Erik Olssen

In this major work, one of our leading historians offers a new account of the origins of New Zealand: how Pākehā settlers—nurtured on Enlightenment thought and evangelical humanitarianism—encountered Māori, and how the two peoples together developed a distinctively experimental society. With James Cook’s arrival in 1769 and the subsequent colonisation, New Zealand became one of the few post-Enlightenment experiments in...