Orphan Histories and Conflicting Narratives: Explaining Thailand's Official Silence on the Second World War

Abstract

New Directions in War and History explores military history’s unique position between the public, scholarly and professional arenas. This volume aims to reconsider military and naval history as a genre of history, while also providing a forum for discussing new and innovative approaches in the field.

The authors explore the limits of military history, its controversies and omissions, its utility and successes.

Jeffrey Grey provides a cogent and forthright examination of the genre’s future.

Robert Hogg investigates identity and belonging among Queensland soldiers during the First World War, while William Westerman offers a new way of looking at middle class soldiers during the war.

Meleah Hampton’s chapter on operational military history during the First World War has at is heart a reinvigoration of the operational level of study through an in-depth study of Pozieres.

Romain Fathi offers a French perspective on the battle of Second Villers-Bretonneux and the contrasting ways in which the battle has been remembered in Australia and France.

Oleg Beyda and Greg Raymond broaden the focus of the book beyond the West, taking the Second World War as their focus.

Beyda explores White Russian emigres serving for Nazi Germany on the Eastern Front between 1941-45, while Raymond shines a light on Thailand’s official silence regarding its participation within the Second World War.

Finally, John Moremon examines the administrative process around aircrew loss between 1939 and 1945, and how this type of study in ‘new’ military history can reinforce pre-existing social history about grief and bereavement in the aftermath of war.

The product of a two-day conference co-sponsored by ACSACS and the ANU’s Strategic and Defence Studies Centre, New Directions in War and History is the starting point for a growing discussion between scholars who examine conflict through a range of cultural, social, economic and political lenses and more traditional military historians taking innovate approaches within their field.