Enemy Aliens: Internment and the Homefront War in Australia, 1914–1920

• Authors: Gerhard Fischer

Abstracts

EN

During the First World War, the German Australian community, the largest non-Anglo-Celtic group, became the target of a relentless campaign of persecution, internment and deportation that resulted in its dismemberment and the destruction of its socio-cultural infrastructure. Under the country’s belligerent Prime Minister, W.M. Hughes, the machinery of government was used to suspend basic civil rights and the rule of law, while Australian civilians were called upon to participate in the “homefront war” against an imagined internal enemy. The government’s aim was to serve the cause of Im- perial Britain and its commercial supremacy, and to secure the future of White Australia as the home of an imaginary, exclusive “British race.”

Keywords

EN

White Australia; race fear; law in war; German Australian community; Australian citizenship; internment; multiculturalism; ethnic cleansing

• Publisher: Institute of English Studies, University of Warsaw
• Journal: Anglica. An International Journal of English Studies
• Year: 2021
• Issue: 30(3)
• Pages: 107-139

Dates

published

2021

Contributors

author

Gerhard Fischer

Identifiers

DOI

10.7311/0860-5734.30.3.07

Biblioteka Nauki

2049125