Selected reference texts, and published research – scholarly and otherwise – bearing mostly on the subject of Australian and New Zealand war trophies.
Journal & Magazine Articles
Barber, Bernard. “Place, Symbol, and Utilitarian Function in War Memorials.” Social Forces 28, no. 1 (1949): 64–68. https://doi.org/10.2307/2572100
Bartlett, R., & Payne, R. “Britain’s Crimean War Trophy Guns: The Case of Ludlow and the Marches.” History 99, no. 337(2014), 652–669. https://doi.org/10.1111/1468-229X.12068
Casey, Shane. “Australia’s largest single war trophy.” Wartime Magazine, Issue 82 (Autumn, 2018)
Clayton, Mark. “Seeds of discontent.” Queensland History Journal 23, no. 9 (May 2018): 563-580. https://www.academia.edu/36432290/Seeds_of_Discontent_Queensland_History_Journal_Vol_23_No_9_May_2018_pp_563_580
Clayton, Mark. “The Price of Honour,” Traces 18 (2022), 32-33. https://www.academia.edu/125367387/The_Price_of_Honour
Clayton, Mark. Symbols of Savagery: Australia’s Second World War Trophy Guns, Queensland Journal of Military History 3 (2024), pp. 45–55. https://qmhs.com.au/wp-content/uploads/CLAYTON-Symbols-of-Savagery-QJMH-Vol-3-2024.pdf
Cooke, Peter. “The Sorry Steel: Trophy Guns in New Zealand’s World War One Commemoration.” Journal of New Zealand Studies, no. 18 (2014): 56–65. https://ojs.victoria.ac.nz/jnzs/article/download/2187/2028/2967
Govern, Kevin H., Licit War Trophies as a Means of Preserving Art and Culture in Times of War ( 2022). Ave Maria Law Review, Vol. 20, No. 1, 2022. https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=4362282
Graves, Donald E. “Booty! The Story of Canada’s World War One Trophy Collection,” Canadian Journal of Arms Collecting 23, 1 (1985), 3–10.
Hadnutt, Nick. “Engines of destruction: Biographies of a museum’s war trophies.” Memoirs of the Queensland Museum, Culture 11 (Jun 2020):7-24. https://www.museum.qld.gov.au/collections-and-research/memoirs/culture-11/mqm-c11-2-hadnutt/
Huddie, Paul. “‘Removing Some Big Guns’: The Story of Dublin’s Crimean War Trophy Guns from 1857 to the Present,” Dublin Historical Record 67, no. 1 (2014): 6–18. http://www.jstor.org/stable/24616018
Hunter, Doug. “Trophy Guns at Albury.” Sabretache 48, no. 2 (2007): 13–16. https://search-informit-org.ezproxy.cqu.edu.au/doi/10.3316/ielapa.200707859
Kearns, Claire. “Australia’s Crimean War Imperial Russian Trophy Guns: How they have been both important military history objects and contested objects.” Sabretache 65, no.2 (June 2024): 13-22. https://doi.org/10.26181/25941208
Melrose, Craig. “Historicising Australia Through Trophies: The memorial landscape 1919 – 1925.” Unpublished paper presented to the Australian Historical Association Conference, Melbourne, July 2008. https://assets.blog.anzacwartrophies.org/2020/05/Craig-Melrose-AHA-2008.doc
Melrose, Craig. “Triumphalism and Sacrificialism: Tradition in the Public Memory of the First World War in Australia, 1919-39.” In: Crotty, Martin (Editor). When the Soldiers Return: November 2007 Conference Proceedings (Brisbane: University of Queensland, School of History, 2009). https://search.informit.org/doi/10.3316/informit.725747951064259
Olsen, Wes. “The Emden Guns,” Naval Historical Review, December 2018. https://navyhistory.au/the-emden-guns/
David Pearson & George Baily, “Trash for treasure,” Wartime Magazine, Issue 9 (Summer 2000): 54-55. https://www.awm.gov.au/wartime/09
Pearson, David & Browning, Kevin. “Neglecting the Past: First World War 150-mm German Trophy Gun 505,” Cannonball, no.89 (Autumn 2015): 38-60.
Pearson, David, and Graham Connah. “Retrieving the Cultural Biography of a Gun.” Journal of Conflict Archaeology 8.1 (2013): 41-73. https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1179/1574077312Z.00000000017
Pearson, David & Connah, Graham. “Battlefield Casualty: The Archaeology of a Captured Gun.” Journal of Conflict Archaeology 5.1 (2009): 231-256. https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1163/157407709X12634580640579
Pearson, David & Vanderkelen, Mike. “The show must go on, the road for victory: The MGO technical armory and the first victory loan, 1944,” Sabretache 59, no.1 (March 2018): 4-30. https://www.mhsa.org.au/sabretache-downloads/vol-lix-2018/
Taylor, William M. “Everyday War Memorials to the End of All Wars: Building Cemeteries and Collecting War Trophies in a Culture of Commemoration.” Southerly 74, no. 1 (2014): 105–26. https://search-informit-org.ezproxy.cqu.edu.au/doi/10.3316/informit.796327108801897
Wellington, Jennifer. 2019. “War Trophies, War Memorabilia, and the Iconography of Victory in the British Empire.” Journal of Contemporary History 54 (4): 737-758. doi.org/10.1177/0022009419864159
Wellington, Jennifer, and Christopher Sommer. 2025. “Flesh and Iron: Historical and Contemporary Perspectives on Woundedness in War Exhibitions.” Critical Military Studies 11 (4): 449–65. doi:10.1080/23337486.2025.2480005
Winter, Christine. “The Theatre with the Most Meagre Audience”: War Trophies from Ex-German New Guinea.” Cogent Arts & Humanities 2.1 (December 2015). https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/23311983.2015.1073656
Walton, Steven A. “The Allied Expositionary Forces in WWI: From Encouragement to Commemoration of War,” Proceedings of Armistice & Aftermath: A Michigan Tech Symposium on WW1 (September 2018): 28-19. https://digitalcommons.mtu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1022&context=ww1cc-symposium#:~:text=3B2:%20The%20Allied%20Expositionary%20Forces,sacrifice%20at%20a%20veteran’s%20post.
Databases
Canadian Great War Trophies, last updated 2023, accessed 9 April 2026.
Australian Second World War gun trophies, accessed 9 April 2026.
Australia’s Frirst World War gun trophies, accessed 9 April 2026.
Theses
Clayton, Mark. To the victor belongs the spoils : a history of the Australian War Trophy Collection, 1914-1993. M.A. thesis, Monash University, 1993. https://bridges.monash.edu/articles/thesis/To_the_victor_belongs_the_spoils_a_history_of_the_Australian_War_Trophy_Collection_1914-1993/19533310
Fox, Aaron. Silent Sentinels: The War Trophies of the First New Zealand Expeditionary Force in War and Peace. Honours thesis, University of Otago, 1987. https://kiamatetoa.org.nz/drathesis.php
Hunter, Edith M. Pounding Swords into Swords: War Monuments Lost During the Scrap Metal Drives of World War II. M.A. thesis, Iowa State University, 2022. https://assets.blog.anzacwartrophies.org/2024/05/Edith-M.-Hunter-Pounding-Swords-into-Swords-War-Monuments-Lost-During-the-Scrap-Metal-Drives-of-World-War-II.pdf
Soye, Edward Peter. Canadian war trophies: Arthur Doughty and German aircraft allocated to Canada after the First World War. M.A. thesis, Royal Military College of Canada, 2009.
Monographs
Billett, Bill. War trophies: from the First World War 1914-1918 (East Roseville, N.S.W.: Kangaroo Press, 1999).
D.N. Brook, Bruno and his guns (1978)
Blogs
Pearson, David. artillerymarkings.com. Accessed 11 April 2026.
blog.anzacwartrophies.org. Accessed 11 April 2026.
War Trophies of Canada. Accessed 11 April 2026.
Casey, Shane, “The first guns captured by the Australians on the Western Front – July 1916.” Australian War Memorial, 22 July 2016. https://www.awm.gov.au/articles/blog/first-guns-captured
Clayton, Mark. “First of Thousands.” State Library of Queensland, November 14, 2018. https://www.slq.qld.gov.au/blog/first-thousands
Clayton, Mark. “The price of honour.” State Library of Queensland, October 28, 2019. https://www.slq.qld.gov.au/blog/price-honour
“Mitchell First World War Memorial and Memorial Obelisk.” State Library of Queensland, April 10, 2015. https://www.slq.qld.gov.au/blog/mitchell-first-world-war-memorial-and-memorial-obelisk
References
American Expeditionary Forces. Notes on German Artillery Materiel: Divisional artillery (A.G. Printing Department, G.H.Q.A.E.F., 1918). https://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/103264247
Australian National Archives
AWM262 1/3 – History Sheets of War Trophies, First World War – [Gun War Trophy cards], https://www.awm.gov.au/collection/C2620623
AWM93 27/1 – General, https://www.awm.gov.au/collection/C2620649
AWM93 27/1/93 – [Australian War Memorial registry file:] Trophies: Distribution of war trophies in Australia – General, https://www.awm.gov.au/collection/C2620650?image=87
Trophy files, 1914-18 War, https://www.awm.gov.au/collection/C2132557
Imagery
https://www.flickr.com/groups/2176233@N21/
https://x.com/MilHistNow/status/1904321473302417420?t=JuQJtAsSNsVmb56doEiQGQ&s=09 (NAID: 24858)