The New Zealand Wars and the Victorian Interpretation of Racial Conflict

First published in 1986, James Belich’s groundbreaking book and the television series based upon it transformed New Zealanders’ understanding of the ‘bitter and bloody struggles’ between Mori and Pkeh in the nineteenth century.Revealing the enormous tactical and military skill of Mori, and the inability of the ‘Victorian interpretation of racial conflict’ to acknowledge those qualities, Belich’s account of the New Zealand Wars offered a very different picture from the one previously given in historical works. Mori, in Belich’s view, won the Northern War and stalemated the British in the Taranaki War of 1860–61 only to be defeated by 18,000 British troops in the Waikato War of 1863–64.The secret of effective Mori resistance was an innovative military system, the modern p, a trench-and-bunker fortification of a sophistication not achieved in Europe until 1915. According to the ‘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.’This bestselling classic of New Zealand history is a must-read – and Belich’s larger argument about the impact of historical interpretation resonates today.