Why is the Gallipoli campaign so strongly linked with Australian nationhood?
The landing on the shores of Gallipoli in Turkey, on April the 25th 1915 is etched into the psyche of Australia as a pivotal point in a young nation coming of age. It is celebrated annually by a public holiday, dawn service and, multiple events held around the country, and at Gallipoli itself. It has crept into popular vernacular in the term ‘ANZAC spirit’ that is used to describe all sorts of underdog endeavours, particularly sporting ones. However, based on the facts, Gallipoli was a military disaster for Australia and only one of many campaigns that ANZACs fought in during the first World War. So why then is it so entrenched within the national identity of Australia? To understand this better, I will explore why Australians identify strongly with the events of the Gallipoli campaign and what has increased its relevance and importance of this as part of Australia’s collective memory.
Historical Background
Australia’s entry into the First World War did not come as it had expected, by initially being sent to fight the German enemy. Instead, they were to engage the Turkish army in an effort to eliminate them from the war. This attempt resulted in the deaths of 8,700 Australians. Allied deaths were over 35,000, whilst the death toll for the Turks was almost double. Australian losses during the entire war were 53,557. The failed Gallipoli campaign was approximately 14% of the total killed but has somehow come to represent what it is to be an Australian and intrinsically tied to nationhood.
To define national identity, I have looked at Smith’s definition of a nation as “a named human population sharing a historic territory, common myths and historical memories, a mass, public culture, a common economy and common legal rights and duties for all members”. To add to this, Anderson states, a nation can be imagined as a community regardless of inequality that may exist. Furthermore, he describes the willingness to die as part of the sense of fraternity that imagined communities have. Based on the above, it can be seen that the laying down of lives as part of the nation’s effort to defeat an enemy creates common myths and historical memories that feed into the notion of nationhood. That said though, Gallipoli was not the only time lives have been lost in similar circumstances, yet Gallipoli prevails over all other wartime activities by Australians.
This is evidenced in polls showing that ANZACs have a 90% association with Australia’s national identity. This result cuts across all socioeconomic backgrounds and would suggest that even as Australia has grown more multicultural, the memory and the myth are growing in popularity, particularly when the first forty years following the landing at Gallipoli, was not even recognised officially.
Is going to war the only way to establish a national identity though? What of those nations that have never been to war? If violence is a contributing factor in nationhood and how Australia views itself through the suffering and the losses endured, what of the violence it inflicted on the Turks? Why are the unspectacular aspects of building a nation not considered as part of Australia’s nationhood also? Henry Reynolds argues that going to war and fighting are considered far more important than agriculture, teaching, governing or other day to day tasks. These are questions that need to be explored as it is easy to leave out the facts that don’t fit the narrative of celebrating an event that is now so entrenched in our national identity. The formation of national identity is linked to how we see ourselves and how others are viewed against this formed perspective. Collectively, we view ourselves as doing a good deed and being killed for it whereas the enemy is the evil other and they are killing us.
The ANZAC
The history of ANZAC day and how it has been celebrated is not a linear one. Soldiers returning to Australia follow the end of the first World War arrived back to a country that was not yet linking the events at Gallipoli to that of its national identity. The Australian community was a divided one, a lengthy strike in New South Wales, two campaigns over conscription, Western Australia’s attempt to leave the federation and a less independent Australia becoming more loyal to the empire. Weariness to the war and the with almost every second family in the country having experienced a casualty, the notion of nationhood and the deaths at Gallipoli were yet to be linked. Even the symbols of Gallipoli that are today known and repeated, such as Simpson and his Donkey, were not at the forefront of stories about the campaign. A memorial to Simpson and the attempts to have the Gallipoli landing commemorated on a stamp were both dismissed in the 1930s. Journalist Charles Bean’s portrayal of the soldiers or ‘diggers’, during the campaign combined with the fact that Gallipoli was Australia’s first significant action during the war would have helped build a sense of pride back home. The subsequent actions that the soldiers took part in and the ongoing length of the war would have not helped in maintaining the romance or adventure that a single action may have had.
There is also some conflation when looking at the soldiers who fought at Gallipoli. The Australian Imperial Force was made up of volunteers who joined with New Zealand troops to establish ANZACs. The existing national stereotype of the Australian bushmen before the war was part of the qualities the Australians took to Gallipoli. A strong sense of mateship who were somewhat ill-disciplined but were loyal to their home country, defying the rules of the military and their British officers. The transformative effect that war has in reshaping a young person from citizen to a disciplined soldier has become a metaphor to how the young Australia has come to viewed over time. This is a convenient truth though as it fails to include any of the bad qualities these young volunteers had and the domestic violence and alcoholism suffered during their return to Australia. The ANZAC legend also fails to include other people in society, such as Indigenous Australians and women. In recent years though, this trend has been reversed as revisionist accounts of Gallipoli have been more inclusive of Indigenous troops, the role of women and other nationalities. Add to this the changing narrative associated with the battle now being shifted to human suffering and other human values. This aside, the ANZAC spirit of overcoming adversity has now come to be linked with sports and sportspeople on a regular basis. None more so than in the America’s Cup victory in 1984 when Alan Bond wrongly referred to not being written off and winning like our boys at Gallipoli. Once the war was over, the stereotype of the ANZAC entered the Australian consciousness alongside that of the bushman, although it could be argued that there two personas are interchangeable.
Myth-Making
In 2002, the last veteran passed away and with them any direct first-hand memory of what it may have been like at Gallipoli. It could be argued however that the need for a direct memory of the events at Gallipoli had long since passed and that the myth that has now emerged had already replaced any actual lived memory. This cultural memory of the events that occurred are reframed through symbolic representations that can morph and change over time and for new audiences. What may have been a historical memory held by those that survived Gallipoli, becomes a sense of memory that the whole nation can share. This is in part due to the lack of recognition given to any individuals but because the actions in Turkey were one of a collective entity. This also helps in keeping the memory a positive one as there is less scrutiny that may be applied to any one individual. The application of the ANZAC spirit to individual sportspeople is an exception but applying to a team would be analogous the amorphous soldier legend. The strength of the myth that encompasses Gallipoli can be seen in the ongoing framing of the events as a positive outcome even though it could be also seen as one of Australia’s greatest military setbacks.
The link with Australia’s nationhood is one that can be seen as part of the myth-making process that helps anchor a community around certain events. How the past is remembered by the nation feeds into the cultural memory that exists in the present. The historical facts, wartime records, and even archaeological work done can’t be overlooked when dealing with what happened at a place and time. The courage of individuals is hard to get an objective sense of, if we compare it to any other battle throughout history, but does become symbolic when anchored against the events at Gallipoli. Western societies also found a need to preserve the memory of these events as veterans around the world died and following studies in the 1980s that more attention should be paid to the commemoration of significant past events.
Bell terms this as a ‘collective remembrance’, which is created through multiple acts of social interactions and remembrance. Australia is made up of a very different demographic today than it was under the White Australia Policy. Yet, ANZAC Day has not faded away to local councils and RSL clubs but could be argued as more significant than Australia Day in how the country celebrates nationhood. That the comments made by CEW Bean on the very first ANZAC day about “the consciousness of Australian nationhood was born”, still hold true, and show that the baton has been picked up and carried forward by new and younger Australians. Bell uses the term ‘mythscape’ to describe how the myths of a nation are built, communicated and reframed constantly. Time can assist as new narratives are formed and the myth takes on a powerful form that any questioning of it showing complete disrespect for the dead. The Gallipoli campaign continues to take on meaning for younger generations too. This is witnessed through the pilgrimages made annually to take part in dawn services at ANZAC Cove.
The shifting demographics have also seen a change in how the nation commemorates ANZAC Day and has softened the hard-line approach previously associated with the marching of veterans on the day. In the early 1980s, the RSL vehemently rejected Turkish veterans taking part with language that was very partisan of what they felt the day was about. This changed in the 1990s following the lead of the Victorian RSL invitation for several Turkish veterans to join the march. This can be seen as the mythscape being reframed to be more contemporaneous with modern Australian society and its values.
The Politicians
If there is one factor that has contributed to the linking of Gallipoli and nationhood and its growing popularity in recent decades, that would be the role that the political leaders have played in promoting the importance of the ANZACs. As early as 1921, the Prime Minister at the time, Billy Hughes, was supporting the creation of ANZAC Day as a public holiday for the country. Fast forward though to the social and cultural changes the country was undergoing during the 1960s and into the 1970s added with the growing objections to Australia’s involvement in the Vietnam War, the image of the ANZACs and war began to deteriorate. It could be argued that the reinvigorating of the ANZAC myth and its reimagining came about with the release of the movie Gallipoli in 1981. Australian cinema was experiencing a new wave in popularity and Weir’s Gallipoli was released at a time when the Vietnam War was receding from memory and a new cultural nationalism was taking hold.
The Labor governments of the 1980s and 1990s further championed ANZAC Day through rhetoric that emphasised courage and mateship over the military facts of the campaign and further supported it with Prime Minister Bob Hawke attending the 75th anniversary of the landing at Gallipoli. Under Paul Keating, there was an attempted shift in trying to shift focus away from Gallipoli as he felt it Kokoda was more representative of a fight that was successful and done against an enemy that was on Australia’s doorstep. He would go further in 2008 by stating that any belief that Australia was born at Gallipoli was complete nonsense. The attempt to realign attention from World War One to World War Two failed to gain the traction the Keating government wanted. Two of the factors contributing to this were that Kokoda was exclusively male and the lack of interest in nationhood being associated with the violence that occurred during the campaign.
John Howard’s Liberal government did away with the Kokoda distraction as he was keen to see the ANZAC legend become reinforced throughout Australian society. Significant funding and resourcing were given to the promotion of Anzac Day through school programs and memorials that resonated with younger Australians. The narrowing of the Australian identity under Howard placed the ANZAC myth and its associated iconography as a central pretence for Australian support in Iraq. This highlights the somewhat flexibility of the ANZAC myth and how political leaders can use it to for their own needs. By entrenching the qualities of the ANZACs and placing them into new contexts it could be viewed as somewhat exploitive if the whole story is left out.
Conclusion
As has been shown above, the legend of the ANZAC that was created on the shores of Gallipoli entered the Australian consciousness almost immediately through the retelling of the feats that they faced and overcome. Time has seen the facts of the Gallipoli campaign pushed to the rear as the qualities of mateship and loyalty are promoted to fit into the narrative of the Australian national identity. Gallipoli has seen growth in popularity over the last forty years as the reversal of the negativity of war from Vietnam receded and Australia sought to invigorate what its national identity is. It has also been challenged by politicians looking to promote alternate celebrations but has ultimately failed to gain the same level of recognition. The young nation was looking to establish itself and sending our troops to fight in a foreign land has resulted in the qualities being displayed that we now see as what it means to be an Australian. If we are to pick a single reason why Gallipoli is so strongly linked to nationhood, it would be time. Gallipoli has become multigenerational and been adopted by new Australians as its narrative has shifted to cater for changing societal viewpoints. It is difficult to see this faltering in the near future.
