History Of New Zealand Research Articles

The Story of a Simple Toilet: What a Forgotten Structure can tell us about the Architectural, Cultural and Social History of New Zealand

The Story of a Simple Toilet: What a Forgotten Structure can tell us about the Architectural, Cultural and Social History of New Zealand

Regulating gender: legal histories of Australia and New Zealand

Regulating gender: legal histories of Australia and New Zealand

Reconstructing colonization dynamics to establish how human activities transformed island biodiversity

Drivers and dynamics of initial human migrations across individual islands and archipelagos are poorly understood, hampering assessments of subsequent modification of island biodiversity. We developed and tested a new statistical-simulation approach for reconstructing the pattern and pace of human migration across islands at high spatiotemporal resolutions. Using Polynesian colonisation of New Zealand as an example, we show that process-explicit models, informed by archaeological records and spatiotemporal reconstructions of past climates and environments, can provide new and important insights into the patterns and mechanisms of arrival and establishment of people on islands. We find that colonisation of New Zealand required there to have been a single founding population of approximately 500 people, arriving between 1233 and 1257 AD, settling multiple areas, and expanding rapidly over both North and South Islands. These verified spatiotemporal reconstructions of colonisation dynamics provide new opportunities to explore more extensively the potential ecological impacts of human colonisation on New Zealand’s native biota and ecosystems.

Performing identity entrepreneurship during the colonisation of New Zealand: A rhetorical construction of ‘loyal subjects of the Empire’

A thematic analysis of New Zealand’s historical Speeches from the Throne (10 speeches, from 1860-1899) investigated rhetorical strategies used by Governors during colonisation, to mobilise both settler and indigenous people’s participation in the British Empire. Identity leadership (Reicher & Hopkins, 2001, https://doi.org/10.1111/0162-895X.00246), augmented by critical theories of emotion (Williams, 1977, Marxism and literature. Oxford University Press) under the cultural framework of hierarchical relationalism (Liu, 2015, https://doi.org/10.1111/jtsb.12058) was applied to show how unequal but reciprocal relationships were invoked by Governors, as representatives of the Crown and advocates for the general public in New Zealand. Governors attempted to mediate a positive shared identity within the British Empire; but at the same time to isolate those who excluded from subjecthood by their hostility to the Crown. Governors alternated between efforts to mobilise people against indigenous Māori who challenged them, and offers to include Māori who conformed to the conventions required of a hierarchical relationship between Crown and subject. We reflect on how these dynamics of rhetorical performance may still be relevant today, especially in contexts of hierarchy and in the domain of leader-follower relations more broadly.

Microinvertebrate Colonization of New Zealand’s Thermally Extreme Environments

Microinvertebrate Colonization of New Zealand’s Thermally Extreme Environments

Reflections on Not In Narrow Seas: The Economic History of Aotearoa New Zealand 1

It is a pleasure to be asked to speak on Brian Easton’s new economic history of New Zealand. I have long admired the breadth and depth of the work Brian has done on New Zealand’s economic history and, as always with his work, the joy of reading the analysis was greatly enhanced by the book’s readability.

GOOD LUCK OR GOOD POLICY? A RECENT MACROECONOMIC HISTORY OF NEW ZEALAND

The Great Moderation was a global phenomenon marked by stable economic growth and inflation. However, how much monetary policy contributed to its success remained a popular debate in the literature. Answering this question became imperative after the global financial crisis since global conditions became relatively more important than past. I examined the recent macroeconomic history of New Zealand through the lens of a regime-switching structural vector-autoregression model to understand the contributions of domestic monetary policy and global conditions to its macroeconomic stabilization. A small open economy structure is essential to facilitate the identification of structural shocks that spillover from the globe.

The Historicity of the Doctrine of Discovery in New Zealand’s Colonisation

Over the last two decades, claims that the Doctrine of Discovery (based on a 1493 papal bull) had some bearing on New Zealand’s colonisation have been gaining force in academic and popular literature, with a nexus emerging between historical and legal analyses of its purported role in British intervention in the country from the eighteenth century. This article explores the bases for these claims, and introduces a distinction between functionalist and intentionalist approaches to interpreting Britain’s colonisation of New Zealand as a means of contextualising and accounting for the explanatory appeal of the Doctrine as a first cause of New Zealand’s colonisation.

Minions, masters, and migration: Challenging power structures in Gavin Bishop's Cook's cook: The cook who cooked for Captain Cook

Arguably New Zealand’s best loved picturebook author/illustrator, Gavin Bishop invariably challenges populist power structures in his fiction and non-fiction. As such, his books are ideal vehicles for teaching children about such broad topics as race relations, colonisation, migration, class conflicts, gender relationships, environmental issues and spiritual beliefs. The fact that Bishop often addresses several of these simultaneously, and draws on found texts to do so, paves the way for the teacher to encourage the child to read not only the lines and images but between and beyond these in order to construct a fuller meaning.
 This article will discuss Bishop’s (2018a) picturebook, Cook’s Cook: The Cook Who Cooked for Captain Cook, which qualifies as “faction”, a genre that mixes fact and fiction, with Bishop reproducing historical events and characters whilst investing them with an imaginative dimension. Most obviously, the selected book portrays migration, including the colonisation of New Zealand and the Pacific, and its longer-term effects. Hence, it focuses on the subjugation of the indigenous people, culture, flora and fauna to those that are imported, as well as the domination of the working class by the upper class. However, Bishop is too skilful an author/artist to suggest that everything is black and white. Rather, through paralleling and fusing the aforementioned foci, and in the ways in which the print and pictures work separately, together, sometimes against each other, and in interaction with fore texts, he suggests that dichotomies are mixed. 
 The article will examine those portrayed as minions and masters (whether human or non-human), their conflicts and conflations, and Bishop’s use of verbal and visual techniques and fore texts to challenge dominant power structures. It will also argue that, while emphasising dichotomies, Bishop, the master storyteller and artist, creates structures that ensure his picturebook is balanced and whole and that, rather than treating the reader as a minion, allow him or her to become a master of meaning making.

«The land оf Nicholas von Tunzelmann»: Russian traces in New Zealand

The article deals with a group of geographical names in New Zealand and one toponym in Antarctica, the history of which is associated with the immigrants from the Russian Empire in the second half of the XIXth century. They are Nicholas and Alexander von Tunzelmann, representatives of the first two generations of the New Zealand branch of the Tunzelmann family, which had Russian roots. Nicholas von Tunzelmann was one of the pioneers of the European colonization of New Zealand. There are a mountain, a river with two tributaries, a river valley and a mountain lodge situated on the west coast of Wakatipu Lake (South Island) received his name back in 1860s. His nephew Alexander is considered in New Zealand as one of the pioneers of Antarctica and the first New Zealander to set foot on its shore. In 1998, the extreme point of Cape Adare at the northern tip of Victoria Land was named after him. Based on various sources, the details of their biographies, events in the lives of their families and descendants are restored. It is emphasized that the Russian origin of Nicholas von Tunzelmann was a significant aspect for himself to the end of his life. It is concluded that it is important to preserve the memory of this Russian contribution to New Zealand toponymy.

The Weapon Beneath the Woodpile

This article is a tribute to the late Auckland historian Dick Scott, whose 1954 The Story of Parihaka became one of the most influential historical works published in this country. Scott’s other best-known works are left-wing exposés of historical events, such as Would a Good Man Die? Niue Island, New Zealand and the Late Mr Larsen (1993). Others are local histories, including Seven Lives on Salt River (1987), an account of the watery district of Pāhi on the Kaipara Harbour. The remainder are industry or company histories, and particularly histories of New Zealand’s wine industry.

Ancient relicts or recent immigrants? Different dating strategies alter diversification scenarios of New Zealand aquatic beetles (Coleoptera: Hydrophilidae: Berosus)

Dated species-level phylogenies are crucial for understanding the origin and evolutionary history of modern faunas, yet difficult to obtain due to the frequent absence of suitable age calibrations at species level. Substitution rates of related or more inclusive clades are often used to overcome this limitation but the accuracy of this approach remains untested. We compared tree dating based on substitution rates with analyses implementing fossil data by direct node-dating and indirect root-age constraints for the New Zealand endemic Berosus water beetles (Coleoptera: Hydrophilidae). The analysis based solely on substitution rates indicated a Miocene colonization of New Zealand and Pleistocene origin of species. By contrast, all analyses that implemented fossil data resulted in significantly older age estimates, indicating an ancient early Cenozoic origin of the New Zealand clade, diversification of species during or after the Oligocene transgression and Miocene-Pliocene origin of within-species population structure. Rate-calibrated time trees were incongruent with recently published Coleoptera time trees, the fossil record of Berosus and the distribution of outgroup species. Strong variation of substitution rates among Coleoptera lineages, as well as among lineages within the family Hydrophilidae, was identified as the principal reason for low accuracy of rate-calibrated analyses, resulting in underestimated node ages in Berosus. We provide evidence that Oligocene to Pliocene events, rather than the Pleistocene Glacial cycles, played an essential role in the formation of the modern New Zealand insect fauna.

الإسلام في نيوزيلندا.. بين الحفاوة والعداوة - الخبرة التاريخية والتحديات الراهنة

Purpose: This research aims to discuss the history of Islam in New Zealand, together with some of the pressing issues and challenges Muslims have encountered along the way. Looking back at the history of early Muslim settlers and the emergence of Muslim organizations and allied enterprises, it is clear that the Muslim community in New Zealand has had a rather mixed reception in a land that, on the whole, is perceived to be benignly tolerant and accepting. Methodology: The research is based on a critical analysis of the available literature, both contemporary and historical. This paper explores complicated community developments, conversions to Islam, the violence experienced with defacement and destruction of mosques in reaction to overseas events over recent decades, ongoing Islamophobia, and the infamous 2019 terrorist attack on two mosques in the city of Christchurch. Findings: The research highlights the status of the New Zealand Muslim community and the extent and nature of their influence in the country. It constitutes a social hierarchy with a complex past and multiple internal issues. Accordingly, this paper concludes with a brief discussion of the migrant experience of Muslims. It also elucidates the necessity of further research in the future and emphasizes the need to study the culture, faith and history of New Zealand from various angles. Originality: This is illustrated in the direct attachment of the research to the core topic of religion. This is the first academic study to deal directly with both the history of the Muslim minority and contemporary issues such as Islamophobia following the 2019 massacre.

Vanda Station, Antarctica: a biography of the Anthropocene

This article uses the history of New Zealand�s Vanda Station in Antarctica as a case study of the inseparability of human history and environmental change in the age of the Anthropocene. Vanda Station was built in the late 1960s to promote New Zealand�s sovereignty claims to Antarctica and to promote scientific research in the predominantly ice-free McMurdo Dry Valleys region. Over the course of the 1970s and 1980s, the levels of the nearby Lake Vanda rose dramatically, and in the early 1990s the decision was taken to close the station. Rather than seeing the closure of Vanda simply as a consequence of the rising lake levels, this article suggests instead that it was the result of a number of interconnected social, political, scientific, and environmental factors. Although the concept of the Anthropocene is not unproblematic, a biographical approach to the history of Vanda Station can add depth and nuance to our understanding of the geological age of humans. In the McMurdo Dry Valleys, the �birth�, �life� and �death� of Vanda Station helps to demonstrate how the political status quo maintained itself through a partial adaptation to the new realities of the Anthropocene. This political adaptation, however, relies on maintaining human-nature dichotomies and resisting the full implications of viewing the region as an eco-social system.

Bill Dawbin, Tasman Diplomacy, and the Great South Pacific Humpback Collapse of 1959–62

ABSTRACT The history of industrial whaling in Oceania, along with crucial moments in the diplomatic histories of Australia and New Zealand, sometimes turned on questions of whale behaviour. So did individual human lives. This article puts together the histories of whale communities and the history of cetacean science in order to unravel the meaning of some key moments in the environmental history of the South Pacific, including Oceanian attempts to increase their share of post-war whaling and the subsequent great humpback whale collapse of 1960–62. In the middle of these histories were the efforts of cetologist Bill Dawbin to understand humpback whale migrations in the late 1950s. Interwoven throughout was the crucial fact of humpback whales’ historical split into several different populations and their migratory choices, and the difficulties humans face in understanding these complex and mobile creatures.

Vital evidence: Change in the marine 14C reservoir around New Zealand (Aotearoa) and implications for the timing of Polynesian settlement

Precise and accurate radiocarbon chronologies are essential to achieve tight chronological control for the ~ 750-years since Polynesian settlement of New Zealand. This goal has, however, been elusive. While radiocarbon datasets in the region are typically dominated by marine and estuarine shell dates, such chronological information has been ignored by those interpreting the timing of key events because a detailed regional calibration methodology for marine shell, comparable to the highly precise Southern Hemisphere calibration curve, is lacking. In this paper, we present the first temporal 14C marine offset (ΔR) model for New Zealand based on paired estuarine/marine and terrestrial radiocarbon dates from 52 archaeological contexts. Our dataset displays significant offsets between the measured New Zealand data and the modelled global marine radiocarbon curve. These shifts are associated with oceanographic fluctuation at the onset of the Little Ice Age ~ AD 1350–1450 (650–500 BP). The application of a regional and temporal correction to archaeological shell dates provides complimentary information to terrestrial radiocarbon production and has the potential to add structure to the blurred chronology that has plagued archaeological theories about the colonization of New Zealand, and other Pacific islands, for decades.

Dangerous Ground or Rich New Research Methods? Using Digital Genealogy to Trace Colonial Mobility

More than 3,000 emigrants took up the New Zealand Company's offer of a free or assisted passage to Nelson, the company's Second Colony of New Zealand, from 1841 to 1844 – but did they stay? This article outlines an academic project that combines genealogy techniques and sources with more conventional research, in order to reveal new information about colonial migrants who are often ‘invisible’ in historical accounts. These were predominantly poor English families (with some Germans, Scots and Irish), and they were part of the earliest stages of British colonisation of New Zealand. Genealogy websites such as Ancestry and FamilySearch proved to be central to this research. They provided a gateway to an astonishing amount of information that could ‘locate’ an individual or family, tying them to a certain place, without the researcher knowing which place to look for. This project highlights some of the limitations and dangers of using genealogy methods and sources in academic research – as well as what might be gained. The results suggest that this kind of hybrid methodology incorporating genealogy research can be used successfully within an academic study. In this project, the intricacies of colonial family networks were illuminated, even though the subjects were poor and continued to move around. Surprisingly high levels of mobility were identified, and this was true of women and children as well as men. These findings suggests that using genealogy to trace patterns of colonial mobility is not only important to gain an understanding of individual lives but may also contribute significantly to a better understanding of the larger processes of migration, colonisation and the history of colonial ‘places’.

What’s in a name? A history of New Zealand’s unique name suppression laws and their impact on press freedom

The principle of open justice, including the media’s right to attend and report on criminal courts, must be balanced with the protection of individuals’ privacy and an accused person’s fair trial rights. Prohibiting media from identifying those involved in criminal cases is one way privacy and fair trial rights may be protected in New Zealand. Court news was not always restricted in this way: 115 years ago all parts of criminal court proceedings could be reported and media decided what information was censored. In 1905, New Zealand judges were given the power to suppress court evidence to protect public morality, and 15 years later, the power to suppress the names of certain first offenders to give them a second chance. The laws now stretch to suppressing many kinds of evidence and the identities of some people accused and convicted of New Zealand’s most serious crimes. Investigation of the 115-year-long evolution of New Zealand’s name suppression laws illuminates a piecemeal, but severe, curtailment of media freedom and a trend of imposition of increasingly complex laws which journalists must keep abreast of, understand and observe to prevent appearing before the courts themselves.

Responses of New Zealand forest birds to management of introduced mammals.

Over the past 1000 years New Zealand has lost 40–50% of its bird species, and over half of these extinctions are attributable to predation by introduced mammals. Populations of many extant forest bird species continue to be depredated by mammals, especially rats, possums, and mustelids. The management history of New Zealand's forests over the past 50 years presents a unique opportunity because a varied program of mammalian predator control has created a replicated management experiment. We conducted a meta‐analysis of population‐level responses of forest birds to different levels of mammal control recorded across New Zealand. We collected data from 32 uniquely treated sites and 20 extant bird species representing a total of 247 population responses to 3 intensities of invasive mammal control (zero, low, and high). The treatments varied from eradication of invasive mammals via ground‐based techniques to periodic suppression of mammals via aerially sown toxin. We modeled population‐level responses of birds according to key life history attributes to determine the biological processes that influence species’ responses to management. Large endemic species, such as the Kaka (Nestor meridionalis) and New Zealand Pigeon (Hemiphaga novaeseelandiae), responded positively at the population level to mammal control in 61 of 77 cases for species ≥20 g compared with 31 positive responses from 78 cases for species <20 g. The Fantail (Rhipidura fuliginosa) and Grey Warbler (Gerygone igata), both shallow endemic species, and 4 nonendemic species (Blackbird [Turdus merula], Chaffinch [Fringilla coelebs], Dunnock [Prunella modularis], and Silvereye [Zosterops lateralis]) that arrived in New Zealand in the last 200 years tended to have slight negative or neutral responses to mammal control (59 of 77 cases). Our results suggest that large, deeply endemic forest birds, especially cavity nesters, are most at risk of further decline in the absence of mammal control and, conversely suggest that 6 species apparently tolerate the presence of invasive mammals and may be sensitive to competition from larger endemic birds.

Lecture Notes on the Constitutional Law of New Zealand

This document is a compendium of my lecture notes prepared while I taught four successive iterations of the Constitutional Law paper at the Auckland University of Technology Law School. It is not meant to be comprehensive: its coverage is to an extent a function of the number of lectures I had in a semester, and of my (rather optimistic) beliefs about what I might cover in a lecture. Some important topics (like the separation of powers and the common law) are covered very little; others (like the Treaty of Waitangi and arguments for and against an entrenched constitution), insufficiently. Moreover, I tried to pitch the notes at a level that could be processed by students very early in their study of the law. Inevitably, this meant simplifying certain things, perhaps more, in some cases, than would have been ideal. I hope that, despite their shortcomings, these materials can provide those who are not familiar with New Zealand’s constitutional law with an accessible introduction to the subject. The lectures cover three main themes: the constitutional fundamentals (including the nature, history, and sources of New Zealand’s constitution), the structure of government (with two lectures each devoted to the executive and the legislature, and one to the judiciary), and limits on government power (primarily, the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act, the Treaty of Waitangi, and the Rule of Law). They seeks mainly to present the law as it is, but they incorporate some commentary and critique on my part, which should be clearly easily identifiable as such. These notes were originally written in the second half of 2016, and were thoroughly revised and updated every time I taught constitutional law in 2017, 2018, and 2019. I have further updated them, but not as thoroughly, when putting the document together in January 2020.