Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Figures and Tables
- Notes on the Contributors
- Acknowledgements
- A Tribute to Sir Tom Devine
- 1 Introduction-Global Migrations: The Scottish Diaspora since 1600
- 2 ‘As Hewers of Wood, and Drawers of Water’: Scotland as an Emigrant Nation, c. 1600 to c. 1800
- 3 ‘You Have Only Seen the Fortunate Few and Draw Your Conclusion Accordingly’: Behavioural Economics and the Paradox of Scottish Emigration
- 4 Scottish Diasporas and Africa
- 5 ‘Have the Scotch no Claim upon the Cherokee?’ Scots, Indians and Scots Indians in the American South
- 6 Conflicts of Interest, Crises of Conscience: Scots and Aboriginal People in Eastern Australia, 1830s–1861
- 7 The Importance of Scottish Origins in the Nineteenth Century: James Taylor and Ceylon Tea
- 8 ‘Our Old World Diff'rences are Dead’: The Scottish Migrant Military Tradition in the British Dominions during the First World War
- 9 ‘Part of my Heritage’: Ladies’ Pipe Bands, Associational Culture and ‘Homeland’ Identities in the Scottish Diaspora
- 10 Understanding Scottishness among Sojourners, Settlers and Descendants in Hong Kong and New Zealand
- 11 Encountering an Imaginary Heritage: Roots Tourism and the Scottish Diaspora
- 12 Home is where the Heart is: Affinity Scots in the Scottish Diaspora
- 13 What Scottish Diaspora?
- 14 Afterword
- Index
8 - ‘Our Old World Diff'rences are Dead’: The Scottish Migrant Military Tradition in the British Dominions during the First World War
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 23 September 2017
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Figures and Tables
- Notes on the Contributors
- Acknowledgements
- A Tribute to Sir Tom Devine
- 1 Introduction-Global Migrations: The Scottish Diaspora since 1600
- 2 ‘As Hewers of Wood, and Drawers of Water’: Scotland as an Emigrant Nation, c. 1600 to c. 1800
- 3 ‘You Have Only Seen the Fortunate Few and Draw Your Conclusion Accordingly’: Behavioural Economics and the Paradox of Scottish Emigration
- 4 Scottish Diasporas and Africa
- 5 ‘Have the Scotch no Claim upon the Cherokee?’ Scots, Indians and Scots Indians in the American South
- 6 Conflicts of Interest, Crises of Conscience: Scots and Aboriginal People in Eastern Australia, 1830s–1861
- 7 The Importance of Scottish Origins in the Nineteenth Century: James Taylor and Ceylon Tea
- 8 ‘Our Old World Diff'rences are Dead’: The Scottish Migrant Military Tradition in the British Dominions during the First World War
- 9 ‘Part of my Heritage’: Ladies’ Pipe Bands, Associational Culture and ‘Homeland’ Identities in the Scottish Diaspora
- 10 Understanding Scottishness among Sojourners, Settlers and Descendants in Hong Kong and New Zealand
- 11 Encountering an Imaginary Heritage: Roots Tourism and the Scottish Diaspora
- 12 Home is where the Heart is: Affinity Scots in the Scottish Diaspora
- 13 What Scottish Diaspora?
- 14 Afterword
- Index
Summary
Our old world diff'rences are dead,
Like weeds beneath the plough,
For English, Scotch and Irish-bred
They're all Australians now!
THE AUSTRALIAN NATIONALIST SENTIMENT conveyed by celebrated bush balladeer A. B. ‘Banjo’ Paterson's 1915 poem ‘We're All Australians Now’ represents a development which is widely recognised to have been common to the experience of the British dominions during and after the First World War. In these countries, the war came to be regarded as a milestone on the journey from colonial status to independent nationhood. Their war efforts may have been articulated in terms of the loyal defence of the British Empire and of the values ascribed to it, but the share taken by the dominions in mobilisation, sacrifice and ultimate victory was understood, as Paterson asserted of his own country, to make Australians feel more Australian in consequence. ‘We're All Australians Now’ was written at home in the summer of 1915 during a brief hiatus in Paterson's war service, which would shortly take him to Egypt as an officer of the Remount Service of the Australian Imperial Force. He was Australian born, the son of a Scotsman who had emigrated to New South Wales in the early 1850s but, with more socially elevated English and Irish forbears on his mother's side, he never traded on the Scottish end of his ancestry. He identified more readily with the country of his birth, which he had seen federated as a nation in 1901, and his literary work, especially ‘The Man from Snowy River’ and ‘Waltzing Matilda’, was already influential in formulating the romantic figure of the bushman as a leading character in the foundation myth of Australian identity. By the end of the First World War, the classic image of the Australian soldier, the strapping, scruffy, unflappable veteran of Gallipoli, Pozières and Romani, had been melded with Paterson's bushman, principally through the influence of war correspondent, official historian and propagandist C. E. W. Bean, to ingrain the archetype of the ideal Australian in popular consciousness.
If, by 1918, to be an Australian soldier was to be a true Australian, much the same might be said for the war's impact on national consciousness in New Zealand, South Africa, Canada and, though with a different long-term outcome, in Newfoundland.
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- Global MigrationsThe Scottish Diaspora since 1600, pp. 138 - 158Publisher: Edinburgh University PressPrint publication year: 2016