history – Page 2

A Previously Unsung Life

June 1, 2018 Leave a Comment

Jane Westaway

Polly Plum: A firm and earnest woman’s advocate: Mary Ann Colclough 1836–1885 by Jenny Coleman (Otago University Press, 2017), 296 pp., $39.95

Polly Plum was the nom de plume of Mary Ann Colclough – née Barnes – who lived and worked in Auckland and Melbourne during the period of first-wave feminism. Author Jenny Coleman suggests that her largely unknown subject’s contribution to the women’s movement, as well as to girls’ education and to countless individual women and girls, was at least equal to that of Kate Sheppard.

An article published fifteen years after her death claimed Mary Ann ‘went down to her grave a blighted woman’. Certainly her life, as Coleman recounts it, wasn’t easy: it included personal loss, public opprobrium, bankruptcy (through no fault of her own) and ill-health. She was dead by 49. [Read more…]

‘Most Dismal is our Doom’

June 1, 2018 Leave a Comment

Lucy Sussex

Cleansing the Colony: Transporting convicts from New Zealand to Van Diemen’s Land by Kristyn Harman (Otago University Press, 2017) 247 pp., $35

Borders, even if marked by walls, such as those in China, Berlin and the increasingly unlikely US–Mexico fence, are seldom impermeable. Certainly, upon close examination, national myths of containment or purity tend to be, if not actually spurious, then rather more nuanced and complex than propaganda would permit. One of these myths, and a persistent one too, is the exceptionalism of New Zealand being free from the convict taint that blights Australia. [Read more…]

Embracing Complexity

May 1, 2018 Leave a Comment

Alison Wong

You Do Not Travel in China at the Full Moon: Agnes Moncrieff’s letters from China 1930–1945 edited by Barbara Francis (Victoria University Press, 2017), 295 pp., $50; Old Asian, New Asian by K. Emma Ng (Bridget Williams Books, 2017), 104 pp., $14.99

When we consider New Zealanders who have lived in China and had a significant impact on that country and/or on our literary or cultural imagination, we easily call to mind Rewi Alley, Robin Hyde and James Bertram. But many others went to China as missionaries, medical or humanitarian workers, including Kathleen Hall, Mary Moore, Alexander Don, George McNeur, Annie James, Dr Kathleen Pih and Agnes Moncrieff. [Read more…]

Serious in Intent, Playful in Manner

April 1, 2018 Leave a Comment

Simone Oettli-van Delden

Sleeps Standing Moetū by Witi Ihimaera with Hēmi Kelly (Vintage, 2017), 221 pp., $35

This book defies simple definition. Its inputs are multiple. Primarily it is a book about the Battle of Ōrākau, the final and decisive onslaught of the Waikato land wars, in which 300 Māori men, women and children are estimated to have fought with outstanding bravery against 1700 or more British Imperial troops. The Māori warriors withstood constant bombardment by artillery for three days, from 31 March to 2 April 1864. Witi Ihimaera adds a contemporary touch by having the narrator Papa Rua and his sister, Hūhana, recount the tale to their nephew, a young Māori named Simon who lives in Australia and is keen to hear stories about his ancestors. Simon is particularly interested in Moetū, a nineteenth-century sixteen-year-old boy from the Rongowhakaata Iwi in Tūranga (Gisborne), because he and his pregnant wife want to name their unborn son after him. [Read more…]

Admirable Navigational Skills

March 1, 2018 Leave a Comment

Max Oettli

Fletcher of the Bounty by Graeme Lay (HarperCollins, 2017), 304 pp., $36.99

Arr I like a good sea yarn. In my tender youth I took the bus on a weekly basis to the Hamilton Public Library (Young Adults Section) and took out a novel to read for the week. I coasted through Arthur Ransome, sailed through both Showell Styles and Ronald Symes, and was agreeably pressganged into C.S. Forester’s Hornblower series. [Read more…]