“The theatre with the most meagre audience”: War trophies from ex-German New Guinea

Abstract

How the First World War is envisaged and commemorated in Australia has been the subject of many studies, which focus on the European war. Seemingly forgotten is the occupation of New Guinea, which has received recent interest as Australia’s first war action. This article analyses the first transient war memorials, namely the exhibiting of war trophies in local shop windows. The Australian Naval and Military Expeditionary Forces brought home and sent home a mixture of German war trophies and New Guinean artifacts, blending war trophies and curios into shows of victory.

Keywords

• WWI
• Australia and New Guinea
• legacies of German colonialism
• ethnographic collecting