The new book Secret History: State Surveillance in New Zealand, 1900-1956 by Richard S Hill and Steven Loveridge (Auckland University Press, 2023) opens up the ‘secret world’ of security intelligence during a period in which counter-espionage and counter-subversion duties were primarily handled by the New Zealand Police Force. This is the first of two volumes chronicling the history of state surveillance in New Zealand. It is the story of the surveillers who – in times of war and peace,...

Forced labour haunts the streets we walk today and the spaces we take for granted. From 1814 onwards, the unfree work of prisoners was used to forge roads, ports, buildings, harbour defences and other public works across New Zealand and its Pacific empire. Prisoners planted forests, cleared land and laboured on dairy farms. Their work was crucial to colonisation. Yet convict Australia and the myth of New Zealand exceptionalism has meant the history of prison labour has been largely...

In this month's Public History Talk, the authors of two recently published books discussed the profound impact of closed stranger adoption in New Zealand and the drive for change. Closed stranger adoption under the 1955 Adoption Act, still in force today, has deeply affected thousands of New Zealanders. In their recent book Adopted: Loss, love, family and reunion (Massey University Press, 2022), Jo Willis and Brigs (Brigitta) Baker shared the complexity of their reunion journeys, the...

Paul Diamond's book, Downfall: The destruction of Charles Mackay, examines the startling ‘Whanganui Affair’ of 1920, when the mayor Charles Mackay, shot a young gay man, D'Arcy Cresswell. The affair and subsequent events reveal the perilous existence of homosexual men at that time and how society conspired to control and punish them. In 1920 New Zealanders were shocked by the news that the brilliant, well-connected mayor of Whanganui had shot a young gay poet, D'Arcy Cresswell, who was...

For more than 150 years, five carved panels that once formed the back wall of a pātaka, slept in a small swamp just north of Waitara. The carvings, which uri of Taranaki now call the Motunui Epa, emerged from their long sleep in 1971 setting off an extraordinary chain of events that would take them around the world and back again. In this talk, Dr Rachel Buchanan will discuss how unearthing the government records has changed the way she works as a historian, taking her much closer to the...

In seeking to understand the terrorist attacks of March 2019, several commentators observed the similarities with the murder of an elderly Chinese man named Joe Kum Yung by Lionel Terry in 1905. It is tempting to draw a direct causal line between the two attacks, both as a concise way of framing an uncomfortable subject and as an emotional salve against the possibility that New Zealand’s radical right tradition is more than the occasional ‘lone wolf’. But this obscures far more than it...

In this podcast, Dr Lucy Mackintosh discusses aspects of her recently published book, Shifting Grounds: Deep Histories of Tāmaki Makaurau Auckland (Bridget Williams Books, 2021), which explores the layered histories embedded in three landscapes in the city. Starting with rocks, lava flows, a grassy paddock, the remains of a garden, the site of a cottage, or a monument, the book examines the histories that unfolded in these places and connects them with the broader historical context of the...

Katherine Mansfield was a New Zealand author of international renown. Her short stories and poetry have been translated into more than 25 languages and her work continues to have an impact one hundred years after her death in France in 1923.  Mansfield spent most of her adult life in Europe, working as a writer, editor, and critic, and living in various places, moving as fortune and misfortune decreed. Author Redmer Yska follows these movements in his new book, Katherine Mansfield's Europe:...

What can popular music tell us about a country and its culture? As the 2023 Lilburn Research Fellow, Nick Bollinger is looking at ways in which pop music in Aotearoa New Zealand has reflected, contradicted, and contributed to our national stories. In this talk he will offer a progress report on a few of his discoveries. These monthly Public History Talks are a collaboration between the Alexander Turnbull Library and Manatū Taonga Ministry for Culture and Heritage. Recorded live on 3 May...

Cybèle Locke’s recently published biography of Bill Andersen, Comrade, examines labour activism, communism and social change, from the 1930s until the turn of the twenty-first century. This talk offers possibilities for how Bill Andersen’s Communist, working-class life might speak to us in the current moment. These monthly Public History Talks are a collaboration between the Alexander Turnbull Library and Manatū Taonga Ministry for Culture and Heritage. Recorded live on 5 April 2023. Download...

Brilliant, hardworking and creative, women architects have made many significant contributions to the built environment, creativity and community of Aotearoa New Zealand. A ground-breaking new book, Making Space, tells the story of women making space for themselves in a male-dominated profession while designing architectural, landscape and urban spaces over a century. Edited by Elizabeth Cox and written by 30 women architects, architectural historians and academics, the book’s bold, vivid...

The Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MFAT) is a remarkable organisation that has represented New Zealand for more than 75 years. A new book, New Zealand’s Foreign Service: A History examines how MFAT (and its predecessors) responded to ever-evolving political and military allegiances, trade globalisation, economic threats, natural disasters and military conflict on behalf of a small nation that seeks to engage on the global stage while maintaining the principles that underpin its political...

This talk sketches Lake Tūtira’s history from formation to today. Historian Jonathan West will follow in the traces of Herbert Guthrie Smith, whose obsessive records of the changes witnessed while farming by the lake made him the founder of environmental history here. He will take his cue from Guthrie Smith’s first book’s opening lines: ‘The lake on Tutira may be considered the heart of the run. It is the centre of all the station’s life and energy.’ Guthrie Smith preserved the lake as a...

It's over 40 years since the Working Women's Charter was adopted as policy by the New Zealand Federation of Labour. The 16-clause Charter demanded rights for women in all aspects of life and work, including equal pay; ending discrimination; education and health rights; improved working conditions; quality child care; family and parental leave, and reproductive rights. But persuading the male-dominated trade union movement to adopt the Charter wasn't an easy job. A panel of authors from the...

Māni Dunlop (Ngāpuhi) and Jamie Tahana (Ngāti Pikiao, Ngāti Makino, Te Arawa) are journalists and national broadcasters who actively champion te reo Māori me nga tikanga Māori through their work. Māni was the first Māori journalist at RNZ to host a weekday show, while Jamie is one of RNZ’s youngest Māori News Directors. They began their careers as RNZ interns, Māni in 2011 and Jamie in 2014. Māni initially worked in the general newsroom focusing on housing and social issues. Jamie started...

Liana MacDonald (Ngāti Kuia, Rangitāne o Wairau, Ngāti Koata) is a lecturer in the Faculty of Education, Victoria University of Wellington. She is interested in how racism, whiteness, and settler colonialism manifest in national institutions. In this talk, Liana focusses on two significant conflicts between mana whenua and British and settler militia during the early stages of the New Zealand Wars and how they are remembered today. Interviews reveal how the Wairau Affray (1843) is...

In the 1940s radio played a central role in the life of the New Zealand household as a source of news and entertainment. Sound historian Sarah Johnston is researching radio during this era, particularly the role of our first radio war correspondents, who travelled with the New Zealand forces in North Africa, the Middle East, Italy and in the Pacific as mobile broadcasting units. Sarah outlines details she has uncovered in her research, including the way demand from listeners back home...

In September 2019, Hon Chris Hipkins announced Aotearoa New Zealand's histories would be taught in all schools and kura from 2022 (later extended to 2023). In this talk Dr Genaro Oliveira shared findings from a comprehensive survey of primary school teachers across the Manawatū region about history teaching at Years 1 to 6. Answers from the ten local schools corroborate the anecdotal evidence many teachers and people involved with primary education have known for a while: first, despite...

Please note: This talk contains material that may be distressing to some listeners, including the discussions of war crimes. If you wish to skip this discussion, it runs from 9:19 through to 16:36. Please take care of yourself, and if you don't think this talk is for you, no worries, and we hope you'll listen again soon. In this talk, military historians John Crawford and Matthew Buck talk about results from their recent research projects.  Over the last 35 years, John Crawford has...

In this talk, Melani Anae, Associate Professor in Pacific Studies at the University of Auckland discusses aspects of her recent book, The Platform: the radical legacy of the Polynesian Panthers. In the book she writes, ‘Fifty years ago the Polynesian Panther Party began to shine a light on racism and oppressive systems, and we made small changes. But these small changes were and are so much greater than the sum of their parts; they are writ large by the liberating education some of us are...

In this talk author Brent Coutts discusses his recently published book, Crossing the Lines, a history of New Zealand homosexual soldiers in the Second World War. While he uncovered fifty homosexual men who served in the military during the war, his research focused on Ralph Dyer, Douglas Morison, and Harold Robinson, three men who were female impersonators in the Pacific Kiwi Concert Party and Tui Concert Party. Coutts discusses their lives before, during, and after the war, and how he...

In this talk, historian Ryan Bodman explores the value of social media as a 21st century history-research tool. Over the past five years, Ryan has been researching and writing Rugby League: A New Zealand History, which is a social and cultural history of the football code in New Zealand. As part of this project, he has developed a social media account under the same name, which promotes public engagement with his research outputs and has brought a collaborative component to his research...

In this talk, Nigel Robson, author of Our first foreign war (Massey University Press, 2021), examines opposition within New Zealand to the South African War 1899–1902. At a time when patriotic fervour engulfed the country, those who questioned British actions in South Africa, or criticised the widespread support for the conflict that characterized New Zealand’s response, risked public vilification and being labelled a ‘pro-Boer’. From J. Grattan Grey, the Hansard chief reporter who...

Inside the Bubble : Kei Roto i te Miru is a collection of human stories recorded during Covid-19 lockdown in Aotearoa New Zealand. Oral historians worked in partnership with Ngā Pātaka Kōrero Auckland Libraries and Manatu Taonga to collect, create and conserve viewpoints from around the country.  ‘Jack’s Story'  Oral historian Will Hansen interviewed his flatmate Jack Hitchcox on ‘Queerintine’; living in an all queer flat during lockdown, being a frontline health worker, making art,...