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https://hdl.handle.net/1959.11/21165| Title: | El uso de los sentimientos nacionales de aislamiento y abandono en la cartelería australiana de reclutamiento de la Primera Guerra Mundial | English Title: | Isolation and abandonment themes in Australian recruitment posters during the First World War | Contributor(s): | Wise, Nathan (author) |
Publication Date: | 2014 | Handle Link: | https://hdl.handle.net/1959.11/21165 | Publication Type: | Book Chapter | Source of Publication: | La guerra: Retórica y propaganda (1860-1970), p. 97-116 | Publisher: | Biblioteca Nueva | Place of Publication: | Madrid, Spain | ISBN: | 9788416345083 | Fields of Research (FoR) 2008: | 210303 Australian History (excl. Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander History) | Fields of Research (FoR) 2020: | 430302 Australian history | Socio-Economic Objective (SEO) 2008: | 970121 Expanding Knowledge in History and Archaeology | Socio-Economic Objective (SEO) 2020: | 280113 Expanding knowledge in history, heritage and archaeology 280114 Expanding knowledge in Indigenous studies |
HERDC Category Description: | B1 Chapter in a Scholarly Book | Series Name: | Coleccion Historia Biblioteca Nueva | English Abstract: | During the First World War approximately 416,000 men from the relatively new nation of Australia enlisted as soldiers in the Australian Imperial Force (AIF) to serve alongside the armies of Great Britain, France, and their allies. Those 416,000 Australians formed roughly 13.43 per cent of the white male population, or about half of the eligible number of recruits believed to be available. They came from small country towns and the burgeoning Australian cities, from large families where brothers fought side by side, and from small families where mothers would send one son off to fight, whilst the other stayed at home to work and support the family. Of those who enlisted, approximately 330,000 were sent eighteen thousand kilometres on a six-week troopship journey around the world to fight. The vast bulk of those who served abroad, some 290,000 people, saw service on the Western Front in Europe, where about 52,000 Australia soldiers lost their lives. Australian soldiers fought on battlefields that were thousands of kilometres from their homes, and in a war that many historians continue to argue had very little relevance to Australians. Nonetheless, throughout the war, in spite of war weariness, growing casualties and the great geographical distance separating the war from the home front, Australians voluntarily enlisted at a rate proportionately similar, relative to Australia's population, to those of the European conscript armies of Britain, France and Germany. Indeed, throughout the First World War Australia relied entirely upon those volunteer recruits for its military forces. Unlike most other combatants in the war, Australia never introduced conscription for overseas service. The voluntary nature of recruitment in the AIF subsequently placed significant pressure on the Australian government to maintain high rates of recruitment to ensure adequate reinforcements for Australian troops in the various theatres of war. To meet these demands, recruitment posters were utilised by the government as a key tool in enticing men to enlist. This paper explores these Australian recruitment posters from the First World War and the themes they conveyed, and places this analysis within a broader historical context. In particular, this paper considers how the messages conveyed through these posters sought to tap into long-held Australian anxieties surrounding a sense of 'distance' from Great Britain, in addition to appealing to white-Australian fears of isolation and abandonment from the 'motherland' (Great Britain). | Editor: | Editor(s): Fidel Gomez Ochoa, Jose M Goni Perez, Daniel Macias Fernandez |
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| Appears in Collections: | Book Chapter School of Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences |
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