![]() ![]() ![]() James Belich's two-volumed history of New Zealand (Making Peoples, 1996, and Paradise Reforged, 2001) was rather too long for general readership. It was as much disturbing as enlightening. ![]() Collectively, the chapters mirrored the angst of the Muldoon years, and their inherent grizzling about their present was projected on to the past. It reflected the tendency of historians to fragment the past into their now narrow specialisations and to talk in relatively exclusive ways. Williams, in 1981 (and revised under the editorship of Geoffrey Rice in 1992), was a multi-authored work, by academics, essentially for academics. The Oxford History of New Zealand, edited by W.H. Of course, it is now long past its use-by date. It was characterised by a proud account of the building of an enlightened and prosperous democracy on remote islands. Keith Sinclair's Short History of New Zealand, first published in 1959, was the last genuinely accessible and instructive (at the time) version of our past. Howe This is by far the best general history of New Zealand to be published in a generation. ![]()
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