Cirrus@Austlit

'One of the concerns of the newly federated Commonwealth of Australia was a fear of invasion by Asia from the north, either by force or through immigration. In the lead-up to World War I, white Australia saw national security and border security as intertwined. Historians have often separated these concerns, with military and diplomatic historians focusing on the defence strategies of Australia in the early 1900s and their links with the security concerns of the British Empire, while immigration historians have focused on the use of the border control system to maintain the ‘White Australia Policy’ and exclude non-white migrants. Peter Cochrane’s book Best We Forget: The War for White Australia, 1914–18 looks to synthesise these two histories. This is not an entirely new endeavour – Anthony Burke wrote a book in the early 2000s on the history of Australia’s fear of invasion, bringing together these ideas of defence, national security and border control. But Cochrane’s book is aimed not just at an academic audience and was written with the general public in mind.' (Introduction)