New Zealand's Great War: New Zealand, the Allies and the First World War.

• Author: Rabel, Roberto
• Position: Book review

NEW ZEALAND'S GREAT WAR: New Zealand, the Allies and the First World War

Editors: John Crawford and Ian McGibbon

Published by: Exisle Publishing, Auckland, 2007, 675 pp, $59.99.

New Zealanders have long remembered the First World War as their 'Great War'. Described justifiably in this book's Introduction as 'the most traumatic event in New Zealand's history', this war was responsible for more New Zealand deaths, both in relative and absolute terms, than any other conflict. In particular, the Gallipoli campaign appears to be indelibly etched in the nation's collective memory as a bloody touchstone for the forging of a distinct New Zealand identity. Drawing on presentations at a 2003 conference ('Zealandia's Great War'), this collection explores an impressive range of issues associated with this war experience. The 32 chapters are grouped within four broad categories: wider political, social and international perspectives; operational and combat experiences; social dimensions of the war effort; and the home front.

Notwithstanding the diversity of topics and approaches encompassed within these groupings, a central theme which is reinforced in so many of the chapters is that it was a very British war for New Zealand. The country's official military contributions were, of course, configured within wider British military formations and many New Zealanders actually fought within British units, especially those who served in the air or at sea. Moreover, in the context of the times, the cultural distance between New Zealand (or Australian) soldiers and those from the British Isles would arguably have been no greater than that between Americans from Alabama fighting alongside New Yorkers. Just as those Alabamans and New Yorkers were citizens of the United States, so too New Zealanders (and Australians) were self-conscious citizens of a 'British world', even if aspects of their war experience may have stimulated a greater emphasis on the New Zealand (or Australian) side of that dual identity as Antipodean Britons. While exemplified in one way or another in all the chapters on military and combat operations, this British context is highlighted in other dimensions of New Zealand's war experience explored in the book, ranging from service in the merchant marine to farming support for the war effort and even religious responses to the conflict.

Being active participants in the British war effort did not mean contemporary New Zealanders believed themselves...