Congratulations to Sam Hutchinson on the publication of his new book, which explores how public commentary framed Australian involvement in the Waikato War (1863-64), the Sudan crisis (1885), and the South African War (1899-1902), a succession of conflicts that reverberated around the British Empire and which the newspaper press reported at length. In doing so, the book examines how war narratives merged with ideas of territorial ownership and productivity, racial anxieties, self-governance, and foundational violence.