Australians and the First World War

1. Front Matter

   Pages i-xv

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2. Introduction

   • Kate Ariotti, James E. Bennett

   Pages 1-6

3. The AIF: Composition and Contribution

   1. Front Matter

      Pages 7-7

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   2. Foreign-Born Soldiers in the AIF: Australia’s Multinational Fighting Force

      • Karen Agutter

      Pages 9-25

   3. The Key to Victory: Australia’s Military Contribution on the Western Front in 1918

      • Meleah Hampton

      Pages 27-43

4. Crossing Boundaries: Race, Culture and Gender

   1. Front Matter

      Pages 45-45

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   2. International Encounters in Captivity: The Cross-Cultural Experiences of Australian POWs in the Ottoman Empire

      • Kate Ariotti

      Pages 47-65

   3. Australian Nurses and the 1918 Deolali Inquiry: Transcolonial Racial and Gendered Anxieties in a British Indian War Hospital

      • Victoria K. Haskins

      Pages 67-83

   4. Opportunities to Engage: The Red Cross and Australian Women’s Global War Work

      • Melanie Oppenheimer

      Pages 85-101

5. The War at Home: Politics, People and Historiographical Perspectives

   1. Front Matter

      Pages 103-103

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   2. Labour and the Home Front: Changing Perspectives on the First World War in Australian Historiography

      • Frank Bongiorno

      Pages 105-122

   3. Australian Echoes of Imperial Tensions: Government Surveillance of Irish-Australians

      • Stephanie James

      Pages 123-142

   4. Aboriginal Australians and the Home Front

      • Samuel Furphy

      Pages 143-164

   5. ‘Total war’ in Australia: Civilian Mobilisation and Commitment, 1914–18

      • Bart Ziino

      Pages 165-182

6. Cultural Legacies: Remembrance and Representation

   1. Front Matter

      Pages 183-183

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   2. Decentering Anzac: Gallipoli and Britishness, 1916–39

      • Jenny Macleod

      Pages 185-201

   3. “So homesick for Anzac”? Australian Novelists and the Shifting Cartographies of Gallipoli

      • Christina Spittel

      Pages 203-220

   4. Australia’s War through the Lens of Centenary Documentary: Connecting Scholarly and Popular Histories

      • James E. Bennett

      Pages 221-239

7. Back Matter

   Pages 241-254

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This book contributes to the global turn in First World War studies by exploring Australians’ engagements with the conflict across varied boundaries and by situating Australian voices and perspectives within broader, more complex contexts. This diverse and multifaceted collection includes chapters on the composition and contribution of the Australian Imperial Force, the experiences of prisoners of war, nurses and Red Cross workers, the resonances of overseas events for Australians at home, and the cultural legacies of the war through remembrance and representation. The local-global framework provides a fresh lens through which to view Australian connections with the Great War, demonstrating that there is still much to be said about this cataclysmic event in modern history.

• World War One
• History of conflict
• Australian Imperial Force
• Colonialism
• The Great War

“Global history of the kind championed in this book is no longer a choice; it is a necessity, and, going by the high level of scholarship found in this book, a portent of excellent things to come.” (Jay Winter, Australian Historical Studies, Vol. 49, 2018)


“The collection is a worthy addition to the stock of historical writing about Australia and the Great War … . the book shows that Australian war history has much more to offer – and illustrates possible future directions.” (Martin Crotty, Honest History, honesthistory.net.au, September, 2017)

• University of Newcastle , Callaghan, Australia

  Kate Ariotti, James E. Bennett

Kate Ariotti is Lecturer in History at the University of Newcastle, Australia. Her PhD thesis on Australians and the impact of captivity in the Ottoman Empire during the First World War was recently awarded the C.E.W. Bean Prize for Military History from the Australian Army History Unit. She has published several book chapters and journal articles about the experiences of the POWs and the legacy of their captivity.


James E. Bennett is an historian at the University of Newcastle, Australia. He has published widely on aspects of Australian and New Zealand history including war and society, history on film, transnational labour history as well as medicine and sexuality. He is the author of ‘Rats and Revolutionaries’: The Labour Movement in Australia and New Zealand 1890–1940 (2004) and co-editor of Making Film and Television Histories: Australia and New Zealand ( 2011) and Radical Newcastle (2015).

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