NZ history being poisoned says academic

NZ history being poisoned says academic

AUT University history professor Dr Paul Moon has lashed out at two new books on New Zealand history, claiming that they are academically dubious and resemble little more than reckless speculation dressed up as scholarship.

The first of the works he has targeted is To the Ends of the Earth, by Maxwell Hill. The book has as its central premise the idea that the Greeks or Egyptians settled in New Zealand two millennia ago. Dr. Moon describes such a theory as “unsupported and unsupportable”.

Also in Dr. Moon’s sights is Ian Wishart’s latest book, The Great Divide, which similarly lends support to the belief that pre-Maori civilisations occupied New Zealand. “Wishart goes further, though”, Dr. Moon points out, “implying that academics have somehow misrepresented our history. This is, of course, preposterous”.

Dr. Moon claims that Wishart’s book gets some aspects of the country’s history wrong. As an example, he notes that one of Wishart’s chapters is entitled “The Littlewood Treaty”. Yet, there is no such thing as the Littlewood treaty, says Dr. Moon.

However, Dr. Moon warns that such works cannot simply be dismissed any more. “The reason why these books are so poisonous”, he explains, “is that their theories are starting to enter the bloodstream of the popular historical imagination and are beginning to circulate with greater force”.

Dr. Moon alleges that these authors “doggedly follow any stray scent if they suspect it will support their argument, and yet they have turned their backs on a vast amount of available research which contradicts their theories”.

For many years, he observes, most historians have chosen to ignore such books. The general view was that to debate these so-called “alternative histories” would be to give them a degree of credence which they manifestly do not deserve.

However, the links between such books, and the “soft-core” denial of the role of Maori in New Zealand are firming up, says Dr. Moon, and simply ignoring them is no longer an option.

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