Paul Moon - New Zealand in the Twentieth Century

W hat was New Zealand like in the twentieth century? Its the sort of question that can be responded to in a variety of ways. One is by producing a conventional history, cataloguing all the major events and stringing them out with an attendant list of dates the sort of thing that history students used to do when preparing for an examination, and that can sometimes turn people away from the subject. This book, by contrast, is an attempt to offer an answer to the question in a more idiosyncratic manner. It is as much a portrait of the nation in this period as a conventional history, inviting the reader to survey the historical contours of the country and thereby acquire an impression of its evolving nature over the century. However, not every episode explored in the following pages is the biggest, the best, the most disastrous, or the most profound to affect the country. Often, small vignettes of everyday life can speak more about the atmosphere of a place or period than the more visible peaks of the historical landscape.

Inevitably, though, much more is excluded than included in an account of any period, and the coherent shapes of the past that end up being depicted in histories are typically formed from great quantities of disparate pieces of material. In this work, three types of events or episodes vie for attention: those that were significant at the time of their occurrence; those that in hindsight were influential in steering the country in the direction that it ended up taking; and those that might otherwise seem trivial, yet convey some insight into New Zealanders, their lives, and their environment at a given time. By choosing to focus on fewer episodes as I have in this volume the opportunity exists to prod and probe them in more detail, rather than just graze the surface before quickly moving on to the next field.

But back to the question of what New Zealand was like in the twentieth century. The shape of the answer is bound to change as more research is conducted, and as the sense of perspective inevitably brought about by distance from the period becomes clearer. Even during the century, there were great shifts in how the country was seen. Early in the 1900s, historians

The imagery of rural New Zealand had become increasingly enticing, to the point where, by 1903, William Pember Reeves observed a tinge of envy in the countrys urban population at the cult of farming life: So fashionable has the agrarian cult been, he wrote, that, at times, to be a townsman has almost been to wear a badge of inferiority, and large towns have been denounced as blots on the colonial landscape. Manufactures have been classed as artificialities, professional men as parasites, and artisans roundly termed a race of loafers. Even to-day numbers of intelligent colonists look upon the growth of their cities with mixed feelings healthy, wealthy, and orderly as those cities are. This was more than just a general characterization of the nation at the beginning of the century. It was in equal measure the prescription for its future. The Malthusian calculus of the planets exponential population growth seemed to secure New Zealands future as a provider of food with an unceasing procession of refrigerated ships exporting lamb and beef carcasses (and increasingly butter and cheese) to the world, and flushing the colonys coffers with foreign exchange in the process.

By the middle of the century, however, historians were more interested in contemplating the rise of the nations increasingly independent foreign policy,

By the closing decades of the century, some historians had shifted the focus of inquiry, and were engaging in an anxious hunt to locate and classify the New Zealand identity their anxiety perhaps stemming from the fear that they might return empty-handed. And while this was often a determined pursuit, capturing what a New Zealander was proved to be frustratingly elusive. Keith Sinclairs A History of New Zealand concluded with an epilogue entitled The Search for National Identity, This was a controversial argument, but the very fact of that controversy showed that the discussion about this issue was like an exposed national nerve that twitched every time it was touched.

James Belichs Paradise Reforged , written during the final years of the century,

In this book, I have avoided making any overarching claims about the nature of New Zealand and New Zealanders in the twentieth century, and have similarly exercised reluctance when exploring themes relating to the countrys social and cultural identity during this period. Many previous writers have delved into this area, but none has come up with a definitive version on which everyone else can agree. National identity and the notion of New Zealandness are very much in the eye of the beholder, and that is where they belong. Some themes might be evident over a brief duration, but any effort at trying to braid them into a uniform representation applying to the entire century is inevitably doomed. Instead, history offers at best an intuitive perception of a nations identity, determined by the junction of events and the interaction of individuals over a given period. It is through such contrasts that the cultural and social relief of the country is revealed. But as in nature, the idea of contrasts, colour, distance, and perspective can sometimes be pure illusion. This volume is therefore not just another recounting of the past a well-worn exercise in historical excavation. Rather, it is an attempt to build up an impression of New Zealand over this period; and if a few shoots of insight sprout from its contents, then it will have achieved its purpose.