Journal Article

The First World War and the Making of Colonial Memory 1

Macdonald, Charlotte

2015

Overview

First World War memory practices linked the War with the present through a syntax that connected past and present time in promises phrased as 'lest we forget' or 'at the going down of the sun and in the morning, we shall remember them' (Binyon's lines uttered as part of Anzac Day services, lines that were often inscribed on War memorials). Imperial fervor and military pride stirred by the South African War (1899-1902) prompted those eager to honour soldiers serving Queen and Empire under the Union Jack in an earlier era. 7 Marilyn Lake, The Limits of Hope: Soldier Settlement in Victoria, 1915-38 (Melbourne and New York: Oxford University Press, 1987); Margaret Tennant, The Fabric of Welfare: Voluntary Organisations, Government and Welfare in New Zealand 1840-2005 (Wellington: Bridget Williams Books, 2007); Ashley N. Gould, 'Proof of Gratitude: Soldier Land Settlement in New Zealand after World War One', PhD thesis, Massey University, 1992; Ian McGibbon, ed., with Paul Goldstone Oxford Companion to New Zealand Military History (Auckland: Oxford University Press, 2000). 9 Paul Fussell, The Great War and Modern Memory (London and New York: Oxford University Press, 1975); Pierre Nora, Les Lieux de Memoire (Paris: Gallimard, 1984) published in English as Realms of Memory: Rethinking the French Past, New York: Columbia University Press, 1996-68); J. M. Winter, Sites of Memory, Sites of Mourning: the Great War in European Cultural History (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995).

• Publisher: Victoria University of Wellington, School of English, Film, Theatre, and Media Studies
• Subject: 20th century / Grief / Postcolonialism / Rites & ceremonies / World War I