Peacekeeping has been a significant part of Australia's overseas military engagement since the end of the Second World War. Yet it is a part of the country's history that has been largely neglected until the 1990s, and even since then interest has been slow to develop. In the last sixty years, between 30,000 and 40,000 Australian military personnel and police have served in more than 50 peacekeeping missions in at least 27 different conflicts. This insightful, engaging and superbly-edited volume approaches Australian peacekeeping from four angles: its history, its agencies, some personal reflections, and its future. Contributors discuss the distinction between peacekeeping and war-fighting, the importance of peacekeeping in terms of public policy, the problems of multinational command, and the specialist contributions of the military, civilian police, mine-clearers, weapons inspectors and diplomats.

Volume I of the Official History of Australian Peacekeeping, Humanitarian and Post-Cold War Operations recounts the Australian peacekeeping missions that began between 1947 and 1982, and follows them through to 2006, which is the end point of this series. The operations described in The Long Search for Peace - some long, some short; some successful, some not - represent a long period of learning and experimentation, and were a necessary apprenticeship for all that was to follow. Australia contributed peacekeepers to all major decolonisation efforts: for thirty-five years in Kashmir, fifty-three years in Cyprus, and (as of writing) sixty-one years in the Middle East, as well as shorter deployments in Indonesia, Korea and Rhodesia. This volume also describes some smaller-scale Australian missions in the Congo, West New Guinea, Yemen, Uganda and Lebanon. It brings to life Australia's long-term contribution not only to these operations but also to the very idea of peacekeeping.