Red Coat Dreaming

Red Coat Dreaming tells the story of the affectionate relationship between colonial Australia and the British army.

Craig Wilcox (Author)

9780521193603, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 21 September 2009

198 pages
25 x 16.8 x 2 cm, 0.53 kg

'British Army is a fun, very short book, not so much intended to leave a mark on the research or analysis of Australia's military history, but to promote an idea, a particular vision of the legacy of British imperial history on Australia, and, perhaps, to give historians ideas for future research topics.' Journal of the Society for Army Historical Research

In Red Coat Dreaming art, artefacts and life stories combine to evoke a period when the British Army was also Australia's army. From the first British settlement to the First World War, some Australians were indifferent to and even disdainful of the military force that fomented the Rum Rebellion and shot down gold miners at Eureka. Yet many were proud of the British Army's achievements on battlefields far from Australia. Hundreds of Australians enlisted in the army or married its officers and rankers; thousands had served in it before settling in Australia, and hundreds of thousands barracked when the army went to war. Red Coat Dreaming challenges our understanding of Australia's military history and the primacy of the Anzac legend. It shows how few Australians were immune to the allure and historic associations of the red coat, the British Army's sartorial signature, and leaves readers thinking differently about Australia's identity and experience of war.

1. Waking
2. King Bungaree
3. Hero of Waterloo
4. Dear Spicer
5. Daughters of the regiment
6. Colonial Coriolanus
7. Scarlet fever
8. Canvas and cadmium
9. England's bugler
10. Dreaming.

Subject Areas: Military history [HBW], Australasian & Pacific history [HBJM], General & world history [HBG]