Overcoming Separate Histories: Historians as ‘Ideas Traders’ in a Trans-Tasman World

Abstract

This paper explores the trade of ideas between Australia and New Zealand in the personal histories and professional work of three historians: F.L.W. (Freddie) Wood, Professor of History at Victoria University Wellington – an Australian; James W. Davidson, New Zealand-born founding Professor of Pacific History at the ANU; and Alan Ward, a New Zealander who worked at La Trobe University, University of Papua New Guinea, University of Newcastle, Australia and the Waitangi Tribunal, Wellington. Their accounts of New Zealand, Australia and Pacific history have been influential in institutions on both sides of the Tasman and their dominant themes – about national identity and independence, the agency of indigenous peoples in colonial struggles, and the importance of land to the identity of native and migrant alike – bridge the gap between the national historiographies of the two Tasman settler societies and alert us to the relevance of a broader regional framework. This article has been peer-reviewed.