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This monumental book explores New Zealand’s most uncomfortable, and therefore forgotten, war on New Zealand soil, a war fought between British forces, settlers, and the Waikato tribes. Its closest comparator in Australian history is Van Diemen’s Land’s Black War. Yet this discombobulating conflict also inspired New Zealand’s first film, Rewi’s Last Stand, a silent movie in 1925 that was remade as a talkie in 1940. This Kiwi culture classic was based on the battle of Orakau of 1864, the best known episode in the Waikato War, which O’Malley argues spurred the belief that New Zealand enjoyed the best race relations in the world. From the 1970s, with the Māori revival, the Pakeha version of Orakau could no longer be sustained, as James Belich also demonstrated in his revisionist history of the New Zealand Wars (1986).

Item Type:	Review Single Work
Keywords:	Great War, New Zealand, Waikato
Research Division:	History, Heritage and Archaeology
Research Group:	Historical studies
Research Field:	New Zealand history
Objective Division:	Culture and Society
Objective Group:	Understanding past societies
Objective Field:	Understanding New Zealand's past
UTAS Author:	Mein Smith, P (Professor Philippa Mein Smith)
ID Code:	130517
Year Published:	2017
Deposited By:	Office of the School of Humanities
Deposited On:	2019-01-30
Last Modified:	2019-01-30
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