Open AccessLest We Remember/“Lest We Forget”: Gallipoli as Exculpatory Memory
Author(s) -
John Bevan-Smith
Publication year - 2014
Publication title -
journal of new zealand studies
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.102
0eISSN - 2324-3740
pISSN - 1176-306X
DOI - 10.26686/jnzs.v0i18.2191
Subject(s) - legend , history , peninsula , dominion , publishing , ancient history , civilization , project commissioning , government (linguistics) , law , political science , art history , archaeology , philosophy , linguistics
Before the build-up to the centenary of the 1915 invasion of Turkey’s Gallipoli Peninsula begins in earnest, I thought it might be timely to interrogate the notion that those of us who live in Australasia are confronted with every Anzac Day: that it was on April 25, 1915, the day the Australia New Zealand Army Corps (Anzacs) landed at Gallipoli as part of the Mediterranean Expeditionary Force, that the consciousness of nationhood was born in Australia and New Zealand, This foundational idea, with specific application to Australia, was first published nine years after the event by Charles Bean, the Australian Government’s official World War I historian who is also regarded as having created the Anzac legend. On a broader view, World War I was, for Bean, about freedom, and more broadly still, about the survival of civilisation.