New Zealand > NZ History

A BOOK FOR ALL NEW ZEALANDERS WHO FEEL CONNECTED TO THE SEA.
This year New Zealands National Maritime Museum will be in the thick of the action when the Americas Cup defence comes ... read more

A CENTURY OF AUCKLANDERS HELPING AUCKLANDERS. This lively history by well-known historian Peter Lineham features over 100 photographs and takes readers inside a remarkable organisation working at the front lin... read more

Not in Narrow Seas is a major contribution to the history of Aotearoa New Zealand. It covers everything from the traditional gift-based Māori economy to the Ardern government's attempt to deal with the economic challenges of global war... read more

October 2019 marks the 250th anniversary of Captain James Cook’s first landfall in New Zealand. One Hundred Days that Mapped a Nation marks this historic occasion by looking at Cook’s intrepid journeys to New Zealand and the Pacific that were unprecedent... read more

First published in 1958, this is the classic collection of myths relating to that cradle of Maori culture, Rotorua - with relevance across New Zealand Rotorua is one of New Zealand's most visited cities. It is impossible to avoid the area's Maori history and, in... read more

Slavery in the popular imagination has always been associated with the enslavement of Africans, and with good reason. Slavery however, is universal and not something that only white people did to black people. Throughout history, slavery has been practiced in many dif... read more

A truly unique insight into the impact the Second World War had on the iwi of the central North Island and Bay of Plenty districts (including Te Arawa, Ngati Tuwharetoa, Tuhoe, Whanau-a-Apanui, Ngati Maru and Ngati Paoa) f... read more

Acclaimed historian Matthew Wright explores the evolution of New Zealand's most historically significant document, the Treaty of Waitangi, from its origins to its place in the present day. From the early cultural collisions between Maori and Pakeha that led to this landmar... read more

When writer and historian Peter Wells found a cache of family letters amongst his elderly mother's effects, he realised that he had the means of retracing the history of a not-untypical family swept out to New Zealand during the great nineteenth-century hu... read more

The Battle of Pukehinahina-Gate Pa was a defining moment in New Zealand history. It brought together forces representing the British Empire's military machine, political manoeuvering and settler land hunger, Maori notions of sovereignty and self-determination, Christian ideals... read more

A rich, complex and engaging account of Cook's voyages across the Pacific, from actor and raconteur Sam Neill, in which Sam Neill retraces Cook's footsteps, in the 250th anniversary year of Cook's first voyage. Captain James Cook first set s... read more

The Sāmoan Islands are virtually unique in that tattooing has been continuously practised with indigenous techniques: the design of the full male tattoo, the pe'a, has evolved in subtle ways since the nineteenth century, but remains as elaborate, mean... read more