Unnecessary Wars
Apr 2016 · NewSouth
Ebook
288
Pages
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About this ebook
‘Australian governments find it easy to go to war. Their leaders seem to be able to withdraw with a calm conscience, answerable neither to God nor humanity.’
Australia lost 600 men in the Boer War, a three-year conflict fought in the heart of Africa that had ostensibly nothing to do with Australia. Coinciding with Federation, the war kickstarted Australia’s commitment to fighting in Britain’s wars overseas, and forged a national identity around it. By 1902, when the Boer War ended, a mythology about our colonial soldiers had already been crafted, and a dangerous precedent established.
This is Henry Reynolds at his searing best, as he shows how the Boer War left a dark and dangerous legacy, demonstrating how those beliefs have propelled us into too many unnecessary wars – without ever counting the cost.
About the author
Henry Reynolds is one of Australia's best-known historians. He grew up in Hobart and early in his career became interested in the history of relations between Australian settlers and Aboriginal people. His pioneering scholarly work, especially The Other Side of the Frontier (1981), was critical in changing understandings of the Australian frontier. With The Law of the Land (1987), he increasingly engaged with contemporary legal and political issues. In morally charged works such as This Whispering in Our Hearts (1998) and Why Weren't We Told? (1999), he gave the cause of reconciliation a historical underpinning. In 2000 he took up a professorial fellowship at the University of Tasmania. Since then he has written Drawing the Global Colour Line with Marilyn Lake and co-authored What's Wrong with Anzac? His most recent book, Forgotten War, won the Victorian Premier's Literary Award for Non-fiction in 2014.
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