Category: History
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The beginnings of Anzac Day
Excerpt from The War at Home by John Connor, Peter Stanley and Peter Yule ‘Anzac’ (soon transmuting from acronym to word) came to sum up the Australian desire to reflect on what the war had meant. What was the first Anzac Day? At least four explanations exist for the origins of the idea of Anzac,…
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The Land Is Our History
The Land Is Our History author Miranda Johnson was awarded the Australian Historical Association’s W K Hancock Prize, which recognises an Australian scholar who has published a first book in any field of history in 2014 or 2015. To coincide with NAIDOC Week, here is an excerpt: The late 1960s was a watershed moment for…
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From Bounty to Tragedy: What Strandings Reveal About Our Changing Relations with Whales
By Jason Colby, author of Orca: How We Came to Know and Love the Ocean’s Greatest Predator In late March, 150 short-finned pilot whales were stranded in Hamelin Bay on the southwestern tip of Australia. The public response was extraordinary. Within hours, more than 100 volunteers mounted a rescue mission, working tirelessly to return the…
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World War One: links to explore
As Anzac Day approaches, we have collected some of our favourite pieces about the Great War from the Oxford Australia blog and around the Press online. You can read about the history of the iconic Anzac biscuit, rediscover soldier slang from First World War or listen to the remarkable story of John Simpson and his…
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World War One: a snapshot in quotes
Assassination has never changed the history of the world. – Benjamin Disraeli, Lord Beaconsfield, speech, House of Commons, 1 May 1865 On June 28th 1914, the Archduke Franz Ferdinand and his wife were assassinated by a Serbian nationalist, Gavrilo Princip, while visiting Sarajevo. This one event, this assassination, was the catalyst for four years of…
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Commemorating 100 years
Between 2014 and 2018 Australia will remember the Anzac Centenary, marking 100 years since World War One. To commemorate, we continue to publish a range of essential history and literature books. Explore Australia’s role in the First World War with our Centenary History of Australia and the Great War series or examine the slang of…
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Remembering Anzac Day – how Australia grieved in the early years
As we draw closer to the day where our country’s tradition is to remember, we thought we’d take a look back at how Australian’s began commemorating ‘Anzac day’ in those first few years. This is an excerpt from chapter 28** from the forthcoming The Centenary History of Australia and the Great War Series – Volume…
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The War with the Ottoman Empire
The Great War looms very large in Australian society and culture, something which the commemoration of the centenary years emphasises but certainly didn’t create. Some of the stories about the Great War are ill-informed, prone to sentimentality and dominated by myths and popular beliefs. Australia’s part in the war with the Ottomans exemplifies these tendencies…