Historian shines a light on 1820s New Zealand

**MEDIA RELEASE**

Historian Paul Moon, well-known for exploring controversial subjects, shines a light on 1820s New Zealand.


New Zealand in the 1820s was a stark and vastly different place and it was the rapid change during this era that influenced the future of the nation for the remainder of the century. In his new book, A Savage Country: The Untold Story of New Zealand in the 1820s, Paul Moon gives a lively revisionist history.

Paul is well-known for exploring controversial subjects (e.g. his bestselling book on cannibalism in New Zealand, This Horrid Practice) and in A Savage Country, Paul once again looks into a variety of controversial subjects, namely a look into the shrunken Maori heads trade. This trade, mainly to Sydney, saw tattooed Maori shrunken heads (severed and specially prepared) sell for high value overseas. This trade was extremely lucrative and saw slaves in particular be killed and tattooed for this purpose. Bodies were even killed and tattooed after death and then transported. The Musket Wars had New Zealand divided and the mercurial need to have weapons saw tribes partake in difficult acts. Paul also explores New Zealand’s occurrences of child prostitution, Hongi Hika’s revised success as a leader, along with a history of church missionaries and their very debatable success in this era.

New Zealand in the 1820s had no government or bureaucratic presence; no newspapers were published; the literate population was probably no more than a few dozen people at any one time. Early explorers’ assessments of New Zealand were haphazard at best – few knew what to make of this foreign land and its people.

Paul Moon details how so many of the events in this decade – the introduction of aggressive capitalism, the arrival of literacy and the beginnings of Maori print culture, intertribal warfare, colonisation as a simultaneously destructive and beneficial force – influenced the nation’s evolution over the remainder of the century.

A Savage Country leaves no stone unturned in an examination of this dynamic and fascinating pre-Treaty era.

Dr Paul Moon is Professor of History at the Faculty of Maori Development, Auckland University of Technology (AUT University), where he has taught since 1993. He has a Bachelor of Arts degree, a Master of Philosophy degree, a Master of Arts degree, and a Doctor of Philosophy. In 2003, he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society at University College, London. Paul is widely recognised for his study of the Treaty of Waitangi. As well as his many books on the subject, he has produced major biographies of political and Maori figures, an examination of Maori cannibalism and a general history of New Zealand in the twentieth century. Paul is appearing at the Auckland Writers and Readers Festival 2012.

A Savage Country: The Untold Story of New Zealand in the 1820s has just been released in New Zealand.

ends

© Scoop Media