We have explored some of the many paths Americans and Australians have taken through the forest of symbols which they might have used to represent their nations. What does the aerial view look like? Where did they take the same paths, where did they diverge, and why?

The four events I have examined here were frameworks for expressions of national identity which were culturally dense and intended to be inclusive. They provide, in cross-sections, a broad overview of what Australians and Americans have been able to claim, with most plausibility, to share. With this sort of comparison we can move beyond the simple claim that nations are culturally constructed imagined communities to ask systematic and specific questions about exactly how they are imagined and constructed. And whereas historians have certainly told us a great deal about particular nationalist themes – about how Americans have thought of their political values, or Australians of their land, for instance – and about developments in the intervening century, looking at national identity in these events means that we can assess the comparative salience of different themes in different times and places. The approach here casts a new light on persistence, loss, and innovation in national representations.

In all four events, there were two core ways that meanings and values associated with the United States and Australia could make sense as expressions of national identity. Whatever the particular symbols invoked, they expressed either world position or internal integration or both.