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Knowing New Zealand

With the introduction of New Zealand history a full-scale unit, even though it is only at stage one level, by the History department, New Zealand historical scholarship is at last receiving due recognition. Not that the study by university students of good histories, not to speak of a mass of historical material, is a criterion of their worth, but it does mean that our historical scholarship has reached a point when it can provide adequate material for more or less complete study of our history at the first academic level.

In recent years there have been published in New Zealand and overseas a number of books dealing with our history which, in their quality as well as by their number, mark a significant stage in our historiography. The History department, in pioneering this unit, is making use of a number of these recent books as a basis for the essential reading course. There are many early works of course, but some of these new furnish a new interpretation which may replace an older one. The working historian must have available all writings contemporary with the events which he is describing. The general reader and the student in the first instance foregoes this ground-work and studies the latest fruits of research, written from the standpoint of his own times and attitudes. This implies of course that there is or will be a continuous revision of history in which older or biassed interpretations are synthesised, or new views entirely are taken. This process of revision is an ever-recurring one in a country with a history much older than ours, but European New Zealand has so far afforded little scope for these revisionary processes to leave deep impressions early material is biassed, polemical or simply chronological, and there has been much controversy, although landmarks like Gorst's Maori King and Pember Reeves's Long White Cloud remind us that there were men of affairs who could write with distinction and relative fair-mindedness.

A further study of New Zealand history will teach many who have retained hazy memories of school days and the history which was taught them then, that New Zealand history does not begin at 1840. We had all heard of Captain Cook and Samuel Marsden, but a study of New Zealand in Polynesia is becoming more and more a fascinating ground for theory and research. As historical and archaeological research into Maori history before the advent of the Europeans takes advantage of scientific methods, there wilt be fascinating and significant facts brought to light. Use of carbon-dating techniques is likely to reveal more fully a much earlier human occupation of New Zealand that may have been hitherto realised. Andrew Sharp's theories of Polynesian peregrinations may discount literal acceptance of myth and legend, and put a colder and more logical interpretation on these epic voyages. Coming closer to our time there are two new works which bring different emphasis to aspects of our history already much discussed. Tapp describes New Zealand before 1840 as an economic and demographic colony not of Britain but of Australia—New South Wales. Harrison Wright's study of the Maori race before 1840 in its contacts with westerners, brings together into one convenient volume much useful information, with an interesting chapter emphasising the part played by disease, as apart from the musket wars, in the depopulation of the Maoris. With its anthropological bias—we expect this from an American—the attitude is one taken from the standpoint of the Maori more than from the old attitude of the settler in which there was always an implicit hostility.

Crown Colony Government, by the Parliamentary historian, Dr. MacLintock, is a full-scale treatment of the period 1840 to 1852. Michael Turnbull's little book on the Wakefield system and the New Zealand Company, The New Zealand Bubble, vigorously attacks Wakefield and all he stood for.

The period of the Maori wars and the provinces is so far not too well covered, although we have Dr. Sinclair's masterly Origins of the Maori Wars, Gorst's book The Maori King, a contemporary work, and Morrell's book on the provincial governments which is somewhat limited in scope. As always of course there is much material in the way of pamphlets and periodical articles but this often has the disadvantages of not being too well digested for the needs of a stage one student, but if the student is to be a true historian he will treat this lack as a challenge.

A good deal of our history is discussed in microscopic aspects in theses, and a number of these could well be made standard reference works for the student until they perhaps become published works. After 1870 there are many more gaps in our historiography. The period of the 80s and 90s is at present the subject of much new research, detailed research which is breaking new ground in an otherwise practically unploughed field. What little do we really know about the twentieth century, except perhaps through a flood of periodical articles on economic aspects? We ourselves and our parents can recall what little of it, historically speaking, was part of our environment. The depression seems to dominate it, undoubtedly had a profound effect on those who, unlike myself, lived through it. But the history of the twentieth century (in New Zealand) is not the history which culminated in the depression and grew, so profoundly altered, out of that experience. New Zealand experienced depression and welfare measures before 1930, and a war in the Pacific in the 40s has made us much more aware of our position in the world and outside the Commonwealth. If Dr. Sinclair (Pelican History of New Zea-(land) emphasises our need for security in the harsh economic conditions of the modern world, Dr. Sutch in his Quest for Security in New Zealand traces a significant development of this theme back in the 80s and 90s, and even back to our origins in the Wakefield settlements. Nevertheless economic history is perhaps the key to all our history in this century.

When one's lecturers in the class-room are sometimes the writers of our history, then the subject can come vitally alive. Dr. Beaglehole, the authority on Captain Cook and Pacific history, delivered several lectures including some on this topic, and Dr. W. H. Oliver who has a book yet to be published (very soon, it is understood on the history of New Zealand) delivered many of the lectures, particularly those on political history. Two lecturers from Auckland were induced to give our regular lecturers a rest, and one of them was Dr. (Associate Professor) Sinclair, who is probably the first lecturer to lecture on a banking history of New Zealand in the 19th century—and to make it so interesting.

Our Victorian heritage is certainly still with us, as a study of our history reveals, and not only in licensing laws at that, but in our manners and morals and other intangible aspects of life. How much have we moved into the modern world—or to what extent do we retain characteristics planted in our country in the middle of the last century? It is always a moot point just how modem any country is or claims to be, because so much of our heritage is in a very true sense historical.

—D.G.J.