The Origins of an Experimental Society

New Zealand, 1769-1860

The history of New Zealand explained through powerfulbeliefs and the people who held them.

In this majorwork, one of our leading historians offers a new account of the origins of NewZealand: how Pakeha settlers - nurtured on Enlightenment thought andevangelical humanitarianism - encountered Maori, and how the two peoples togetherdeveloped a distinctively experimental society.

With James Cook'sarrival in 1769 and the subsequent colonisation, New Zealand became one of thefew post-Enlightenment experiments in creating a new nation anywhere in theworld. The Europeans who settled these islands brought with them a belief inthe power of reason and experience to improve peoples and societies. Encountersbetween Maori and these new arrivals profoundly shaped the thoughts andbehaviours of both peoples.

Olssen arguesthat the people who settled New Zealand planned two experiments in making abetter society. They hoped that, in contrast to earlier colonial projects, theindigenous New Zealanders would not be driven to extinction but eventually taketheir place as equals in a modern commercial society. And they aimed to createa society that was fairer and more just than the one they had left behind; a'Better Britain'. While both experiments were first conceived by savants and philosophers,they gained ongoing support, by lodging in the hearts and minds of the settlers:whalers and missionaries, mothers and farmers. In turn, Maori adapted these newideas to their own ends, giving up slavery and inter-tribal warfare, and adaptingthe institutions of the colonisers in ways that would re-define theexperiments.

This then is anethnography of 'tangata Pakeha', a people of European descent changed by theirencounters with 'tangata Maori' and their land - just as Maori were themselveschanged - and the story of the society they built together. Ranging acrossintellectual and cultural history, from the beach at Paihia to the coffeehouses of Paris, Olssen enables us to understand the origins of New Zealandanew.

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