New Zealand’s colonial past and active empire building in the Pacific is frequently overlooked. However, starting with the colonisation of the Cook Islands in 1900, New Zealand went on to colonise Niue, Samoa, Nauru and Tokelau, amassing an empire that spanned a vast area of the Pacific Ocean.
This course will trace the impact of New Zealand in the Pacific, analysing motivations and justifications for New Zealand’s empire building. It will analyse the impact of colonisation and the tangible benefits NZ had from maintaining a significant base of power in the Pacific Ocean. It will examine the impact New Zealand had on the development of the Pacific through demands for labour and economic benefits, cultural and social changes, and the experiences of the first and second world wars. It will also consider the deconstruction of this empire after WWII in the face of the global drive for Indigenous self-determination, and the reality of this for Pacific peoples. Finally, this course will examine the evolving dynamics of New Zealand’s place in the Pacific from this point until the end of the twentieth century. New Zealand as a settler-colony and the relationship between Māori as tangata whenua and Indigenous Pacific Peoples will also be a point of discussion in this course.
This course will prioritise primary sources both written and oral, and give validation to Indigenous ways of telling history. It will discuss the methodological challenges inherent in utilising primary sources and provide models for students that will enhance their abilities to interpret and weave together primary sources with established scholarly arguments. It will encourage critical analysis of existing interpretations of New Zealand’s place in the Pacific in light of primary sources and through different worldviews, to create new interpretations and perspectives.