colonial New Zealand

Four Pākehā heroes for empty plinths

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Yesterday Ātea editor Leonie Hayden suggested a number of Māori whose great deeds deserve to be memorialised in stone. Today Pākehā historian Scott Hamilton picks four heroic early New Zealanders of European descent. Recently I publicly suggested that Akaroa’s Bully Hayes Restaurant and Bar should change its name. Bully Hayes was a 19th century slaver … Read more

Where are the women in the Business Hall of Fame?

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Summer reissue: The lack of female faces in the hallowed halls has been put down to their traditional roles in our colonial society. Now the digitisation of historical records is blowing that theory out of the water. This story was first published on 11 October, 2019. There are 171 people in the New Zealand Business Hall … Read more

Review: Colonial Combat reinvents colonisation as a level playing field

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Is there something to be learned from TVNZ’s Wild West-meets-WWE-meets-19th-century-New Zealand web series? After all, writes Sharon Mazer, colonisation, like professional wrestling, is a fixed match. The premise underlying TVNZ’s new web series Colonial Combat is anachronistic and preposterous, even by WWE standards. It’s also fascinating. Transported from American popular culture to New Zealand as … Read more

Women doing it for themselves: the NZ businesswomen of the 19th century

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Are there really not enough women in New Zealand’s commercial history worth recognising? Business editor Maria Slade discovers it all depends on where you look. There are 171 people in the New Zealand Business Hall of Fame. Just 15 of them are women. It’s an eyebrow-raising statistic, given educational non-profit Young Enterprise established the Hall … Read more