Through a series of case studies that involve past conflict in China, the United States, The South Pacific and Europe, the nature of battlefield sites as tourist locations are explored. As places of past conflict and individual acts of heroism, these sites are places of story telling. How are these stories told? And for what purposes are the stories told? The acts and modes of interpretation are many, ranging from a discourse conducted through silences to the more complex nuanced story telling told through re-enactments of past battles. The book also asks where is the battle-field? - as case studies relate to conflicts that ranged over several hundreds of miles, to, on the other hand, acts of local civil disturbance that subsequently achieved mythic values in a history of national identity. The book is divided into 'acts', these being 'Acts of Resource Management', 'Acts of Silence', 'Acts of Discovery and Rediscovery', 'Acts of Imagination' and 'Acts of Remembrance' and embrace examples as diverse as an re-enactment of past battles on a New Zealand rural town cricket pitch to the towering strength of the aircraft carrier USS Yorktown, and from the Straits of Taiwan to the centre of Canada.
Chris Ryan
Acts of Resource Management
2. Introduction
Chris Ryan
3. Echoes of War: Battlefield Tourism
Bruce Prideaux
4. It’s just a bloody field! Approaches, opportunities and dilemmas of
Interpreting English battlefields
Mark Piekarz
5. A Proposed Code of Conduct for War Heritage Sites
Teresa Leopold
6. Jinggangshan Mountain - A Paradigm of China’s Red Tourism
Gu Huimin, Chris Ryan and Zhang Wei
Acts of Silence
7. Introduction
Chris Ryan
8. Post Colonial Representations of Japanese Military Heritage:
Political and Social aspects of battlefield tourism in the Pacific
and East Asia
Malcolm Cooper
9. The Battles of Rangiriri and Batouche – amnesia and memory.
Chris Ryan
10. Seventy years of waiting: a turning point for interpreting the
Spanish civil war?
Hugh Smith
11. The Legerdemain in the Rhetoric of Battlefield Museums:
Historical Pluralism and Cryptic Parti Pris
Craig Wight
Acts of Discovery and Rediscovery
12. Introduction
Chris Ryan
13. World War II and Tourism Development in Solomon Islands
Charlie Panakera
14. Xiamen and Kinmen – from cross-border strife to shopping trips
Li-Hui Chang and Chris Ryan
15. Hot war tourism: the live battlefield and the ultimate adventure holiday
Mark Piekarz
Acts of Imagination
16. Introduction
Chris Ryan
17. Cambridge Armistice Day Celebrations – making a carnival of war
and the reality of play.
Chris Ryan and Jenny Cave
18. Re-fighting the Eureka Stockade: managing a dissonant battlefield
Warwick Frost
19. Re-enacting the Battle of Aiken - honour redeemed
Chris Ryan
Acts of Remembrance
20. Introduction
Chris Ryan
21. Yorktown and Patriots Point, Charleston, South Carolina –
interpretation and personal perspectives
Chris Ryan
22. Romanticising Tragedy: Culloden battle site in Scotland
Fiona McLean, Mary-Catherine Garden and Gordon Urquhart
23. Forts Sumter and Moultrie – summer cruise into a catalyst for war
Chris Ryan
24. Synthesis and antithesis
Chris Ryan
Biography
Chris Ryan
