Far Away But Not Long Ago Essay

, Research Paper

Far away, but not long agoParadise Reforged: A History of the New Zealandersby James Belich608pp, PenguinSome snapshots from New Zealand in 2002: public disapproval as Prime Minister Helen Clark welcomes the Queen to Government House wearing trousers; high popularity ratings for a transsexual small-town MP; front-page coverage when a Guardian travel writer declares the country “boring”; heated debate over the plight of asylum-seekers in Australia; 24/7 attention to The Lord of the Rings.The national character seems at once conservative, cosmopolitan, parochial, and intensely proud. How New Zealanders became a conflicted race is one of the main explorations of James Belich’s comprehensive and exhilarating history: his concern is the underexamined people of the often-visited place.Belich has both the broad sweep and the salty detail that bring a thesis to life, and the ability to conjure vivid portraits of the most interesting historical players. At its best his writing delivers a real emotional charge. His books have provided significant reinterpretations of New Zealand history; Paradise Reforged and its predecessor companion, Making Peoples, comprise the largest history of the nation by one author.”New Zealand history makes the ‘wild west’ look like an old people’s tea party,” Belich has said, and Paradise Reforged backs up this claim, observing that the nation’s development is notable for its speed, not length. In image-laden, energetic prose, this history delves wholeheartedly into the lives of its subjects, investigating religion, class, diet, popular culture, technology and all aspects of the social nuances that forge cultural self-perception.Belich’s central thesis is that, rather than undergoing a steadily progressive independence from Britain, New Zealand entered a “recolonial” phase in the 1880s, with the launching of refrigerated cargo ships bearing, by 1941, 500,000 tonnes of meat and dairy products to England: it operated as a long-distance market town for London, and emotional as well as financial ties to Britain were tightened for nearly a century.Recolonisation brought both benefits and appalling costs. The country sent nearly a fifth of its male population more than 10,000 miles to the first world war, a much larger percentage than any other colony. Wartime memoirists such as Vera Brittain and Robert Graves describe no particular appreciation of this by the British themselves, and are if anything patronising about the colonial effort, but New Zealand did establish a reputation as the most loyal and dutiful of dominions.Many dates have been suggested for the onset of national independence, the adolescent culture’s “21st birthday”. This book makes a near-irrefutable case for 1973, when Britain joined the EEC and the New Zealand export industry was left out in the cold. It was a forced independence, one that the populace reacted to with confusion. Belich suggests that the extreme shift to free-market policies introduced by the 1984 Labour government was partly due to this economic rejection.The 1985 terrorist bombing of the Greenpeace ship Rainbow Warrior, engineered by the French government and condemned by neither Britain nor the United States, was another landmark contributor to separation from former allies; it strengthened the country’s anti-nuclear position and ecological awareness. And all through the 1980s, battles over sporting links with South Africa forced New Zealanders to look hard at their identity and priorities. Race relations have generally been perceived as harmonious. The survival and resurgence of Maori culture, under adverse conditions, is one of the most exciting strands of this history.Belich makes a passionate case for the need to understand recolonisation and the implications of decolonisation. “No one likes snapshots of one sitting on Mother’s knee being shown at one’s 21st birthday, especially if the snaps were taken at age 19.” If New Zealanders are to confront previously unexplored realities of the past 150 years, and approach the future accepting the positive outcomes of this history – transnationalism, cultural hybridity – without the collective amnesia that perpetuates a national identity crisis, this is the book to show them the way.· Emily Perkins’s most recent novel is The New Girl (Picador)