"The past is not sacred: the ‘history wars’ over Anzac " Topic

"The term "history wars" is best known in Australia for summing up the fierce debate over the nature and extent of frontier conflict, with profound implications for the legitimacy of the British settlement and thus for national legitimacy today.

That debate, though hardly resolved, is now taking something of a back seat to a public controversy focused on Australia's wars of the 20th century and particularly on the war of 1914–18, called the Great War until the Second World War redefined it as the First.

If "history war" is a public controversy about past events that raise disturbing contemporary questions about national legitimacy and identity, then this Great War controversy also qualifies as such. The polemic unfolded in a familiar fashion. "History warriors" from the political right have publicly insisted that historians and left-wing commentators were distorting the past and violating cherished understandings about the First World War…."
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Amicalement
Armand

As usual the "truth" lies, most probably, somewhere in the middle.

Great find Tango.

DELETED……………..

Glad you enjoyed it my friend!. (smile).

Amicalement
Armand

Historian Christina Twomey wrote about this shift in the December 2013 edition of History Australia. Twomey argued that social history's focus on suffering in war is but one part of a fascination with the traumatic in contemporary society. She called this change "the rise to cultural prominence of the traumatised individual" and argued that this rise is not peculiar to Australia, or even to the military sphere, but is evident throughout the Western world.

Actually, I think it is not as much "fascination with [trauma]" but the shift from historizing the past to memorializing it. It is characteristic of contemporary Western societies to de-construct the past, de-historizing it and transforming it into nostalgic events of rememberance, where feelings are more important than truths.

A military heritage understood as trauma and suffering will always threaten to undermine narratives constructed around strategic necessity.

And yet by focussing on trauma, it choses deliberately to ignore the willingly participation of Australians on the war. The accusation of being duped by the British it is only a half-truth. If there was a scam it was one in which most Australians willingly participated, not just the elites.

ANU historian Frank Bongiorno has argued that it is precisely the renewed cultural authority of Anzac – the popular enthusiasm for remembrance – that has had unanticipated and, for some of us, unwanted consequences, notably a declining toleration of any critique of Australian military endeavour.

This is the problem with rememberance, not only in Australia but in every other Western society. Rememberance acts like a cult, as a secular religion with the past acting as the received wisdom -that cannot be defied or put in doubt- and with its own priesthood of "guardians of the memory" -who, mostly, are not even trained historians but politicians and journalists-.

The history business is more richly resourced, sophisticated and nuanced, more exhaustive and rigorous and more openly scrutinised by a fascinated general public than ever before. A vigorous contest about the origins and meaning of the war continues unabated.

Exactly, but in order to continue in that path the past must be re-historized, and memory and rememberance left where they belong: in the realm of popular kistch that Hollywood loves so much.

Agree with you Antonio.

Amicalement
Armand

Napoleon famously defined history as a mutually agreed tissue of lies. Let that stand as a warning whenever any party steps forth making loud proclamations on the subject

The truth is out there for those willing to look for it. but it is damned hard to find.

B

If you can persuade a nation's citizens that its foundations lie on the battlefield, and that its national character is inherently militaristic, it's so much easier to justify, and quell opposition to, the increasing militarisation of society, and regular involvement in international military adventures that don't in any way serve the national interest.

Except that EVERY nation's foundations are on the battlefield.

Without exception.

That claim seems a little… shall we say… dogmatic, Lion.

Driven by social and political forces the nation of Australia came into existence with the Act of Federation in 1901. The Gallipoli campaign didn't play out until 1915. Unless one chooses to ignore the political significance of Federation in favour of the symbolic significance of Gallipoli, it could reasonably be asserted that Australia is an exception*. I'm sure many others can be cited.

*Certainly it can be argued that the foundations of individual Australian colonies lie on the many 'unrecorded battlefields' of colonial Australia.