History war rages on the frontier

Historian Clare Wright told a Sydney Writers Festival audience the other day that there was a national “cult of forgetfulness”, that we celebrated “the military valour of certain soldiers in certain wars” – she meant Gallipoli. And we do so while ignoring resistance by Indigenous Australians, now known as the frontier wars.

There is far too much commemoration of the former and not enough of the latter at the Australian War Memorial in Canberra, is the argument. Fair enough; history is always contested ground and Professor Wright has a case to make. She is exceptionally well placed to do so, being a professor of history at La Trobe University and chairwoman of the National Museum of Australia council.

But there is more to this argument than changing what events are commemorated. It is part of a long academic campaign to remake the past to suit present politics. A few years back, Professor Wright had another go at Gallipoli, deploring the “militarist narrative of youthful sacrifice” that replaced Federation, including the role of feminists, as Australia’s foundation historical achievement.

She is not on her own. There is a long campaign by generally left-wing historians against what is called “Anzackery”, said to be the chauvinist celebration of Australians fighting other people’s wars.

While they can point to examples in the media, it never shaped the memories of the World War I generation. The record of the defeat at Gallipoli and the horrors of the Western Front ensured there was nothing for the first generation of Australian citizen soldiers to mindlessly celebrate.

There still isn’t – as all who have been to Australian memorials at Anzac Cove in Turkey or Villers-Bretonneux in France will attest. But historians who are uncomfortable with Australia past and present need an explanation of why so many of us ignore their arguments, and Gallipoli is a handy hook.

In her writers festival talk, Professor Wright mentioned increased interest in Indigenous history since the voice referendum, suggesting “we are not sufficiently celebrating the nation’s achievements by having too much emphasis on the pain and the brutality of the past”. But what is “pain and brutality” to Professor Wright was generally seen as self-sacrifice for family and country in 1915.

Professor Wright also mentioned the Black Lives Matter protests increasing interest in Afro-American history. Just not an accurate one; during President Donald Trump’s first term, a statue of Abraham Lincoln famously was pulled down on the allegation Lincoln was a racist. That was a statue of the president who ended slavery in the US and who claimed black abolitionist Frederick Douglass as a friend.

Mr Trump was mightily exercised by such protests and it surely encouraged his animus towards universities, which he claims impose ideological conformity. On Thursday Mr Trump escalated his campaign against Harvard University, which he considers the most woke of the woke, by banning it from enrolling foreign students unless it demonstrates diversity of opinion.

This is what happens when our ancestors are conscripted into present politics. “The past is a foreign country: they do things differently there,” novelist LP Hartley wrote. They should be studied on the terms of their own times, and their founding achievements for all of us should not be dismissed.