Keith Sinclair and the History of New Zealand

The second required text of the course is Keith Sinclair’s History of New Zealand. Sinclair, like Clark, was a nation-maker, and of the same generation as Clark. Sinclair, too, was concerned with extricating his country from its colonial condition and asserting nationhood through History.

Biographical

1922-1993. Born and raised in Auckland; spent most of his academic life on the faculty of the University of Auckland. Founding editor of the New Zealand Journal of History. A poet whose work is found in standard anthologies of New Zealand poetry.

In both Literature and History, an ardent nationalist who believed that New Zealand should shed its colonial skin and cultivate an independent identity.

Erik Olssen says, Sinclair was instrumental in "destroying the pervasive belief in New Zealand's inferiority, which crippled so many of this country's intellectuals during his youth."

W.H. Oliver says, "He made New Zealand History."

Significant Works

The Origins of the Maori Wars. Wellington: New Zealand University Press, 1957.

A History of New Zealand. Auckland: Pelican, 1959. 4th Rev. Ed., 1991.

William Pember Reeves: New Zealand Fabian. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1965.

Walter Nash. Auckland: Auckland University Press, 1976.

A Destiny Apart: New Zealand's Search for a National Identity. Wellington: Allen & Unwin, 1986.

Kinds of Peace: Maori People After the Wars, 1870-85. Auckland: Auckland University Press, 1991.

Selected quotes from Sinclair's autobiography, Halfway Round the Harbour: An Autobiography (Auckland: Penguin Books, 1993)

From the author blurb: "Born in Auckland in 1922, he decided at an early age that he was a writer and a New Zealand nationalist."

RE Bill Oliver's history of New Zealand: "His book was not more popular than mine, but had a very different emphasis, stressing British origins, whereas I dwelt upon resemblances between New Zealand, Australia and the United States."

RE the English failure to root in NZ: "The emptiness of the landscape was a recurrent theme in the writings of late nineteenth-century poets, almost all of them South Islanders. . . . I referred to these writers as South Island Englishmen and to their doctrines as the 'no monuments on our hills' school of poetry."

RE the lack of respect for New Zealand history: "It was difficult, for many years, to get New Zealand history taken seriously: did we have one? it was asked."

RE the human frailties of historians: "I spent more time thinking about sex than about history."

RE the human condition: "It's a bugger being old."

Sinclair's Periodization of Political History

"In general," says Keith Sinclair, "New Zealand political history has been unusually stable." He offers a straightforward periodization along these lines.

Span of the Political Period	Characteristics of the Times
"From about 1870 . . . until 1891"	"ruled by an oligarchy chiefly representative of the pastoralists and speculators"
"For a further twenty-one years, until 1912"	"the Liberal Party, chiefly backed by the small farmers and unionists, was supreme"
"during the intervening twenty-three years from 1912 to 1935"	"there was an unstable three-party system . . . Reform Party . . . predominant, but its authority was precarious"
"For fourteen years, from 1935 to 1949"	"the Labour Party held power"
"Since then"	"the National Party has been in office for all but three years"

Some Study Questions from Sinclair’s History of New Zealand

[Questions in preparation]

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