Abstract
On 9 June 1918, a schoolboy, Hector Vasyli, walked along a road in Brisbane to join a group of children who were cheering returning soldiers. The soldiers were travelling in a convoy of cars. One of the cars struck Hector, killing him. Following discussions between the Hellenic Association of Queensland and the Returned Sailors’ and Soldiers’ Imperial League in Brisbane, it was decided that a memorial should be erected in memory of the boy. When the memorial was unveiled the civilisational prestige of Greek antiquity was displayed. By analysing the memorialisation of Hector Vasyli, this chapter explores the interrelationship between philhellenism, Greek-Australia and settler-colonialism. In short, this investigation will reveal how imperial imaginings of Greece became tied to authoritative migrant-cum-settler articulations of civilisation prestige.
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Piperoglou, A. (2019). The Memorialisation of Hector Vasyli: Civilisational Prestige, Imperial Association and Greek Migrant Performance. In: Payton, P., Varnava, A. (eds) Australia, Migration and Empire. Britain and the World. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-22389-2_11
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