Academic literature on the topic '1914-1918 Campaigns Turkey Gallipoli Peninsula Anniversaries'

This study examines the changing perceptions of Anzac Day in New Zealand, Australia and Turkey in the twentieth century. Changing interpretations of Anzac Day reflect social and political changes in the nations over that time. Anzac Day is an annual commemoration which has profound significance in the Australian and New Zealand social landscape. It has undergone significant changes of meaning since it began, and may be regarded as being an example of the changeable script of memory. The thesis argues that memory and landscape intersect to influence the way commemorative gestures are interpreted. Personal and community memories are fluid, influenced by the current historical landscape. This means that each successive Anzac Day can have different connotations. The public perception of these connotations is traced for each of New Zealand, Australia and Turkey. Anzac Day reflects the forces at work in the current historical landscape. Within that landscape it has different meanings and also functions as an arena for individual and community agency. On Anzac Day there are parades and services which constitute a public theatre where communities validate military service. Individual and communal feats are held high and an ethic or myth is placed as a model within the social fabric. Anzac Day is contested and reflects tides of opinion about war and society and the role of women. It is also the locale of quiet, personal contemplation, where central family attachments to the loved and lost and the debt owed by civilian communities to the military are expressed. Generational change has redefined its meanings and functions. Anzac Day was shaped in a contemporary historical landscape. It reflected multi-national perspectives within British Empire and Commonwealth countries and Turkey. For Turkey the day represented a developing friendship with former foes and was couched within Onsekiz Mart Zaferi, a celebration of the Çanakkale Savaşlari 1915 victory in the Dardanelles campaign. As Anzac Day evolved, Turkey, the host country for New Zealand and Australian pilgrims, became the focus of world attention on the day. Gallipoli is now universally recognised as the international shrine for Anzac Day.

Constructions of memory, myth and legend relating to Gallipoli have dominated the academic assumption which suggests that this dimension alone has allowed for the reawakening of the exceptional interest in the Anzac tradition; a tradition that has converged at the physical site in modern day Turkey. While these intangible constructions have waxed, waned, and re-emerged over the Twentieth Century, possessing the site to commence the construction of an Anzac Battlefield Cemetery has been ignored in academic enquiry. This significant series of events from 1916 to 1965 were indispensable to memory perpetuation and essential to the commemorative primacy that this preserved headland now enjoys. The desire to repossess, and then own in perpetuity the battlefield in order to attach the appropriate masonry adornments, is in itself unique. This dimension has not been academically scrutinised by any historian until now. Nor has the deliberate desire to construct an Anzac shrine that would someday attract pilgrims from the Antipodes been studied. Present day site-sacralisation by rite-of-passage pilgrims, thoroughly emersed in the Anzac tradition, suggests the convergence of the two dimensions is complete. To counteract this problem of the �hegemony of the intangibles� this thesis explores primary sources, gleaned largely from archival records, then evaluates the significance of the history of �physical Gallipoli.� Thematic approaches based upon the lines of possession, preservation and pilgrimage argue that this parallel dimension has played an indispensable role in shaping the end result today. Tens of thousands Australasian travellers now flock to this preserved battlefield to encounter the actual physicality of the tradition. The battlefield cemetery, complete with botanical emblems of ownership, had been out of the reach of the very generation who had created, acquired and constructed the battlefield landscape. The New Zealand public had to be content with assorted forms of vicarious pilgrimage coupled with widespread domestic memorialisation. New Zealand�s post-evacuation experience at Gallipoli became a story completely distinctive from that of Australia or Great Britain. The deliberately constructed Anzac Battlefield Cemetery is a unique landscape artefact that a proud but mournful generation set out to create. They eventually achieved this end by a complicated mixture of conquest, occupation, careful preservation, and commemorative ownership. These efforts were assisted by the vagaries of economic happenstance and international politics that left this remote Peninsula isolated and off-limits to human encounter. Fortuitously frozen in time, this landscape artefact, so steeped in Classical history, has emerged as one of the most sacred, and perhaps the most recognisable, geographic features associated with Australasia. Overriding these plans for shrine construction had been the stated goal of securing a reverent final resting place for those who fell during the creation of the Anzac legend in 1915. Sepulture perpetuelle became the post-evacuation catchphrase that propelled this Great War generation to go almost to the brink of war to secure the principles of this phrase. This lofty goal of permanence, by passage of time and the re-appropriation of nature, had mercifully been completed before the current �second invasion� that commenced in the 1980s. The Anzac Battlefield Cemetery is now a victim of its own very successful physical preservation.

This thesis re-examines and reconstructs the Anzac Landing at Gallipoli on 25 April 1915 by applying a new approach to an old topic - it uses the records of a single battalion over a single day to create a body of evidence with which to construct a history of the battle. This focus on the battle's participants might be expected to shed light only their immediate experience, but it also creates a profile of the fighting on this day. This is in part due to the methodology developed to assess and compile accounts, but also to the fact that the chosen battalion, the 11th Battalion, 3rd Infantry Brigade, 1st Division, Australian Imperial Force, landed with the covering force for the Australian and New Zealand Army Corps, and its members fought from Fisherman's Hut to 400 Plateau, on Third Ridge and Battleship Hill. This study therefore places much of the battlefield under the microscope. The use of veterans' accounts to re-tell the story of the Landing is not new. Anecdotes are often layered over the known history, established in C.E.W. Bean's Official History of Australia in the War, The Story of ANZAC, Volume I, to colour narrative and connect with personal experience. Less frequently are they reliably used as historical evidence. In this thesis, letters, diaries, memoirs, manuscripts, photographs, maps, diagrams and other information, collected from private collections, libraries, museums, archives and period newspapers, the battlefield and many secondary sources, are used as evidence to construct events, chronologies and frames of reference in order to reconstruct the history of the day. This thesis will argue that eye witness testimony can be extremely unreliable when taken in isolation, but when verified, contextualised and validated by a thorough and robust methodology, can provide valuable information with which to re-examine some of the battle's significant events and outstanding questions. Why did the advance stop? Why was the high ground not taken? Why do the accounts of the adversaries of the best known clash of the day not match? The missing evidence may lie in the smallest of fragments - not in isolation, but when examined in aggregate. This shift in the way evidence is collected and analysed leads to a shift in the way the battle is interpreted. The Landing has not previously been studied at this level of detail. Bean amalgamated the disparate and confused accounts of that day into a canvas; this thesis digs deeper into the foundation data to analyse, verify, add to and reconstruct the day. It builds on and complements Bean's work, confirming and enriching some aspects of his account, filling gaps, and, in some aspects, potentially re-writing the history of the Landing. There has been much rhetoric over the years and many myths and legends surround this battle. This thesis will argue that even though nearly 100 years have passed since the Landing, and well over 1000 books written on the campaign, much can be learned by returning to the 'primary source, the soldier'.

"December 2004"
Bibliography: leaves 390-420.
vii, 420 leaves : ill., maps, photos. (col.) ; 30 cm.
Title page, contents and abstract only. The complete thesis in print form is available from the University Library.
Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of Adelaide, School of History and Politics, Discipline of History, 2005

"December 2004"
Bibliography: leaves 390-420.
vii, 420 leaves : ill., maps, photos. (col.) ; 30 cm.
Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of Adelaide, School of History and Politics, Discipline of History, 2005