The History Group of the Ministry for Culture and Heritage is developing a series of print and digital projects to commemorate the centenary of the First World War in 2014-18. At the moment we are working on a major web project and a series of books exploring the impact of the war on New Zealand society during and after the conflict. Further projects will be developed over the coming years.

First World War website

Senior Historian Damien Fenton and the NZHistory web team are developing a major web resource on New Zealand’s experience of the war, which will be hosted on New Zealand’s leading history website, NZHistory. The team is combining existing content with extensive new material to build New Zealand’s most comprehensive online resource on the world at war, the major campaigns, the soldier’s experience, the main NZEF units, the home front, post-war memorialisation and many other subjects. A feature of this site is likely to be a searchable database of all New Zealand personnel who served during the war, linked to other online resources such as the Defence Force personal files currently being digitised by Archives New Zealand.

First World War illustrated history

Senior Historian Damien Fenton and Researcher Caroline Lord are worked on a highly illustrated print publication, to be published by Penguin Books in 2013. This will be a general overview of New Zealand’s involvement in the First World War, aimed at the non-specialist reader and covering events on the battlefields and at home. An interactive or ‘engineered paper’ book, it will be highly visual, full colour, and include facsimiles of contemporary diaries, maps, posters and a range of other memorabilia inserted into the publication.

Western Front history

This overview of New Zealanders’ experiences on the Western Front is being written by leading military historian Ian McGibbon and is due to be published in 2013/14.

A guide to First World War heritage sites in New Zealand

The First World War took thousands of young New Zealand men across the globe to fight in foreign fields, but it was also an event which happened at home. This guide will take readers on a tour of sites throughout New Zealand of significance to the country’s experience of the war. There is a broad range of sites which bear upon military, political, economic, and social aspects of New Zealand’s war experience, such as drill halls, embarkation points, training facilities, hospitals and recuperative facilities, veterans’ homes, patriotic organisations, sites of leisure and recreation. It will also describe sites that developed after the war, such as selected memorials and streets named after campaigns. As a story of the domestic experience of the war, it will be of interest to a general audience.

Historians Imelda Bargas and Tim Shoebridge are compiling the guide as part of the First World War Centenary Project, and it’s scheduled for publication in about 2013.

Follow this project on our facebook page.

New Zealand's hospital ships

In 1915 the government chartered the trans-Tasman liners Maheno and Marama for use as our first hospital ships. For the next four years, starting with the Maheno off the beach at Gallipoli, they travelled the globe, staffed by Kiwi seamen, doctors and nurses. Back home, thousands of New Zealanders made items and raised money to support these 'mercy ships' and followed their movements closely as they transported the sick and wounded from many countries. Gavin McLean is working on a book that will provide the first detailed history of this remarkable contribution to our First World War effort. Publication date: 2013

New Zealand Society after the Great War

Neill Atkinson is developing a project that seeks to place the First World War and its legacy in the wider context of early 20th-century New Zealand history. Rather than focus on far-off battlefields and martial myths, it will explore changing social patterns, popular culture and everyday life in the quarter century from 1914 to 1939. Key themes will include the impact and memorialisation of war, prohibition and sectarianism, mobility, leisure and consumerism, suburban expansion, and the social impact of technological innovations like radio, cinema, gramophone records and cars.