'You must remember you are New Zealanders': identity-making in First World War New Zealand troopship magazines

This thesis presents a sustained analysis of New Zealand World War I troopship magazines, as a distinct sub-genre of soldierly print culture. The New Zealand Expeditionary Force had the longest journey to and from the war, and the thesis argues that the 120 magazines produced en route are a significant, if neglected source, given their frequent publication over the whole war, their popularity and the breadth of the contributors. This thesis builds on, and contributes to, international scholarship on soldierly magazines from the First World War, and to the New Zealand historiography of the War. The thesis identifies questions of identity as a central concern of these magazines. Underpinning the analysis is an understanding of identity as a dynamic process, negotiated by imagined and interpretive communities, through narrative. While not everyone contributed to the magazines everyone was included in the imagined readership. The magazines contain representations and discussions from the bottom up. They reveal how New Zealand soldiers of all ranks were imagining the war, and their role in it. They also show how travelling back, these men envisaged their return home, and the way their memories of the war and their sense of themselves as New Zealanders might shape the future. Individual chapters investigate how this community used their magazines to reflect on the imperial-national relationship (revealing dual loyalties without conflict of interest) and on their reasons for enlisting including a strong sense of duty, conceived in plurivalent ways (straddling personal, national and imperial loyalties); their interpretation of the Gallipoli Campaign and the Anzac legend which many saw as defining them as New Zealand soldiers and which became the measure for later troops; the articulation of multiple identities including regional, military and national (with the latter dominating); the influence of landscapes both overseas and back home on writers’ notions of identity and personal well-being. The visibility of Māori is a distinctive feature of these conversations. A separate chapter investigates what happened to these ideas in the homeward magazines, and shows that men were not disillusioned but optimistic about leaving the war behind and shaping New Zealand’s future