through victoriously, focussed on perceived virtues such as courage, determination, ferocity and nobility. In addition, proof was offered that Australian soldiers had been superior their opponents. At the same time, the Memorial dealt sensitively and honestly with defeat, death and the wounded, although these subjects were treated so as play down their horror and emphasise Australian triumph over them. Further, the displays were governed by a strict realism of presentation which operated through a process I have named naturalisation insist that both military fact and moral assertion were equally true. I have labelled the Memorial's version of the Australian overseas war experience the interpretation of it. It is argued that the influence of what I label martial nationalism was the key these displays, as it was the key Australian commemoration more broadly. This was a major mode of nationalist thinking in Europe before 1914, expressed in a complex of war memorials and triumphal writings that equated national identity with success on the battlefield. Certain educated Australians were seeking a national history which could compete on this ground in the same pre-war period, and when the Australian troops performed creditably in 1915 and 1916, and with increasing effectiveness in 1917 and 1918, nationalism was embraced, complete with its accompanying glorification of victory. A major aspect of Australian inter-war commemoration was the enunciation of an Australian national identity. Two major nationalist models were taken up, the martial, championed by educated Anglo-Australian elites, and what might be termed the developmental, advocated by such moderate Leftist groups as the Australian Labor Party. These were manifest in two cultures, which have been labelled the and the anti-monumental. The former recognised the horror of war, but concentrated upon the positive elements of the Australian war experience, building a major national tradition upon those elements. The latter could not see beyond the horror. The result of these varying visions of the war was that the monumental culture wished publicly remember the war forever, to keep green the memory of the AIF, while the anti-monumental argued that the war experience should be consigned oblivion. The monumental culture was dominant; indeed, it is suggested that this was the predominant commemorative reaction in the immediate post-war years. The so-called Anzac Legend, a myth focussed upon the characteristics of the typical Australian soldier (and by extension, the typical Australian citizen), which emerged from the war and which was regularly rehearsed on commemorative occasions and in war literature, was strongly nationalist, being founded upon an assertion of Australian military supremacy.Through its war narrative, its interpretation of typical soldierly characteristics of Australians, and its proof of military supremacy, the Memorial made a significant and enduring contribution the monumental culture and its nationalist vision of the war. Its displays outlined the characteristics of a typical solider, and thus typical Australian male, thereby promoting the vision of Australian identity against competing visions. It held physical evidence for the many public assertions made about Australian soldiers and their military abilities. Also, the Memorial embodied a strong masculinist ideology; men had defended the nation, its logic asserted, and this made their citizenship deeper and more important than women's.Finally, all memory of the war was imbued with political connotations, and throughout its inter-war life the Memorial was associated with the leading figures of conservatism in Australia, with Nationalist politicians and returned officers on its controlling committee. Its messages about the war were in broad agreement with those of the dominant right-wing groups in the country, including the RSSILA, whose agents controlled vital commemorative days and whose non-political stance masked a clear conservatism.

In 1972, Martha Vicinus edited Suffer and Be Still, a groundbreaking collection that introduced Victorian women into mainstream historical scholarship. Five years later, Vicinus brought out A Widen...

This article will examine a neglected ‘front’ in Australia's ‘History Wars’: the debate over the Australian response to the outbreak of war in Europe in 1914. Since the 1980s, several historians have contributed to a body of literature which insists that Australia's vital interests were at stake in the confrontation between Britain and Germany in the Great War, and that Australia participated in order to protect these interests. In short, these historians are united in asserting that the Great War was ‘Australia's war’ as much as Britain's, and in condemning an alleged radical‐nationalist orthodoxy that presents Australia as a victim of the British Empire and the war as none of Australia's business. They also seek to redirect historical attention away from the themes emphasised by social and cultural historians, and towards strategy, diplomacy and high politics. Recently, several conservative newspaper columnists have also taken up their line of argument. This article seeks to explain how and why this somewhat one‐sided ‘debate’ has gathered momentum. While recognising the value of much of the new research generated by these historians, we also suggest that its terms are closely connected with efforts by the political right to defend the legitimacy of the British colonisation of Australia. At this point, the issues at stake in the historiography of Australia's response to the outbreak of the Great War intersect with some of the better‐known battles in Australia's ‘History Wars’, and notably those over the nature and extent of frontier conflict.

Justin Fantauzzo. The Other Wars: The Experience and Memory of the First World War in the Middle East and Macedonia. Studies in the Social and Cultural History of Modern Warfare. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2020. Pp. 247. $99.00 (cloth). - Volume 60 Issue 1

Reviewed by: Fighting Different Wars: Experience, Memory, and the First World War in Britain Lisa M. Budreau Fighting Different Wars: Experience, Memory, and the First World War in Britain. By Janet S. K. Watson. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2004. ISBN 0-521-83153-9. Illustrations. Notes. Select bibliography. Index. Pp. xiv, 333. $70.00. Another book on Britain and Great War memory? No, not quite. This revisionist work represents the latest in the Studies in the Social and Cultural History of Modern Warfare series under the editorial leadership of memory historian Jay Winter. In her somewhat provocative study, Janet Watson uses an exhaustive supply of published and unpublished texts (diaries, letters, poetry, public and private narratives) to challenge numerous claims concerning the war experience. Most significantly, she suggests that the disillusionment connected with the First World War was a postwar phenomenon, one gradually produced through the publication and popularity of memoirs and novels after the Armistice. "The war itself was overwhelmingly popular, and the nation came together to a remarkable degree [End Page 584] despite critical differences that reflected the nature of divisions in English society," she suggests (p. 2). This controversial stance is supported by an innovative two-part approach in which the author considers her evidence of wartime accounts as a lived experience separately in the first section, then examines retrospective accounts and postwar writings in the second half. Though primarily a study of gender and class dynamics, the analysis is comparative in several key ways. Watson looks at both women and men side by side, with special attention paid to families where both brothers and sisters were active in the war effort. Then, she examines two groups who brought different attitudes to wartime efforts: those who viewed participation as work and those who saw it as service. People brought a wide variety of attitudes to their efforts during wartime as the meaning of patriotism was constantly redefined. For example, professional soldiers and trained nurses, while patriotic, saw their efforts as work with a view toward career advancement. Munitions workers, by contrast, saw an opportunity for better wages and working conditions. For some, theirs was a job that had to be done while others believed king, honor, and glory were their supreme duty. Perceptions of class position played a crucial role in the way different types of war work were viewed, according to Watson. These views, in turn, were grounded in convictions about the preservation of social order in Britain's wartime class society. Interestingly, Watson concludes that people who had seen their wartime participation in terms of service were most likely to remember it as a story of disillusionment. Some aspects of Watson's argument are bound to provoke. She states, for example, "Without diminishing the terrors of trench bombardment or the total horrifics of mass advance into direct machine gun fire (though this was not fortunately, a frequent occurrence), we must acknowledge and give credence to other portrayals of the war experience which are not uniformly negative" (p. 50). Granted, most conventional histories begin with idealistic volunteers and end with shattered veterans and names on memorials. But, what about perspectives during the war? The author asks us to consider where the shift occurred from valuable contribution of soldiers during the war years toward the attitude of useless sacrifice? Without minimizing the considerable effort that has gone into this study, perhaps the book's greatest contribution to First World War scholarship is its ability to bring such questions of memory to the forefront of traditional military history enquiry. All credit to a work that is freshly researched and can genuinely be said to contribute so significantly to the field. Similarly, I applaud the Journal for its range and diversity by eliciting this new and distinctive historiographical genre for review. Lisa M. Budreau St. Antony’s College, Oxford University Oxford, United Kingdom Copyright © 2005 Society for Military History

<i>Imperial Apocalypse: The Great War and the Destruction of the Russian Empire</i>. By Joshua A. Sanborn. The Greater War. Edited by Robert Gerwarth.Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014. Pp. xii+288. $49.95.

Contested Objects breaks new ground in the interdisciplinary study of material culture. Its focus is on the rich and varied legacy of objects from the First World War as the global conflict that defined the twentieth century. From the iconic German steel helmet to practice trenches on Salisbury Plain, and from the ‘Dazzle Ship’ phenomenon through medal-wearing, diary-writing, trophy collecting, the market in war souvenirs and the evocative reworking of European objects by African soldiers, this book presents a dazzling array of hitherto unseen worlds of the Great War. The innovative and multidisciplinary approach adopted here follows the lead established by Nicholas J. Saunders’ Matters of Conflict (Routledge 2004), and extends its geographical coverage to embrace a truly international perspective. Australia, Africa, Italy, Germany, France, Belgium and Britain are all represented by a cross-disciplinary group of scholars working in archaeology, anthropology, cultural history, art history, museology, and cultural heritage. The result is a volume that resonates with richly documented and theoretically informed case studies that illustrate how the experiences of war can be embodied in and represented by an endless variety of artefacts, whose ‘social lives’ have endured for almost a century and that continue to shape our perceptions of an increasingly dangerous world.

\She is lost to time and place\

Jay Winter. Sites of Memory, Sites of Mourning: The Great War in European Cultural History. (Studies in the Social and Cultural History of Modern Warfare number 1.) New York: Cambridge University Press. 1995. Pp. x, 310. $29.95 Get access Winter Jay. Sites of Memory, Sites of Mourning: The Great War in European Cultural History. (Studies in the Social and Cultural History of Modern Warfare number 1.) New York: Cambridge University Press. 1995. Pp. x, 310. $29.95. Kim Munholland Kim Munholland University of Minnesota, Twin Cities Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar The American Historical Review, Volume 102, Issue 5, December 1997, Pages 1470–1471, https://doi.org/10.1086/ahr/102.5.1470 Published: 01 December 1997

Books reviewed in this article: The Americas: Dictionary of Canadian Biography , Volume VI 1821 to 1835 . Edited by Francess G. Halpenny and Jean Hamelin. The Americas: Sugar Plantations in the Formation of Brazilian Society: Bahia, 1550–1835 . By Stuart B. Schwartz. The Americas: Colonial Identity in the Atlantic World, 1500–1800 . Edited by Nicholas Canny and Anthony Pagden. The Americas: Society and Economy in Colonial Connecticut . By Jackson Turner Main. The Americas: The American Revolution . By Edward Countryman. The Americas: The American Revolution . By Michael Heale. The Americas: Franklin of Philadelphia . By Esmond Wright. The Americas: Saving the Revolution: the Federalist Papers and the American Founding . Edited by Charles R. Kesler. The Americas: A Machine That Would Go Of Itself: the Constitution in American culture . By Michael Kammen. The Americas: The American Constitution: the first two hundred years 1787–1987 . Edited by Joseph Smith. The Americas: The Whiskey Rebellion . By Thomas P. Slaughter. The Americas: The Origins of the Republican Party, 1852–1856 . By William E. Gienapp. The Americas: From Slave South to New South: public policy in nineteenth‐century Georgia . By Peter Wallenstein. The Americas: Judah P. Benjamin: the Jewish Confederate . By Eli N. Evans. The Americas: Embattled Courage: the experience of combat in the American Civil War . By Gerald F. Linderman. The Americas: Sheffield Steel and America: a century of commercial and technological interdependence, 1830–1930 . By Geoffrey Tweedale. The Americas: The Limits of Power: great fires and the process of city growth in America . By Christine Meisner Rosen. The Americas: Origins of the Federal Reserve System: money, class and corporate capitalism, 1890–1913 . By James Livingston. The Americas: The American Conservation Movement: John Muir and his legacy . By Stephen Fox. The Americas: Inventing the Dream: California through the Progressive Era . By Kevin Starr. The Americas: From Progressivism to Prosperity: World War I and American Society . By Neil A. Wynn. The Americas: The Marcus Garvey and Universal Negro Improvement Association Papers , Volume III September 1920‐August 1921 , Volume IV 1 September 1921–2 September 1922 . Edited by Robert A. Hill. The Americas: Strength for the Fight: a history of black Americans in the military . By Bernard C. Nalty. The Americas: American Indian Policy and American Reform: case studies of the campaign to assimilate the American Indians . By Christine Bolt. The Americas: Harry Hopkins: ally of the poor and defender of democracy . By George McJimsey. The Americas: China Reporting: an oral history of American journalism in the 1930s and 1940s . By Stephen R. Mackinnon and Oris Friesen. The Americas: Hollywood Goes to War: how politics, profits, and propaganda shaped World War II movies . By Clayton R. Koppes and Gregory D. Black. The Americas: America and the Reconstruction of Italy, 1945–1948 . By John Lamberton Harper. The Americas: No Boundaries Upstairs: Canada, the United States and the origins of North American Air Defence, 1945–58 . By Joseph T. Jockel. The Americas: Ideology and US Foreign Policy . By Michael H. Hunt. The Americas: Selvages and Biases: the fabric of history in American culture . By Michael Kammen. The Americas: The Legacy of Conquest: the unbroken past of the American West . By Patricia Nelson Limerick. Ancient and Medieval: The Rise of the Greeks . By Michael Grant. Ancient and Medieval: Personal Enmity in Roman Politics, 218–43 BC . By David F. Epstein. Ancient and Medieval: The History of Cartography , Volume 1 Cartography in Prehistoric, Ancient, and Medieval Europe and the Mediterranean . Edited by J.B. Harley and David Woodward. Ancient and Medieval: The South‐West to AD 1000 . By Malcolm Todd. Ancient and Medieval: Medieval Thought: the western intellectual tradition from antiquity to the thirteenth century . By Michael Haren. Ancient and Medieval: Politics and Ritual in Early Medieval Europe . By Janet L. Nelson. Ancient and Medieval: Religion in the Medieval West . By Bernard Hamilton. Ancient and Medieval: The Gospels in the Schools c1100‐c1280 . By Beryl Smalley. Ancient and Medieval: The Preaching of the Friars: sermons diffused from Paris before 1300 . By D.L. d'Avary. Ancient and Medieval: Anglo‐Norman Studies , IX Proceedings of the Battle Conference, 1986 . Edited by R. Allen Brown. Ancient and Medieval: The Governance of Norman and Angevin England 1086–1272 . By W.L. Warren. Ancient and Medieval: Castles in Wales and the Marches: essays in honour of D.J. Cathcart King . Edited by John R. Kenyon and Richard Avent. Ancient and Medieval: Saint Hugh of Lincoln . Edited by Henry Mayr‐Harting. Ancient and Medieval: Politics, Policy and Finance under Henry III 1216–1245 . By R.C. Stacey. Ancient and Medieval: Women in the Medieval English Countryside: gender and household in Brigstock before the Plague . By Judith M. Bennett. Ancient and Medieval: Merchants and Mariners in Medieval Ireland . By Timothy O'Neill. Ancient and Medieval: The Political Thought of Baldus de Ubaldis . By Joseph Canning. Ancient and Medieval: Pastor and Laity in the Theology of Jean Gerson . By D. Catherine Brown. Ancient and Medieval: Royal Intrigue: crisis at the court of Charles VI, 1392–1420 . By Richard C. Famiglietti. Ancient and Medieval: Lambert Simnel and the Battle of Stoke . By Michael Bennett. Early Modern: Pienza: the creation of a Renaissance city . By Charles R. Mack. Early Modern: The Historical Anthropology of Early Modern Italy: essays on perception and communication . By Peter Burke. Early Modern: The Renaissance . By Peter Burke. London: Macmillan, Studies in European History. Early Modern: The Intellectual Origins of the European Reformation . By Alister E. McGrath. Early Modern: The French Reformation . By Mark Greengrass. Early Modern: The Witch Hunt in Early Modern Europe . By Brian P. Levack. Early Modern: Highroad to the Stake . By Michael Kunze. Early Modern: Godly Zeal and Furious Rage: the witch in early modern Europe . Early Modern: The Languages of Political Theory in Early Modern Europe . Edited by Anthony Pagden. Early Modern: Revolt and Revolution in Early Modern Europe . By Yves‐Marie Bercé, translated by Joseph Bergin. Early Modern: Renaissance and Revolt: the intellectual and social history of early modern France . By J.H.M. Salmon. Early Modern: The French Peasantry 1450–1660 . By Emmanuel le Roy Ladurie, translated by A. Sheridan. Early Modern: History of Wales , Volume III Recovery, Reorientation and Reformation: Wales c1415–1642 . By Glanrnor Williams. Early Modern: Protestantism and the National Church in Sixteenth‐Century England . Edited by Peter Lake and Maria Dowling. Early Modern: Elizabethan Parliaments, 1559–1601 . By Michael A.R. Graves. Early Modern: A Protestant Vision: William Harrison and the Reformation in Elizabethan England . By G.J.R. Parry. Early Modern: Court and Country: studies in Tudor social

Book reviews

This article introduces the first volume of AHS Classics: Australia and the First World War. It surveys the critical scholarship on the Australian experience of war, taking its cue from Ken Inglis' seminal article, ‘The Anzac Tradition’ (1965), and tracing the development of his challenge to Australian historians over the following five decades. It argues that the adaptability of the Anzac legend, and its assimilation of varied experiences of the First World War, requires both investigation and caution in the production of new histories of events almost a century distant.

Tanya Evans has a very clear and consistent goal for this book: to persuade academic historians, especially, that family historians should be taken much more seriously, not dismissed as dilettantish hobbyists. As the director of the Centre for Applied History at Macquarie University in Australia and the leader of many workshops on how to do family history, Evans is well positioned and qualified to advocate on behalf of these industrious and enthusiastic researchers. Unfortunately, this book seems unlikely to make many converts.Evans too often belabors the obvious or writes opaquely. Take this key sentence, for example: “My continued research with family historians is committed to the belief that the historiographical projects of social and cultural history, with the history of emotions, are mutually constitutive; that learning and teaching should be collaborative; and that history researchers should aim for pedagogical and political impact” (p. 26). The book is also weakened by her portrayal of family historians as uniformly progressive and sophisticated.The book’s primary source of evidence is often at the heart of its circular, unconvincing assertions. The author sent a list of thirty-seven largely open-ended questions to family-history practitioners who responded to her invitation “to share their motivations, discoveries and the impact of these [motivations and discoveries, evidently] upon their lives” (p. 21). One of the questions asks if researching your family history has “helped you to develop your interpersonal (communication, listening and empathy) skills? If so, in what ways?” (p. 155). Evans is then able to quote from, in a chapter entitled “‘I’m much more empathetic now’: Family history, historical thinking and the construction of empathy,” several people out of the 136 who had responded that, yes, as a matter of fact, this work had made them more empathetic. When Evans is more specific about what proportion of her sample responded affirmatively to her questions, the evidence does not necessarily support her argument. For example, though less than 20 percent of those surveyed answered affirmatively to the question of whether or not feminism had “informed your work at all,” she reports this as “a significant proportion” of her (largely female) sample (p. 155, p. 63). This reader wished for a much wider range of primary sources and a much fuller and more even-handed treatment of the conservative ends, political as well as cultural, that family and local history often serves.That said, Evans certainly presents extensive quotations from the survey suggesting that family historians may indeed be much more sophisticated and progressive than is commonly assumed. As she points out, academic historians lecturing to and writing for dwindling audiences can hardly afford to ignore fellow practitioners who are so numerous and enthusiastic. This book is a flawed but timely call for mutual engagement, curiosity, and respect.

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