Unnecessary Wars

'Australian governments find it easy to go to war. Their leaders seem to be able to withdraw with a calm conscience, answerable neither to God nor humanity.'
Australia lost 600 men in the Boer War, a three-year conflict fought in the heart of Africa that had ostensibly nothing to do with Australia. Coinciding with Federation, the war kickstarted Australia's commitment to fighting in Britain's wars overseas, and forged a national identity around it. By 1902, when the Boer War ended, a mythology about our colonial soldiers had already been crafted, and a dangerous precedent established.
This is Henry Reynolds at his searing best, as he shows how the Boer War left a dark and dangerous legacy, demonstrating how those beliefs have propelled us into too many unnecessary wars - without ever counting the cost.

Henry Reynolds is one of Australia's best known historians. He grew up in Hobart and was educated at Hobart High School and the University of Tasmania. In 1965 he accepted a lectureship at James Cook University in Townsville, which sparked an interest in the history of relations between settlers and Aborigines. His pioneering scholarly work, especially The Other Side of the Frontier (1981), was critical in changing understandings of the Australian frontier. With The Law of the Land (1987), this prolific historian increasingly engaged with contemporary legal and political issues. In morally charged works such as This Whispering in Our Hearts (1998) and Why Weren't We Told? (1999), he gave the cause of reconciliation a historical underpinning. In 2000 he took up a professorial fellowship at the University of Tasmania. Since then he has written Drawing the Global Colour Line with Marilyn Lake and co-authored What's Wrong with Anzac?