The New Zealand Wars/Ngā Pakanga o Aotearoa

The New Zealand Wars were a series of conflicts that profoundly shaped the course and direction of our nation’s history.

Fought between the Crown and various groups of Māori between 1845 and 1872, the wars touched many aspects of life in nineteenth century New Zealand, even in those regions spared actual fighting. Physical remnants or reminders from these conflicts and their aftermath can be found all over the country, whether in central Auckland, Wellington, Dunedin, or in more rural locations such as Te Pōrere or Te Awamutu.

The wars are an integral part of the New Zealand story but we have not always cared to remember or acknowledge them. Today, however, interest in the wars is resurgent. Public figures are calling for the wars to be taught in all schools and a national day of commemoration was recently established.

Following on from the best-selling The Great War for New Zealand, Vincent O'Malley's new book provides a highly accessible introduction to the causes, events and consequences of the New Zealand Wars. The text is supported by extensive full-colour illustrations as well as timelines, graphs and summary tables.

https://www.bwb.co.nz/books/new-zealand-wars

The Great War for New Zealand: Waikato 1800-2000

A monumental new account of the defining conflict in New Zealand history. It was war in the Waikato in 1863–64 that shaped the nation in all kinds of ways: setting back Māori and Pākehā relations by several generations and allowing the government to begin to assert the kind of real control over the country that had eluded it since 1840.

Spanning nearly two centuries from first contact through to settlement and apology, ​Vincent ​O’Malley focuses on the human impact of the war, its origins and aftermath. Based on many years of research and illustrated throughout, The Great War for New Zealand is a groundbreaking book written in the conviction that a nation needs to own its history.

https://www.bwb.co.nz/books/great-war-new-zealand

Haerenga:Early Māori Journeys Across the Globe

From the late eighteenth century, Māori travellers spread out from New Zealand across the globe. They travelled for a variety of reasons – curiosity, adventure, commerce, political missions or under duress. Most travellers eventually returned home, bringing something of their own ‘new world’ stories with them. These remarkable experiences of voyaging and discovery, presented here in a series of vignettes, also form part of the wider history of Māori and Pākehā encounter.

https://www.bwb.co.nz/books/haerenga

Beyond the Imperial Frontier: The Contest for Colonial New Zealand

Frontiers in colonial New Zealand were not simply lines on maps, but zones of contact and encounter. Beyond the Imperial Frontier explores these zones to discover the different ways Māori and Pākehā ‘fronted’ one another across the nineteenth century. Beginning with a pre-1840 era marked by significant cooperation, Vincent O’Malley details the emergence of a more competitive and conflicted post-Treaty world. As a collected work, these essays also chart the development of a leading New Zealand historian.

https://www.bwb.co.nz/books/beyond-the-imperial-frontier

The Meeting Place: Māori and Pākehā Encounters, 1642-1840

How did Māori and Pākehā negotiate a meeting place? Would Māori observe the Sabbath? Should Pākehā fear the power of tapu? Whose view of land ownership and control would prevail? How would Māori rangatira and Pākehā leaders establish the rules of political engagement? Around such considerations about how the world would work, Māori and Pākehā in early New Zealand defined a way of being together. This is a book about that meeting time and place, about a process of mutual discovery, contact and encounter — meeting, greeting and seeing — between Māori and Pākehā from 1642 to about 1840.

After introducing the brief encounters and misunderstandings between European visitors and Māori before 1814, O’Malley focuses his study on the period between 1814 and 1840 when he argues that both peoples inhabited a ‘middle ground’ meeting place in which neither could dictate the political, economic or cultural rules of engagement. By looking at economic, religious, political and sexual encounters, O’Malley offers a strikingly different picture to traditional accounts of imperial Pākehā power over a static, resistant Māori society.

In this meeting place, O’Malley shows, Māori and Europeans re-evaluated cultural priorities, adapted the customs of the other people that they found useful and sometimes ‘went native’ as they fell over into the other culture. O’Malley concludes with an analysis of how the middle ground gave way around 1840 to a world in which Pākehā had enough power largely to dictate terms.

https://aucklanduniversitypress.co.nz/the-meeting-place-maori-and-pakeha-encounters-1642-1840/

The Treaty of Waitangi Companion: Māori and Pākehā from Tasman to Today

From the New Zealand Wars to the 1975 Land March, from the Kīngitanga to the Waitangi Tribunal, from Captain Cook to Hone Harawira, The Treaty of Waitangi Companion tells the story of the Treaty and Māori and Pākehā relations through the many voices of those who made this country’s history.

Sourced from government publications and newspapers, letters and diaries, poems, paintings and cartoons, the Companion brings to life the long history of debates about the Treaty and life in Aotearoa. Was the Treaty a Māori Magna Carta or a fraud? A blueprint for partnership or an instrument of annexation and dispossession? In The Treaty of Waitangi Companion we hear Māori and Pākehā wrestling with those issues, including King Tāwhiao’s frustrated pleas to colonial politicians, Te Whiti’s message of peace and Sir William Martin’s appeals against the injustice of confiscation.

The Treaty of Waitangi Companion is an invaluable book for students, from high school to postgraduate, and general readers who want to get directly to the heart of New Zealand history.

https://aucklanduniversitypress.co.nz/the-treaty-of-waitangi-companion/

Voices from the New Zealand Wars | He Reo nō ngā Pakanga o Aotearoa

The New Zealand Wars of the mid-nineteenth century profoundly shaped the course and direction of our nation's history. This book takes us to the heart of these conflicts with a series of first-hand accounts from Māori and Pākehā who either fought in or witnessed the wars that ravaged New Zealand between 1845 and 1872. From Heni Te Kiri Karamu's narrative of her remarkable exploits as a wahine toa, through to accounts from the field by British soldiers and powerful reports by observers on both sides, we learn about the wars at a human level. 

The often fragmentary, sometimes hastily written accounts that make up Voices from the New Zealand Wars vividly evoke the extreme emotions – fear, horror, pity and courage – experienced during the most turbulent time in our country's history. Each account is expertly introduced and contextualised, so that the historical record speaks to us vividly through many voices.

https://www.bwb.co.nz/books/voices-from-the-new-zealand-wars/

The Invasion of Waikato/Te Riri ki Tainui

The Waikato War is a pivotal event in the history of Aotearoa. In this accessible introduction, Vincent O’Malley explains the enduring impact of these conflicts, continuing his remarkable work on the New Zealand Wars.

The book begins with the 1863 crossing of the Mangatāwhiri River by British troops. This act marked the Crown’s declaration of war against the Waikato tribes, igniting a conflict with far-reaching consequences. At its heart, the war was a clash between the Crown’s push for control and Māori insistence on self- governance, a right affirmed in Te Tiriti o Waitangi. The resulting conflict has shaped the nation for over a century, more influential, O’Malley argues, than even New Zealand’s involvement in the two World Wars.

The Invasion of Waikato/Te Riri ki Tainui features short biographies of people and groups who have contributed to our contemporary understanding of the events. Building on Dr O’Malley’s comprehensive 2016 study, The Great War for New Zealand: Waikato 1800–2000, this concise account includes rich illustrations and detailed maps. Insights from recent research emphasise the roles of memory and place in shaping our understanding of this history.

Through clear and engaging writing, Vincent O’Malley helps readers explore a crucial period in Aotearoa’s past, opening up this history to a wide readership.

https://www.bwb.co.nz/books/the-invasion-of-waikato-te-riri-ki-tainui/