Australia Oceania category: 2401 books

A detailed examination of the circumstances leading to British intervention and hence to the Treaty of Waitangi, Fatal Necessity was first published in 1977.Now re-issued as an e-book, this key text in Treaty studies emphasises that the dual aim of British policy was to protect both settlers and Māori; the reality, however, proved very different.

‘Us Maoris used to practice slavery just like them poor Negroes had to endure in America . . .' says Beth Heke in Once Were Warriors. ‘Oh those evil colonials who destroyed Maori culture by ending slavery and cannibalism while increasing the life expectancy,' wrote one sarcastic blogger. So was...

A pioneering study of early trade and beach communities in the Pacific Islands and first published in 1977, this book provides historians with an ambitious survey of early European–Polynesian contact, an analysis of how early trade developed along with the beachcomber community, and a detailed reconstruction...

Scots made up nearly 20 percent of the immigrant population of New Zealand to 1920, yet until the past few years the exact origins of New Zealand's Scots migrants have remained blurred. From Alba to Aotearoa establishes for the first time key characteristics of the Scottish migrants arriving between...

Framing the churches’ missionary outreach to Aboriginal people within the reality of frontier violence, government control, segregation, and neglect, this account reveals how Aboriginal people on the missions responded to white Christianity as part of their enforced cultural change. It also tells...

For four decades Jeremy Beckett has shone a light on previously marginalised fields of life. While the many went in search of ‘traditional culture’, Beckett was fascinated to learn how people who often lacked wider recognition of their Aboriginality went about their lives. In the process he changed...

LAST TRAIN TO PARADISE is a celebratory account of a time when train travel was more than just the accepted means of travelling around New Zealand. It was also an era when rail journeys provided excitement, companionship and romance. Royal trains, troop trains, rugby specials, tourist trains ... all come to life in Graham Hutchins evocative descriptions of rail travel in the golden age.

Maoria: A Sketch of the Manners and Customs of the Aboriginal Inhabitants of New Zealand By Captain John Campbell Johnstone. The scene of action is on the west coast of the North Island, at a Maori pah or fortified village called Ngutukaka, near the mouth of the Waitebuna river, which we cannot...

 A bunch of workmen were lying on the grass of the park beside Macquarie Street, in the dinner hour. It was winter, the end of May, but the sun was warm, and they lay there in shirt-sleeves, talking. Some were eating food from paper packages. They were a mixed lot ñ taxi-drivers,...

In her introduction, Ros writes that she wants to entertain the reader; she has done a great deal more than that in this highly original, intricately woven memoir. Eschewing the easier chronological approach, Ros has created a colourful tapestry of stories from her own life in England and from her...

'This is an important, well researched book: challenging, compelling and controversial. It is a must read for anyone interested in Australian history.' - Henry Reynolds The Queensland frontier was more violent than any other Australian colony. From the first penal settlement at Moreton Bay...

New Zealand in the 1820s had no government or bureaucratic presence; no newspapers were published; the literate population was probably no more than a couple of dozen people at any one time. Early explorers' assessments of New Zealand were haphazard at best - few knew what to make of this foreign...

In the 1830s Kororareka was known as the 'hell-hole of the Pacific'. Whalers, sealers, escaped convicts, seamen, traders and adventurers descended upon this small cove in the Bay. Grog-shops and the oldest profession in the world abounded. At one stage the town was said to be harbouring 'a greater...

This book traces Maori engagement with handwriting from 1769 to 1826. Through beautifully reproduced written documents, it describes the first encounters Maori had with paper and writing and the first relationships between Maori and Europeans in the earliest school. The book tells an image-led story...