Tom Brooking 

100 Days that Mapped a Nation by Graeme Lay (New Holland Publishers, 2019), 208pp, $65

This is the first Cook book I have ever reviewed, although I have managed a couple of large tomes on French exploration in the Pacific, and taught Honours courses on early New Zealand featuring the outstanding navigator from Yorkshire. Such books will appear relatively frequently over the next few months as the 250th anniversary of Cook’s arrival is commemorated. Unlike most recipe books, however, some of these publications are destined to be controversial. One of the reasons for the contentious nature of the Cook story is that some Polynesian historians, like Haunani-Kay Trask of Hawai`i, see Cook as personifying all the baleful impacts of colonisation upon indigenous peoples. Some Māori commentators, including descendants of Rongowhakata, the iwi settled around Gisborne, feel much the same way. They cite the killing of nine of their tīpuna and current problems – such as the high prison incarceration rates of Māori, on-going poverty and educational underachievement – in support of their claim that European colonisation of New Zealand has seriously damaged the indigenous people of the last major land mass on earth to be settled by humans. Such critics seem set on supporting the now rather outdated notion of the ‘fatal impact’ of colonisation, which portrays all indigenous people as hapless victims without any historical agency. [Read more…]

Nicholas Reid

Tutu Te Puehu: New perspectives on the New Zealand Wars edited by John Crawford and Ian McGibbon (Steele Roberts, 2018) 524pp, $49:99; New Zealand and the Sea: Historical perspectives edited by Frances Steel (Bridget Williams Books, 2018) 384 pp, $59:99 

Basically, there are three types of history book. The poorly researched, opportunistic kind knocked off for the general reader. The well-researched, scholarly kind, written for the general reader. And the well-researched, scholarly variety, written for specialists. Tutu Te Puehu is definitely scholarly and well-researched, but I am not sure if it comes into the second or third category.  [Read more…]