The Journal of New Zealand Studies

Editor's Introduction

2025-08-10T23:36:44+00:00

Two years ago my predecessor as editor, Peter Whiteford, wrote of the ‘serious financial challenges that are being faced right now’ in Te Herenga Waka Victoria University of Wellington and in other universities. While some universities report budget surpluses, the position of the humanities and social sciences, and some other disciplines, remains fragile, to use no stronger a word. Readers will be aware of the serious pressures in the public sector as well, notably the loss of jobs at the Ministry of Culture and Heritage. In the end all these crises are driven by government policy.

Tracing Digital Footsteps: A New Zealand Musician in the Internet Age.

2025-08-12T00:46:40+00:00

Since becoming widely accessible in the 1990s, the Internet has had a profound impact on creative fields such as music. The experiences of New Zealand musician Luke Rowell (a.k.a. Disasteradio, Eyeliner) provide an illuminating case study of these changes. First dialling-up in 1998, his online activity and creative development are intertwined in a career spanning several epochs of Internet history. This article explores these connections and the task of tracing an artist's digital footsteps using web archives and other sources. It focuses on three periods: Rowell's involvement with the European demoscene (1999-2002); becoming part of the online vaporwave movement (2011-2013), and contemporary online music distribution (2023).

“Like the swallows and the telegraph-wires”: Road Safety in New Zealand, 1898–1930

2025-08-12T00:48:47+00:00

Safety was a major concern for both motorists and other road users in the early decades of the twentieth century in New Zealand, as it was in many other countries. This article looks at road accidents, perceptions of reckless driving and the dangers posed to pedestrians, placing them in an international context. The response to the new dangers included a variety of safety campaigns, targeted particularly at children. The New Zealand experience closely matches the four traffic-safety paradigms identified by Peter Norton for the United States.

Reconciling the Treaty/te Tiriti Through the Discourse of Civil Government/Kāwanatanga

2025-08-10T23:45:44+00:00

This essay charts a middle course between the old, basically Pākehā orthodoxy that sovereignty was ceded by Māori in the Treaty of Waitangi, and the newer orthodoxy that Māori never ceded sovereignty to the British Crown. The essay argues instead that government was the main paradigm of the historic treaty: it was government or kāwanatanga that was ceded or agreed to by Māori.

"Protecting and Preserving": Mid-Nineteenth Century Māori Views on Forest Conservation in Wairarapa and Tamaki-nui-ā-Rua

2025-08-10T23:46:55+00:00

During the early stages of European colonisation in Wairarapa and Tamaki-nui-ā-Rua, the opinions of Māori individuals and groups on forest conservation, deforestation, and land ownership became increasingly relevant within iwi and hapū. This case study of Wairarapa examines the reasons behind these burgeoning ideologies, profiles these varying opinions, details the development and scope of these ideas, and investigates how they evolved during the mid-nineteenth century. The importance of whakapapa, economic factors, and socio-cultural interactions within these underlying ideas is examined, and the contributions of iwi and hapū to the ultimate development of Aotearoa New Zealand's forest land management policies are considered.

The Curious Case of Bill Sutch’s PhD

2025-08-10T23:48:36+00:00

How William Ball Sutch, with a reputation as a distinguished economist, achieved his doctorate at Columbia University in a remarkably brief period of time and by researching a New Zealand topic in New York is an intriguing question which the author sets out to investigate.

Class in Colonial Aotearoa: An Alternative Historiography

2025-08-10T23:50:24+00:00

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.

Contributors Bios

2025-08-11T00:13:16+00:00

Affiliation of each contributor.

Becoming Aotearoa: A New History of New Zealand.

2025-08-10T23:52:00+00:00

Although Michael Belgrave notes in the Introduction to Becoming Aotearoa that national histories are currently unfashionable, he believes they provide an opportunity to weave together disparate aspects of the past into an overall framework that can help to reveal what was, and possibly still is, distinctive about New Zealand. His overall interpretive position thus corresponds with a long tradition that explains New Zealand history in terms of its exceptional characteristics.

Beyond Hostile Islands: The Pacific War in American and New Zealand Fiction Writing.

2025-08-10T23:54:18+00:00

The value of Daniel McKay’s Beyond Hostile Islands, a study of treatments of the Pacific War in fiction from the United States and New Zealand, is its range. McKay follows master narratives and images from war writing across decades, and through archives many readers are unlikely to look in or move between.

Forms of Freedom: Marxist Essays in New Zealand and Australian Literature.

2025-08-10T23:57:36+00:00

Dougal McNeill’s book Forms of Freedom is a study of literary culture and its material determinations on both sides of the Tasman. In his readings of New Zealand and Australian literature, McNeill adopts an overtly Marxist approach, shunning both conventional (new) historicism and the dematerialised politics of identity that form the contemporary critical orthodoxy.

Interesting Times: Some New Zealanders in Republican China.

2025-08-11T00:00:44+00:00

Chris Elder’s latest book is a fascinating, engaging and well-written account telling the stories of some of the many New Zealanders in Republican China, the period from the end of the imperial dynasty (1912) to the beginning of the People’s Republic of China (1949). Elder writes with sympathy, humour and knowledge in this excellent book.

John Mulgan and the Greek Left: A Regrettably Intimate Acquaintance.

2025-08-11T00:02:23+00:00

In May 2021, I attended the Featherston Booktown Festival with Vincent O’Sullivan to talk about John Mulgan and Man Alone, which had just been re-published in a corrected edition. The large audience was clearly interested in and knowledgeable about Mulgan’s only novel, and equally interested in its enigmatic author.

Old Black Cloud: A Cultural History of Mental Depression in Aotearoa New Zealand.

2025-08-11T00:04:06+00:00

A few pages into Old Black Cloud I was struck by the static, black and white photographs of past psychiatric institutions in Aotearoa New Zealand: Auckland Lunatic Asylum in the 1870s, Seacliff, north of Dunedin, around 1917; and the institutions of Seaview, Sunnyside, Porirua, variously in the early years of the twentieth century.

Remembering and Becoming: Oral History in Aotearoa New Zealand.

2025-08-11T00:06:02+00:00

Anyone who has conducted an oral history interview can attest that it is a highly personal means of conducting research. Interviewers strive to build trust and develop rapport to collect the memories and observations of their narrators. Those being interviewed share their often deeply personal stories. Strong relationships are frequently formed between the collaborators.

Revisiting the British World: New Voices and Perspectives.

2025-08-11T00:08:31+00:00

In 2005, Rediscovering the British World sought to offer a study of the state and potential of British World scholarship. An edited collection, that text approached the British World as a transnational community which developed alongside Britain’s imperial expansion and the British diaspora.

Rēwena and Rabbit Stew: The Rural Kitchen in Aotearoa, 1800-1940.

2025-08-11T00:10:13+00:00

Attempting to describe, in detail, the rural kitchen of Aotearoa, is an almost impossible task. Of mosaic complexity, even the definitions of “kitchen” and “rural” are blurry, at best. No two kitchens are identical – each is influenced by its purpose, culture, time, gender, affluence, geography, available construction materials, whether farm or industry, and a host of factors relating to rural infrastructure and foodways.

Six Legged Ghosts: The Insects of Aotearoa.

2025-08-11T00:11:50+00:00

Six Legged Ghosts is Lily Duval’s love letter to what many might regard as the most unlovable creatures of all – insects. Duval does not write as someone with a lifelong passion for these animals. Instead, her passion is that of the convert, someone who has come to see the light about the inherent worth of the small and beautiful. As a former arachnophobe turned arachnologist, I recognize the signs!