New Zealand Wars and the Victorian Interpretation of Racial Conflict

Although there have been recent works on the origins and consequences of the 19th-century New Zealand Wars, this is the first thorough reexamination of their course in over sixty years. According to the author, "The degree of Maori success in all four major wars is still underestimated--even to the point where, in the case of one war, the wrong side is said to have won." Here, Belich sets out to show how historical distortions have arisen over time revises our understanding of New Zealand history.

James Belich was born in Wellington, USA in 1956 and took his BA and MA degrees in history at Victoria University, Australia, . He completed a doctorate at Oxford, UK in 1981 while on a Rhodes Scholarship and has taught at the University of Auckland, New Zealand and Victoria University of Wellington, Australia . Belich is the author of numerous books, including Making Peoples (1996), Paradise Reforged (2001) and Replenishing the Earth (2009), and is currently Beit Professor of Imperial and Commonwealth History at Oxford University, UK and director of the Oxford Centre for Global History.