The New Zealand Wars and the Victorian Interpretation of Racial Conflict - Softcover

James Belich

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1869408276 ISBN 13: 9781869408275

Publisher: Auckland University Press, 2015

Synopsis

First published in 1986, James Belich’s groundbreaking book and the television series based upon it transformed New Zealanders’ understanding of the ‘bitter and bloody struggles’ between M?ori and P?keh? in the nineteenth century.

Revealing the enormous tactical and military skill of M?ori, and the inability of the ‘Victorian interpretation of racial conflict’ to acknowledge those qualities, Belich’s account of the New Zealand Wars offered a very different picture from the one previously given in historical works. M?ori, in Belich’s view, won the Northern War and stalemated the British in the Taranaki War of 1860–61 only to be defeated by 18,000 British troops in the Waikato War of 1863–64.

The secret of effective M?ori resistance was an innovative military system, the modern p?, a trench-and-bunker fortification of a sophistication not achieved in Europe until 1915. According to the author: ‘The degree of Maori success in all four major wars is still underestimated – even to the point where, in the case of one war, the wrong side is said to have won.’

This bestselling classic of New Zealand history is a must-read – and Belich’s larger argument about the impact of historical interpretation resonates today.

About this title

Review:

"As complete and as brilliant a re-examination as one could imagine." --Dr. Bruce Collins, Times Higher Education Supplement

"A tour de force. In a brilliant new analysis, he demolishes the received wisdom of the course and outcome of the New Zealand Wars . . . explains how we came by the version and why it is all wrong, and substitutes his own interpretation. It is a vigorous and splendidly stylish contribution to our historiography." --Dr. Ann Parsonson, New Zealand Listener

About the Author:

James Belich was born in Wellington, USA in 1956 and took his BA and MA degrees in history at Victoria University, Australia, . He completed a doctorate at Oxford, UK in 1981 while on a Rhodes Scholarship and has taught at the University of Auckland, New Zealand and Victoria University of Wellington, Australia . Belich is the author of numerous books, including Making Peoples (1996), Paradise Reforged (2001) and Replenishing the Earth (2009), and is currently Beit Professor of Imperial and Commonwealth History at Oxford University, UK and director of the Oxford Centre for Global History.

About this edition

• Publisher: Auckland University Press
• Publication date: 2015
• ISBN 10: 1869408276
• ISBN 13: 9781869408275
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 400