Jean Bou
ABOUT
Jean Bou is an Australian historian of war. Formerly at the Australian War Memorial, in the Military History Section, he went on to be an academic staff member of the Strategic and Defence Studies Centre at the Australian National University for more than a decade. He convened and taught modules at the Australian Command and Staff College (now War College), and in the under- and post-graduate programs at ANU. He has also taught at the University of New South Wales at the Australian Defence Force Academy.
He is a graduate of the University of Queensland (First class honours) and holds a PhD in History from the University of New South Wales (at the Australian Defence Force Academy).
He is widely published and is the author or editor of ten books, and has written numerous articles and entries for scholarly and general publications. As a member of the team that produced the Official History of Australian Peacekeeping, Humanitarian and Post-Cold War Operations, he was co-author of volume 4.
QUALIFICATIONS
Bachelor of Arts (1st Class Honours, Qld), Doctor of Philosophy (UNSW)
RESEARCH INTERESTS
Jean’s interest is the history of war, with a particular focus on Australian military history from before Federation to today. His current research focus is examining the question of why Australia goes to war.
He has written and taught on a wide variety of historical topics including:
- Australian military and strategic history
- Institutional military adaptation
- Operational military history
- Australia and the First World War
- Peacekeeping operations
JEAN’S BOOKS
The Australian Imperial Force
Duty First: A history of the Royal Australian Regiment
Australian’s Palestines Campaign
The Limits of Peacekeeping
The Oxford Companion to Australian Military History
AIF in Battle: How the Australian Imperial Force Fought, 1914–1918
Light Horse: A History of Australia’s Mounted Arm
Australian Peacekeeping: Sixty Years in the Field
PUBLICATIONS
Books – monographs and co-written
Jean Bou and Peter Dennis, The centenary history of Australia and the Great War, volume 5: the Australian Imperial Force, Melbourne, Oxford University Press, 2016 (246 pages).
Jean Bou, MacArthur’s secret bureau: the story of the Central Bureau, General MacArthur’s signals intelligence organisation, Loftus, NSW, Australian Military History Publications, 2012 (140 pages).
Jean Bou, Australia’s Palestine campaign, Canberra, Australian Army History Unit, 2010 (160 pages).
Jean Bou, Light horse: a history of Australia’s mounted arm, Port Melbourne, Cambridge University Press, 2009 (375 pages).
Jean Bou, A century of service: the Southport School Army Cadet Unit, 1906–2006, Southport, The Southport School, 2007 (103 pages).
Books – edited
David Horner, Peter Londey and Jean Bou (eds), Australian peacekeeping: sixty years in the field, Port Melbourne, Cambridge University Press, 2009 (350 pages).
David Horner and Jean Bou (eds), Duty first: the Royal Australian Regiment, 1946–2006, Sydney, Allen & Unwin, 2008 (560 pages).
Peter Dennis, Jeffrey Grey, Robin Prior, Ewan Morris with Jean Bou (eds), The Oxford companion to Australian military history, 2nd edition, Melbourne, Oxford University Press, 2008 (650 pages).
Book chapters
Jean Bou, ’Why Australia goes to war: some reflections on the nineteenth century’, Joan Beaumont and Garth Pratten (eds), Military History Supremo: Essays in honour of David Horner AM FASSA, Canberra: ANU Press, 2025.
Jean Bou, ‘The Australian Army, mobilisation and history’, John Blaxland (ed) Contingencies and compromises: mobilising the Australian Army, Port Melbourne, Cambridge University Press, 2025.
Jean Bou, ‘Underpowered and mostly unwanted: a short history of UNAMIR’, Phillip Drew, et. al. (eds), Rwanda revisited: genocide, civil war, and the transformation of international law, Boston, Brill, 2021.
Jean Bou, ‘The government that could not say no and Australia’s military effort, 1914–1918’, Douglas Delany, et. al., (eds) Manpower and the armies of the British Empire in the two world wars, Ithaca, Cornell University Press, 2021.
Jean Bou, ‘Artillery in support of Desert Mounted Corps operations, 1917’, William Westerman and Nicholas Floyd (eds), Clash of the gods of war: Australian artillery and firepower lessons of the great war, Newport, NSW, Big Sky Publishing, 2020.
Jean Bou, ‘Cavalry combat: mounted warfare in Palestine’, Jean Bou (ed), The AIF in battle: how the Australian Imperial Force fought, 1914–1918, Carlton, Melbourne University Press, 2016.
Jean Bou, ‘A cavalry victory? Cavalry in the historiography of the Sinai-Palestine campaign’, Yigal Sheffy, et. al. (eds), Palestine and World War I: grand strategy, military tactics and culture in war, London, I.B. Taurus, 2014.
Jean Bou, ‘Ambition and adversity: developing an Australian military force, 1901–1914’, Peter Dennis and Jeffrey Grey (eds), 1911: preliminary moves, Chief of Army History Conference 2011, Sydney, Big Sky Publishing, 2011.
republished in Australian Army Journal, vol. IX, no 1, Autumn 2012.
republished in (US) Army History, no. 85, Fall 2012.
Jean Bou, ‘Modern cavalry: mounted rifles, the Boer War and the doctrinal debates’, Peter Dennis and Jeffrey Grey (eds), The Boer War, army, nation and empire, the 1999 Chief of Army/Australian War Memorial military history conference, Canberra, Army History Unit, 2000.
Refereed articles and book entries
Jean Bou, ‘The Middle East Front During the First World War’, The Routledge History of the First World War, Routledge, 2024.
Jean Bou, ‘Underpowered and mostly unwanted: a short history of UNAMIR’, Journal of international peacekeeping, no. 22, 2018.
Republished as a chapter in an edited book, Rwanda revisited, details above.
Jean Bou, ‘Allenby, Field Marshal Edmund’, Gordon Martel (ed.), The encyclopedia of war, Wiley-Blackwell, 2012.
Jean Bou, ‘ANZAC’, Gordon Martel (ed.), The encyclopedia of war, Wiley-Blackwell, 2012.
Jean Bou, ‘Gallipoli Campaign’, Gordon Martel (ed.), The encyclopedia of war, Wiley-Blackwell, 2012.
Jean Bou, ‘Townshend, General Charles’, Gordon Martel (ed.), The encyclopedia of war, Wiley-Blackwell, 2012.
Jean Bou, ‘Cavalry, firepower and swords: the Australian light horse and the tactical lessons of mounted warfare in Palestine 1916-1918’, The journal of military history, vol. 71, no. 1, 2007.
Other articles, book entries and published conference papers
Jean Bou, ‘Evans, Gareth John (1944–)’, Geoffrey Browne et. al. (eds), Biographical dictionary of the Australian Senate, volume 4, 1983–2002, Canberra, Department of the Senate, 2017.
Jean Bou, ‘Taylor, Alexander John (1916–1984)’, Australian dictionary of biography, volume 18, Carlton, Melbourne University Press, 2012.
Jean Bou, ‘Sold or shot? The fate of the light horse’s mounts – 1919’, Sabretache, the journal of the Military Historical Society of Australia, vol. L, no. 3, September 2009.
Jean Bou, ‘An aspirational army: Australian planning for citizen forces divisional structure before 1920’, Sabretache, the journal of the Military Historical Society of Australia, vol. XLIX, no. 1, March 2008.
Jean Bou, ‘The Palestine campaign 1916-1918: causes and consequences of a continuing historical neglect’, The journal of the Australian War Memorial, no. 40, 2007.
Jean Bou, ‘Light horse’, Joan Beaumont (ed), The Australian centenary history of defence, volume VI: Australian defence: sources and statistics, South Melbourne, Oxford University Press, 2001.
Jean Bou, ‘Palestine’, Joan Beaumont (ed), The Australian centenary history of defence, volume VI: Australian defence: sources and statistics, South Melbourne, Oxford University Press, 2001.
Jean Bou, ‘The union and the changing nature of war in the American Civil War’, Australian Defence Force journal, no. 123, March-April 1997.
Jean Bou, ‘The western military model and the Chinese response, 1840 to 1949′, Proceedings of the University of Queensland history research group, no. 7, 1996.
Other writing
Jean Bou, ‘Prisoner of the French’, Wartime, no. 95, 2021.
Jean Bou, ‘Before Kibeho’, Wartime, no. 88, 2019.
Jean Bou, ‘Behind the myth’, Beersheba: legend of the light horse, colour lift-out magazine, Weekend Australian, 28–29 October 2017.
Jean Bou, ‘Myth or mercy?’, The Great War, part 3: the darkest days, colour lift-out magazine, Weekend Australian, 29–30 July 2017.
Jean Bou, ‘Beersheba and its myths’, Wartime, no. 80, 2017.
Jean Bou, ‘Raising the AIF’, Gallipoli 100, 2014.
Jean Bou, ‘Light Horse at Gallipoli’, Gallipoli 100, 2014.
Jean Bou, ‘Anzacs in Palestine and Syria’, Gallipoli 100, 2014.
Jean Bou, ‘Why does the Boer war matter?’, Wartime, no. 65, 2014.
Jean Bou, ‘First and last: Australia’s carrier airpower goes to Korea’, Wartime, no. 53, 2011.
Jean Bou, ‘Jifjafa – a desert raid’, Wartime, no. 51, 2010.
Jean Bou, ‘The Beersheba photograph: 1’, Quadrant, March 2009.
Jean Bou, ‘They shot the horses – didn’t they?’, Wartime, no. 44, 2008.
Jean Bou, ‘To Amman with the 6th Regiment’, Wartime, no. 37, 2007.
Conference papers and select public presentations
‘The Australian Army, mobilisation and history’ presented to ‘Chief of Army History Conference: Contingencies and compromises: mobilising the Australian Army’, Canberra, 2021 (publication planned for 2022).
‘The doomed relationship between UNAMIR and the victors of Rwanda’s civil war, 1994–95’, presented (virtually) to ‘Civil wars in history, c1500–2000’, Society for the History of War and Department of War Studies, University College Dublin, 2021.
‘UN peacekeepers and the Kibeho massacre, 1995: what happened and why’, presented to University of Wolverhampton War Studies seminar, 2018. An version of this was also presented some months earlier as a ANU War Studies Seminars.
‘The government that could not say no and Australia’s military effort, 1914–1918’, presented to ‘Manpower and the armies of the British Empire in the two world wars’, Royal Military College, Kingston (Canada), 2018 (published, details above).
‘Sideshow or clash of empires? The Egyptian Expeditionary Force’s war of 1916’, presented to ‘1916: the cost of attrition’, Australian War Memorial history conference, 2016.
‘Cavalry in a sideshow: British Empire cavalry in the Sinai-Palestine Campaign, 1916-18, and does their performance matter?’, presented to Society for Military History Annual meeting/conference, Kansas City, Missouri, 2014.
‘Ambition and adversity: developing an Australian military force, 1901–1914’, presented to the ‘Chief of Army Military History Conference, 1911: Preliminary moves’, Canberra, 2011 (published, details above).
‘British cavalry and the Sinai and Palestine Campaigns: time for a reappraisal?’ presented to ‘Palestine and the First World War new perspectives conference’, Tel-Hai Academic College, Israel, 2007 (published as ‘A cavalry victory?’, details above).
‘In the shadow of the veldt’ presented at the Menzies Centre for Australian Studies, King’s College, London, 2006.
‘The Palestine Campaign 1916-1918; causes and consequences of a continuing historical neglect’, presented to ‘Anzac Day to VP Day: arguments and interpretations’ conference, Canberra, 2005 (published, details above).
‘Modern cavalry: mounted rifles, the Boer War and the doctrinal debates’, presented to the Chief of Army/Australian War Memorial Military history conference, ‘The Boer War, army, nation and empire’, Canberra, 1999 (published, details above).
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