Historiography 1918-today (Australia)

Charles E.W. Bean’s twelve-volume Official History of Australia in the War of 1914-1918 (1921-1942) dominated Australian historiography of the Great War for four decades. The theme of the Official History, that the Australian nation was born through the deeds of its soldiers, was neither affirmed nor disputed by academic historians, but ignored. It was not until the 1960s that historians began to study the Great War. Much of the historiography since then has challenged Bean’s story of martial baptism and emphasised the divisions that existed on the Australian home front during the war. Ken Inglis’ pioneering work on Anzac Day and war memorials fanned the historiography of remembrance and commemoration, just as the international rise of cultural history and memory studies led scholars back to the Great War with new questions about grief, mourning and trauma. The nation-making interpretation of the war survives and indeed thrives outside the academy