Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
renewal. For good and ill, a Yorkshire farm boy remains the single most significant fig-
ure in the shaping of the modern Pacific.
Tony Horwitz is a Pulitzer-winning reporter and nonfiction author. In researchingBlue
Latitudes(orInto the Blue), Tony travelled the Pacific - 'boldly going where Captain
Cook has gone before.
Welfare & Warfare
From the 1850s to the 1880s, despite conflict with Maori, the Pakeha economy boomed on
the back of wool exports, gold rushes and massive overseas borrowing for development.
The crash came in the 1880s, when NZ experienced its Long Depression. In 1890, the Lib-
erals came to power, and stayed there until 1912, helped by a recovering economy. The Lib-
erals were NZ's first organised political party, and the first of several governments to give
NZ a reputation as 'the world's social laboratory'. NZ became the first country in the world
to give women the vote in 1893, and introduced old-age pensions in 1898. The Liberals also
introduced a long-lasting system of industrial arbitration, but this was not enough to prevent
bitter industrial unrest in 1912-13. This happened under the conservative 'Reform' govern-
ment, which had replaced the Liberals in 1912. Reform remained in power until 1928, and
later transformed itself into the National Party. Renewed depression struck in 1929, and the
NZ experience of it was as grim as any. The derelict little farmhouses still seen in rural areas
often date from this era.
Maurice Shadbolt's
Season of the Jew
(1987) is a semifictionalised story of bloody cam-
paigns led by warrior Te Kooti against the British in Poverty Bay in the 1860s. Te Kooti and
his followers compared themselves to the Israelites who were cast out of Egypt.
To find out more about the New Zealand Wars, visit
www.newzealandwars.co.nz.
In 1935, a second reforming government took office: the First Labour government, led by
Michael Joseph Savage, easily NZ's favourite Australian. For a time, the Labour govern-
ment was considered the most socialist government outside Soviet Russia. But, when the
chips were down in Europe in 1939, Labour had little hesitation in backing Britain.
'I believe we were all glad to leave New Zealand. It is not a pleasant place. Amongst the
natives there is absent that charming simplicity…and the greater part of the English are the
very refuse of society.' Charles Darwin, referring to Kororareka (Russell), in 1860.
