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Comment by spectre | Hacker News Reader

I'm well aware of the nature of, and reason for the ANZAC day commemorations. The irony was that an event that served to define New Zealand and Australia's national identities, is also one of British Empires greatest failures.

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I don't think that it's ironic that Gallipoli and WW1 in general is what led to Australia and New Zealand starting to view themselves as distinct from the "Home Country" - our experiences in WW1 made it very clear that England didn't consider us colonials to be English, even if we still did at the time.

It's estimated that between 1/4 and a 1/3 of the ANZACs were born in the "Mother Country", so their rejection as being not-British was probably a contributing factor to the passing of the Nationality Act of 1920.

Yet, when WWII came around... (see my other reply on this thread)

Define our identities? There's hardly anyone (relatively speaking, by comparison to say the US's independence day) outside of Australia/New Zealand that even know about Galipoli.

I think you're confusing external identity (how other countries see us) with national identity (how we see ourselves). Gallipoli was hugely influential in defining how New Zealanders and Australians thought of themselves and their nation. It was our coming of age, the moment when we started to see ourselves as nations rather than colonies.

(Of course, that description is a little bit exaggerated: I'm sure reality was much fuzzier and messier. But that just proves the point that Gallipoli has become our national myth. It defines us now, even if it didn't really define us then.)

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