The Oxford Companion To Australian Military History

This is a comprehensive guide to Australian military history, broadly conceived within a critical and analytical framework. It contains 800 entries. The editors have sought a balance between various types of entries. Their interpretation of 'military history' is inclusive, extending beyondstandard categories such as battles, campaigns, biographies and weapons, and encompassing entries on the structures of various parts of the defence force organization and their evolution, military language and customs, literature dealing with military themes and treaties, alliances and acts ofparliament that have had a significant impact on the military. Biographical entries vary from long analytical essays on figures such as Thomas Blamey and C.E.W. Bean to much shorter entries on figures of less importance. Not every Chief of General Staff or RAN and RAAF equivalent has an entry: as the editors say, some were undistinguished. All office holdersof significant rank within the three services are listed in an appendix. No attempt is made to duplicate the Australian Dictionary of Biography; nor, except in two instances, have the editors commissioned articles on specific individuals from the historians who wrote those particular entries forADB. The editors' focus is different, combining essential biographical facts with more commentary and analysis. Battles are grouped into overall campaigns, thus providing a more integrated approach enabling greater analysis of broader issues. The Companion offers essential technical details on every significant weapons system employed in the three services since their inception, together with comments thathelp place those systems in an operational and sometimes political context. In addition, there are several longer articles on key aspects of military history and culture. The entry on conscription, while not neglecting past controversies, explains the mechanics of the various methods. There is anabsorbing entry on the ways in which animals have been used by the military. Aboriginal resistance to white invasion is covered in a long entry, as is Aboriginal service in the armed forces. There are also several articles on military influences in Australian culture - war films, literature, art,popular culture. Complete with 100 photographs and 32 maps, the result is a comprehensive work of reference, analysis and interest that will come to be regarded as the authoritative work in the field.

This text provides a comprehensive guide to Australian military history, written by the country's leading military historians. It includes entries on key soldiers, politicians and writers, as well as information on major campaigns, weapons and themes.

An expanded edition of one of the most acclaimed accounts of Australian military history.

"This book is the most comprehensive guide yet to New Zealand's rich and varied military history. It is supplemented with 150 photographs and more than forty maps, as well as lists of important office-holders. It is a must for students, specialists, and anyone interested in New Zealand's military history and the effect of war on its society."--BOOK JACKET.

"The Oxford Companion to Australian History draws on the latest scholarship and covers people, institutions, and events that have shaped Australian society, politics and culture. There are entries on politicians, colonisers, visionaries, newspaper barons, industrialists, explorers, writers, artists, and scientists. There are numerous extended essays on key facets of the nation's life--political, social, cultural, scientific, military, and economic. Readers will find incisive entries on matters such as, art, capital punishment, gambling, language, literature, military history, republicanism, and reconciliation."--Publisher's description.

The Australian Army is the oldest of the three armed services, and is one of the oldest continuous national organisations in the country.

"This textbook is meant to serve as a foundation for undergraduate courses in American military history ... War, naturally, plays a central role in this textbook, and in several instances chapters are devoted solely to conflict. Other issues and events beyond war, however, also characterize the American military experience. The struggle between the tradition of militia and the need for a standing army, the evolution of civil-military relations, the advent of professionalism in the military, the non-military uses of the military, and the military's role in democratic society as a tool of international and domestic power, a social institution, and symbol of American prestige abroad are also part of the experience. In order to gain a holistic appreciation of American military history, these themes and others must be examined in the context of American history"--Preface.

Official history is a misunderstood genre of historical writing, which attracts much negative comment from (non-official) historians but about which very little detail is actually known. This book examines the development of official history programs in Canada, South Africa, Australia, and New Zealand over the course of the twentieth century, looking at the ways in which they developed and the contributions each made to their respective national historiography. The second part of the work develops some themes from the first and takes the official histories of the Second World War as case studies. Drawing on programs in Australia, Britain, and the United States, these essays examine the relationship between the histories, the historians, and their sponsoring institutions. They assess the impact of the histories on historical understanding of the Second World War. They also consider the impact that contemporary events during the Cold War had on the writing of the official history.