Battlefields of the New Zealand Wars: A Visitors Guide

Battlefields of the New Zealand Wars: A Visitor's Guide

David Green 2010, Penguin, ISBN 9780143204183 208pp.

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The Blurb:

The New Zealand Wars of the nineteenth century still cast a long shadow over the twenty-first. Three decades of fighting across much of the North Island ensured Pakeha rule, but also enabled Maori survival.

This guidebook, heavily illustrated with photographs, artwork and maps, takes you on a journey of discovery, both by car and foot, through the often-ignored history that surrounds us.

Each chapter presents a guided tour of the theatre of war. The battlefields are located and described; the conflicts placed in context. These descriptions bring to life the bitter struggles that occurred.

These special places are where history happened, and should be remembered in honour of all those who fought to create our New Zealand.

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Mini Review

This is a POP page. It represents a Personal OPinion. That opinion is the sole responsiblity of the author and not the website!

Green takes readers on a journey through the sites of the wars, dealing with the main areas in their chronological order based on when conflict started. Within each area the visit is in terms of a trip to all of the sites in a logical sequence by road. Not all of the places featured are sites of the wars, some are relevant places for a visitor - such as Puke Ariki in Taranaki. These extra sites are well chosen. With the information on the sites enough information is gvien on the conflicts overall to place the sites and the fighting in context. The accounts are balanced and sober with little of the dearing do that has sometimes afflicted like works in the past. The maps show site locations in a regional view relating sites to each other and major modern roads, but they do little as either a modern road map for visitors or to set the sites in their historical geography.

Will a user of the book follow the routes proposed? I suspect not - a general reader is likely to want to see other things as well and perhaps pick and choose from the sites here. It is a book for the general reader rather than an archaeologist - still the Wellington section had an existing site I had not heard of even if most of the sites covered there no longer have any surface remains. The historical illustrations are well chosen - the modern ones less so. There are rather too many war memorials and too many of the ground level photographs are uninformative. There is a bibliography of historical accounts and fiction and also a filmography. The reader though is not directed to sources for the individual sites.

Overall - worthy enough - but perhaps a little dull?

GL

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