Beyond the Imperial Frontier Book Launch

Thanks to all those who attended the launch last night. It was a great occasion. Here are a few photos of the evening.




Comments

Post a comment

Popular posts from this blog

New Zealand Wars Teaching and Learning Resources

Image
Over the past year I have given a number of talks and presentations on the New Zealand Wars to a variety of audiences. I have provided links to a few of these presentations that are available online here for anyone wanting to learn more about these defining conflicts. My books, The New Zealand Wars/Ngā Pakanga o Aotearoa and The Great War for New Zealand: Waikato 1800-2000 , are also both available to purchase as e-books during the current lock-down, either directly from publisher Bridget Williams Books or from the usual online e-book outlets. Many New Zealand libraries will also provide access to these works through the various Bridget Williams Books digital collections . Check the eLibrary section of your local library. Michael King Memorial Lecture, May 2019 The New Zealand Wars/Ngā Pakanga o Aotearoa was launched at the Auckland Writers Festival in May 2019, where I was honoured to be invited to deliver the prestigious Michael King Memorial Lecture before a very lar
Read more

'I am an Irishman': Irish and Māori Historical Connections

Image
Just as exceptionalism has formed an enduring strand of American historiography, New Zealand history has its own variant of this. In New Zealand’s case, this rests largely on the notion that the Treaty of Waitangi signed in 1840 between representatives of Queen Victoria and more than 500 Māori chiefs represented a unique experiment in benevolent and humanitarian imperialism. Allied to this is often the notion that subsequent relations between the indigenous Māori tribes and incoming settlers were, after a few early hiccups, vastly superior to other white settler dominions. For much of the twentieth century Pākehā New Zealanders liked to boast that their country had the ‘greatest race relations in the world’. It turns out Māori had a different story to tell concerning the history of their relations with the newcomers. In recent decades New Zealand historians have played their own part in deconstructing these myths. Most historians now acknowledge that the Treaty of Waitangi had much
Read more

A Stain Upon History: The Ngatapa Massacre, January 1869

Image
Imagine this: somewhere between 86 and 128 people, captured or surrendered at the end of a siege, are stripped naked, lined up against the side of a cliff, and summarily executed without trial by government forces. Couldn’t happen here, many people would probably say. But it did, and the story behind the worst massacre in New Zealand history deserves to be more widely known. In July 1868 Te Kooti Arikirangi Te Turuki and nearly 300 other mostly East Coast Maori escaped from the Chatham Islands (Wharekauri) and made their way back to the mainland. This group, known as the Whakarau, had been held at Wharekauri since 1866. None of their number had been tried, and the government admitted that they were being held as ‘political offenders’ while arrangements were made to confiscate their lands back home. Judith Binney suggested that Te Kooti had been included among those illegally imprisoned at Wharekauri because he was regarded as a threat by rival traders back in Gisborne (Turanga). Te Koo
Read more