Introduction: New Zealand's empire

• Main Authors: Pickles, Katie, Coleborne, Catharine
• Other Authors: The University of Newcastle. Faculty of Education & Arts, School of Humanities and Social Science
• Format: Book Part
• Language: English
• Published: Manchester University Press 2016
• Subjects: New Zealand; imperialism; empire; webs of empire; Pacific; Antarc*; Antarctica
• Online Access: http://hdl.handle.net/1959.13/1345662

New Zealand's empire revises, expands, and complicates received histories of empire and imperialism: specifically their significance to, in, and from New Zealand. In the study of the imperial past, both colonial and postcolonial approaches have often asserted the dualism of core and periphery, with New Zealand firmly positioned on the 'edge', or as an outlier of empire. Meanwhile, nation-centred approaches have tended to under-emphasise the connections between New Zealand and the rest of the world. Turning the theme of 'empire' on its head, contributors show how a focus on New Zealand as being at the centre of a local world of imperialism throws older debates about New Zealand as a 'periphery' into sharp relief. With historians building upon and revising existing approaches to New Zealand history, there is now a literature that traverses nation and empire, variously placing New Zealand as a part of a 'British world', a 'Tasman world', an 'Anglo world', and networked 'webs of empire'. Yet what of New Zealand's own 'imperial' ambitions, and its awkward interactions with 'empire' over time? This volume argues that New Zealand could assert its own forms of 'imperialism', both 'at home', and also in the Pacific, Australia, and Antarctica, and that New Zealanders have constantly grappled with ideas of and about imperialism, from a range of vantage points.