Imagined Landscapes in Palestine During the Great War

Abstract

This chapter explores the creation of a series of official representations of Palestine during the First World War and their reception by British and Australian audiences during and after the war. Drawing on the images generated by official war correspondents, artists, photographers and cinematographers, Wellington shows how the Palestine campaign was represented through a series of recurring motifs, visual tropes drawn from Scripture, the history of the Crusades and the generalized exoticism of imperial Orientalism, and examines how those images served different agendas in Britain and its settler colony, Australia, where the image of the hardy antipodean Briton, the bush horseman, battling the colonial frontier, allowed Australia to join the glorious sweep of British imperial history.