The author of a new book on the response of Maori to colonialism says New Zealanders tend to look down on their own history as boring, even though events within it were internationally significant.
Ian Pool has drawn a lifetime of study in population trends and demography into Colonisation and Development in New Zealand between 1769 and 1900: Seeds of Rangiatea.
He says it’s a counter to revisionist historians who try to blame Maori for the poor state they were in by the end of the century, ignoring the effects of introduced disease and the loss of capital in the form of their land and the businesses it sustained.
Professor Pool says most people don’t appreciate the barbarity of British colonialism and the resources they put into the New Zealand Wars.
"Twenty seven percent of all imperial troops outside India and the United Kingdom – and remember they were fighting wars all around Africa and the Caribbean, all sorts of places – 27 percent were in New Zealand dispossessing the people of Taranaki, the Waikato, Bay of Plenty and so on, destroying Maori commercial horticulture by the way so they could implant sheep pastoralism which became, until dairying took over, the way of life," he says.
Professor Pool says his next book will be about how Maori recovered from the low of the end of the 19th century.
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