Ambitious social history of N.Z.

Press, 12 September 1981, Page 17

Ambitious social history of N.Z.

The Oxford History of New Zealand. Edited by IV. H. Oliver with B. R. Williams. Clarendon Press, Oxford and Oxford Press, Wellington. 585 pp. $39.95 (paperback $24.95). (Reviewed by Angus Ross) The appearance of this one-volume history of New Zealand constitutes an event of some importance in the writing and publishing of the history of our country. Not since Professor W. H. Oliver's “A Story of New Zealand" (I 960 and Professor Keith Sinclair's “A History of New Zealand” (1959) have we had a comparable work. But those two general histories, though thoroughly worth while 20 years ago, have been more than somewhat outdated by the very considerable amount of research which has been done in the intervening years and by the altered emphasis given to social as distinct from political history. Actually, as this Oxford history is a composite work made up of 16 chapters each by a different specialist writer, we have to go back to 1933 to find a more strictly comparable work in the New Zealand volume of the Cambridge History of the British Empire. Like the present Oxford history, that C.H.B.E- work had different authors for its various chapters, but several of them were then resident in the United Kingdom. While . the Dominion adviser to the Cambridge promoters was Dr James Hight, Rector of Canterbury University College (how the old titles date that whole book:), the general editor was the wellknown Cambridge professor, J. Holland Rose, who, as if to indicate that the new Oxford work is not infallible, is listed on p. 518 as simply “J. Holland." All 16 of the 1981 authorities are New Zealanders, most of them holding appointments in university history departments. Professors Oliver, Chapman, and Sorrenson will be known to most readers and certainly W. J. Gardner will be as well known to Canterbury readers as his chapter “A Colonial Economy” will be appreciated, but general readers would have welcomed a line or two of biographical information concerning the remaining 12 contributors. Who are they? Where were they educated? Where do they work? What are their credentials in research and publication? Within the somewhat arbitrary limits set by the editors, this is clearly, and by a large margin, the best as well as the most up-to-date history of New Zealand yet published. Each chapter author is an expert who has either drawn on his or her own deep-probing doctoral researches, or has successfully summed up the findings of other noted scholars. Each chapter has its own set of references, documenting sources, or suggesting further reading, or challenging traditional interpretations, as well as its own select bibliography tucked into the concluding pages of the book. i The graphs, also grouped at the end, tell their stories of growth, trade, direction of exports, and population trends more effectively than any number of words could do. In short, this Oxford history is scholarly, authoritative and a highly commendable piece of work. As was probably the intention, it must be compulsory reading for all students and teachers of New ‘ Zealand history. , Intelligent general readers, too, will find pleasure and profit in reading the book, although in view of the weight of some chapters, the back cover blurb that “it is a

book every New’ Zealander should read" is so much wishful thinking. In his skillfully worded introduction Professor Oliver does many things: he explains the intention of the editors and the structure of the book: he stresses its basic character as a social history; he offers something of an apologia for the failure to deal adequately with external relations and influences. But “in a book designed as a unified history of the country," it would have required more than editorial expertise to impose a unity on 16 essays, even allowing for the effect of “its initial design,” “its structure" and the “contact and co-operation between contributors.” As Oliver himself goes on to explain, “The reader is presented with many viewpoints and encouraged to explore a variety of interpretations.” This is particularly evident in the thoroughly knowledgeable discussions of Maori affairs at various stages by Ann Parsonson, Keith Sorrenson and Michael King. The dominating thinking behind this book demanded that it simply had to be a social history.' Perhaps this was fair enough, as the trend-in the last-50 years has been .to move away from predominantly constitutional history (older readers will remember Hight and Bamford) to more explicitly political history, and then'in more recent decades there has emerged a stronger emphasis on economic and regional histories.

In the last decade the stress has been on social history, and consequently this book has been directed to “the analysis of social systems, of the relationship of classes and groups” and has taken account of “the principle that a society reveals itself in the activities commonly classified as political, economic, ' technological, intellectual, and artistic.” This last statement presumably justifies the fact that some of the chapters have a relatively orthodox, if not old-fashioned, political basis: they are “The Politics of Settlement,” by Raewyn Dalziel, "Parties and Political Change,” by Len Richardson, and “From Labour to National,” by Robert Chapman. The three scholars entrusted with the responsibility of dealing with economic forces and factors, Jim Gardner, Tom Brooking and G. R. Hawke, have made a good fist of integrating government decisions, private enterprise activities, and technological changes as they affected agriculture and industry in turn. The opening chapters treat the preannexation period and set the scene for what follows: Janet M. Davidson writes with extreme caution about pre-historic Maori history and warns of the dangers implicit in the study of a period where the source material is so mixed and so difficult of interpretation; as befits one of the senior writers, John Owens provides an excellent survey of missionary activities- and Maori reactions to early Christian teachings, as well as discussing the economics of sealing and whaling. But, for the more pointedly social history, we must turn to the chapters “Settler Society,” by Jeanine Graham, for the period up to around 1890, “Towards a New' Society," by Erik Olssen, for the years 1890-1940, and “The Social Pattern,” by Graeme Dunstall. for the period from the Second World War up to the present. They provide some entertaining points and illustrations to arguments advanced and will do much to win recruits to the study of social history. But, as with P. J.

Gibbons and W. H. Oliver, the authors of the two essays on the arts and general cultural activities, we may fairly hold that while some of their generalisations are soundly based on the study of statistics or other firmly established facts, others are more speculative or open to challenge. At any rate, they should provoke thought. Of course, it is always difficult to generalise about a diverse group even if its members enjoy something in common. Thus we are told that the urban capitalists or haute bourgeoisie, “men such as John Logan Campbell, Arthur Myers, James Parr, L. D. and Arthur Nathan, Ernest and Eliot Davis. Bendix Hallenstein. Willi Fels," had a wide range of interests. “They liked making music and hearing it. enjoyed the theatre, owned racehorses, filled their homes with fine furniture and the best art they could find." What is true of one or two is not true of all. Those who knew Willi Fels during his lifetime or as remembered by Charles Brasch will find the idea of his owning a racehorse somewhat ludicrous. This 1981 publication was prepared well before the Springbok tour, but it has some apposite remarks to pass on the related subjects of rugby, apartheid and R. D. Muldoon. Thus, after outlining the emergence of rugby as “the national game," Erik Olssen claims that “the success of the 1905 All Blacks in Britain helped make the game a vehicle for colonial cockiness,” and later that all could see that on the rugby field “urbanisation and education had not eroded the pioneering virtures of courage and vigour.” Oliver mentions the opponents of apartheid and the defenders of “no politics in sport” as contributing to the passionate need of alarmed people to convert others to their cause. Chapman outlines National's rise to power in 1975 and touches on R. D. Muldoon’s “unparalleled capacity for polarising politics and for devastating criticism,” while Dunstall holds that “the polarising, hard-nosed rhetoric of the new National Party leader R. D. Muldoon” was one of several factors breeding trade-union militancy. The editors and some -■ of the contributors argue that histories reflect the times in which they are written and therefore this book “shows something of the mood, the tone, and the style of an inwardly turned decade," that of the 19705. "a decade marked by social diversity, anxiety, and inquiry." This has been taken to justify the almost total neglect of the theme of external affairs or foreign policy. To this Oliver added another argument when telling a "Listener” reporter that “too much scholarship had already been devoted to New Zealand’s ‘discovery and foreign relations’.” As if to excuse the Oxford History’s omissions, he added. “The work's been done thoroughly by Ross. Wood, and Beaglehole ...” New Zealand may be geographically, in Kenneth Cumberland’s phrase, “A Land Apart,” but in the twentieth century it has not been so isolated as to make neglect of foreign relations justified. No one volume could be expected to cover the whole subject of New Zealand history adequately and to the satisfaction of all its readers. Despite its title, therefore, it is as basically a social history that this book must be judged.