Imperial war, refugees, radical writers locked in madhouses & exiled to baches: the NZ Herald acknowledges some of Auckland's secret past: http://readingthemaps.blogspot.co.nz/2016/05/the-city-of-words.html http://www.nzherald.co.nz/entertainment/news/...
'Although the New Zealand Ground Forces in Fiji were relieved by the US 37th Division in May-July 1942 and the sent back to NZ to reorganise' But there were still eight hundred NZ troops in Fiji in '43, and that's when the interesting folk songs that ...
'Although the New Zealand Ground Forces in Fiji were relieved by the US 37th Division in May-July 1942 and the sent back to NZ to reorganise' But there were still eight hundred NZ troops in Fiji in '43, and that's when the interesting folk songs that ...
Public sentiment isn't homogenous or static, and Anzac Day has meant different things to different people at different times. Talked about this a while back http://readingthemaps.blogspot.co.nz/2016/03/rethinking-anzac-day.html By all means celebrate the ...
'We should include wars of colonisation as part of the ANZAC spirit? You can’t see what the problem is with that?' The Anzac tradition began in NZ in the nineteenth century, not at Gallipoli. You can't understand NZ's role in the wars of the 20th century ...
I had the opportunity to walk up the Great South Road, the route built to send conquering troops into the Waikato Kingdom in the 1860s, last year, and talk about the history of the NZ Wars with the people who lived over old battlesites and redoubts and ...
One hundred and one years since Anzac Day, and almost one hundred and fifty-three years since the beginning of the Waikato War, where some of the first Anzacs fought and died. The myth that the Anzacs had their origins has been debunked by scholars - there...
Is Angus Gillies a ghoulish profiteer, or are his critics denying the conflicts in their own community? http://readingthemaps.blogspot.co.nz/2016/02/who-speaks-for-ruatoria.html
Marvellous interview by Steve Braunias and Angus Gillies about the forgotten guerrilla war in 1980s NZ: http://thespinoff.co.nz/23-02-2016/i-had-recurring-nightmares-in-which-i-would-fall-victim-to-the-anger-of-the-rastas-an-interview-with-angus-gillies/
Exploring Point Chevalier's forgotten working class and left-wing history, with a busload of brilliant pensioners: http://readingthemaps.blogspot.co.nz/2016/02/cruising-point.html
I see your point, Sirenia, but I think you underestimate how much variety and contradiction there has been within Anzac Day commemorative activities, and possibly overestimate how much external opposition there has been to Anzac services. You write that ...
The first Anzacs actually fought in the lower Waikato, not Gallipoli. The first Anzacs to fall in combat are buried in Drury, not Turkey. This piece of history has almost been erased, though it's known to military historians and members of iwi like Ngati ...
Anzac Day needs to be reclaimed by the left. We have to take back ownership of WW2, and we have to broaden Anzac Day so that it becomes a commemoration of the tens of thousands who fought and the thousands who died in NZ's 19th century wars. WW2 was only ...
TRadical history repeats? This week, in the build-up to the signing to the TPPA, strange machines were photographed moving through central Auckland. Are they an echo of the revolutionary year of 1913? http://readingthemaps.blogspot.co.nz/2016/02/strange-...
Former ACT MP and prominent conservative commentator calls for nuclear attacks on Middle Eastern cities: http://readingthemaps.blogspot.co.nz/2016/01/david-garrett-and-peace-of-dead.html
The rejection of Iraq-born Muslim Warda Jawad by the New Zealand Defence Forces reflects the Islamophobia that has become rampant in the West, but this same Islamophobia ensures that the West will continue to lose wars in the Middle East: http://...
Forgotten history: if New Zealanders remembered the refugees that filled their roads in 1863 & 1933, they might empathise with today's Syrians: http://readingthemaps.blogspot.co.nz/2015/10/new-zealands-road-of-refugees.html
Dylann Roof's massacre of black churchgoers in Charleston has reminded the world of the legacy of the Confederacy and slavery. But what about the slavery that flourished in the 19th century Pacific, thanks partly to the influence of displaced Confederates?...
Debate: is New Zealand's democracy an outgrowth of the European Enlightenment, or does it have local sources, in the Maori nationalist & workers' movements? http://readingthemaps.blogspot.co.nz/2015/06/enlightening-new-zealand-open-letter-to.html
One hundred and thirty years ago, at the beginning of 1885, New Zealanders debated whether or not to join a war against an Islamic army that had conquered a tract of desert and committed atrocities against its prisoners. In 1885, though, New Zealand ...
Canterbury museum is the latest target for the anti-intellectuals who earlier attacked Nicky Hager and Eleanor Catton: http://readingthemaps.blogspot.co.nz/2015/02/a-quick-note-on-exhibitionism.html
While the NZ Herald was dehumanising the bonded labourers who come to New Zealand under the Recognised Seasonal Employer scheme, a group of artists were staging a celebration of the Pacific Island working class in a gallery in the middle of New Zealand's ...
Thanks for those comments folks. I think Chris should be credited for at least taking a very serious interest in NZ's history. Unlike John Key, he's prepared to stake out a detailed position and argue for it. I don't mean to obstruct other discussions here...
John Key thinks NZ was settled peacefully; Chris Trotter largely agrees. Are they right? http://readingthemaps.blogspot.co.nz/2014/11/war-and-peace-arguing-with-chris.html
John Key says Islamist terrorists are a threat to the world. So why is he sending Kiwi troops off to Iraq to help them? http://readingthemaps.blogspot.co.nz/2014/11/for-and-against-islamism-wests.html
In 2012 and now again in 2014, a high-profile Tongan-NZ artist has made a very public protest against homelessness. His performance has provoked hysterical responses from sections of the public - and from some members of the police force: http://...
'snaps of SIS troops sitting on camels in front of the Great Pyramid' Very few Kiwis know that we had troops in Egypt for decades, from the 1980s until several years ago, as part of the Israel and US-controlled Multinational Force and Observers: http://...
Though many NZers have humanitarian reasons for wanting to see an intervention against ISIS, and individual NZ military personnel may have the same desire, the nature of US-led military adventures, in the Middle East and also further afield, has time and ...
Whaledump's campaign against the Key regime may use new technology, but it echoes the efforts of generations of left-wing pamphleteers, like the trade unionists who fought National PM Sid Holland's police state in 1951: http://readingthemaps.blogspot.co.nz...
Nicky Hager in 1940? Certainly, some of the Nats would like to drive their critics into caves... http://readingthemaps.blogspot.co.nz/2014/08/caving-with-nicky-hager.html
Hi Grey Warbler, the notion that Hitler hated Steiner schools is a myth which seems, so far as I can tell, to be used by Steiner's followers when they get called out for racism. A US academic called Peter Staudenmaier has recently published a book after ...
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