Class in Colonial Aotearoa: An Alternative Historiography

Abstract

The question of class in colonial Aotearoa has vexed past historians. Yet the historiography has often been foreshortened by narrow understandings of class-as-consciousness and sociological approaches that attempt to confine people into ever-expanding categories. Drawing on heterodox Marxist thought, this paper argues for a relational approach to class. A critique of the stratification approach is followed by a reading of class as a social relation of struggle, via the revolt of emigrant labourers in 1840s Nelson and rural incendiarism between 1865-1900. Viewing class as a relationship and process has the potential to reappraise key events in Aotearoa’s past.