Review of Ron Palenski The Making of New Zealanders (original) (raw)

Review of: New Zealand's empire, ed. By Katie Pickles and Catharine Coleborne, (Manchester University Press), 2016

law&history, 2019

Katie Pickles and Catharine Coleborne begin New Zealand’s Empire with a bold proposition — they hope to revise, expand and complicate received histories of empire and imperialism in Aotearoa. Until recently, they argue, New Zealand has been viewed as an outpost of empire rather than the centre of local and regional worlds of imperialism. Over four thematic sections, their collection extends recent scholarship concerned with New Zealand’s dynamic place within the British Empire and its long-ignored imperial ambitions at home and in the Pacific.

I Can Tell You This Is a Fine Country': Identity Construction in the British-New Zealand Imperial Diaspora

2013

This thesis uses diaspora theory to analyse late-nineteenth-century texts written by women in New Zealand. The texts include a number of novels as well as non-fictional journals and memoirs. Robin Cohen‟s definition of diaspora provides a framework for understanding the British settler community in New Zealand as an imperial diaspora. My approach modifies Cohen‟s framework by also employing constructivist theories of diaspora, in particular by Stuart Hall, Paul Gilroy and James Clifford. These theorists see identity as continuously produced within representation and diaspora as furthering cultural crossover and hybrid identities. This view of the British diaspora reveals fissures within the teleological ideology of the nation-state, which underlies imperialism. Rather than focusing on a binary of imperial centre and colonial periphery, I understand the diasporic community in New Zealand as part of an international network in which mobility and a shared print culture provided manifol...