O'Malley and SInclair


 Vincent O’Malley’s work on the New Zealand Wars and especially the Waikato Wars is formative to my understanding of the context that led to the aukati and the deep suspicion that the Kīngitanga had toward the government. The sense of betrayal and injustice along with the material suffering of the Kīngitanga shaped the way they related to the authorities. Their desire for restoration of confiscated lands became an impassable barrier to negotiations for a peaceful settlement, which Michael Belgrave* illuminates. I am aware that O’Malley’s work tends toward polemic as he seeks to show the dark side of our history and legitimate Māori claims for recognition and compensation. Nonetheless, his work is an essential corrective to the earlier histories that focused on the advancement of civilization, the betterment of the Māori race and New Zealand’s superior race relations record. My work will interact with this broader sweep of historiography and offer insights from microhistories that will support and or critique O‘Malley’s emphasis. 

Keith Sinclair in Kinds of Peace explores the post war period from a Māori perspective where he draws on the significant archival collection of Māori literature available from this time. Sinclair resists generalising the Māori context while he elucidates the material conditions as well as the political, spiritual, and psychological context of te ao Māori. Sinclair interacts with the historiography of this period which has portrayed the post war period as a dark age and for which various historians have posited theories as to the decline in Māori vitality and population. Sinclair instead proposes that Māori continued to be active for their own causes and he rehearses several examples of activities, supporting his thesis with documentary evidence. Sinclair’s analysis is mostly at the rangatira and political level, probably reflecting the type of source material that he used and the historiographical milieu that he contends with. Sinclair’s Kind of Peace illuminates the historiographical landscape as well as beginning to unveil the extensive te reo Māori documentary resources available from this period. There remains work to be done in taking a more fine-grained perspective on the local and particular experiences of Māori and settlers. Kind of Peace offers a great resource with its high-level analysis of ‘the dark age’ and its explanation of the historiography and its opening up of the depository of te reo Māori sources. My project will drill down into the particular and local experiences of kingite and kūpapa Māori, of Anglo, Irish and other ethnic settler groups, of women’s experience, and the stories of local community groups such as sports clubs, churches, and friendly societies.


* Belgrave, Michael. Dancing with the King: The Rise and Fall of the King Country, 1864- 1885. Auckland: Auckland University Press, 2017.

O'Malley, Vincent.  The Great War for New Zealand: Waikato 1800—2000. Wellington: Bridget Williams Books, 2016.

________. The New Zealand Wars: Ngā Pakanga o Aotearoa. Wellington: Bridget Williams Books, 2019. 

________. Voices from the New Zealand Wars | He Reo nō ngā̄ Pakanga o Aotearoa. Wellington: Bridget Williams Books, 2021.

Sinclair, Keith. Kinds of Peace: Māori People After the Wars, 1870–85. Auckland: Auckland University Press, 1991.

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