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History of New Zealand and its Inhabitants is the English language translation of a lively, opinionated book by Dom Felice Vaggioli,
an Italian monk who was one of the first Benedictine priests to be sent to Aotearoa NZ. While working in Auckland, the Coromandel and Gisborne during the years 1879–1887,
he observed lifestyles and customs and gathered information about the country's history, including first-hand accounts of the signing of Te Tiriti and the conflicts in Taranaki and Waikato.
Back in Italy, he published his history of New Zealand in 1896, only to have most of this Italian edition destroyed by the British because Vaggioli,
who was not backward in coming forward with his anti-Protestant and anti-British views, was so critical of the colonialist project. The book nearly disappeared completely, but a few copies survived.
About a century later, John Crockett was doing some research in the archive of the Auckland Catholic Diocese when the archivist showed him an old book in Italian – Storia della Nuova Zelanda by Dom Felice Vaggioli.
Crockett realised he was holding a unique interpretation of the impact of colonisation on Maori and set about translating the book into English.
Crockett's vivid translation of Vaggioli's work was published by Otago University Press in 2000. Out of print for several years, that edition is hard to find and much sought-after.
Now reprinted with a striking new cover, the 2023 edition of History of New Zealand and its Inhabitants brings Vaggioli's unique document into the public eye once more.
This lively and sometimes controversial account of prominent historical events in nineteenth-century Aotearoa New Zealand provides a remarkable resource for people interested in Maori–Pakeha relations or the history of colonisation.
NZ$50.00 + delivery.
The story of Te Ra - the last known customary Maori sail - weaves together our past, present and future. Skillfully woven from harakeke more than 200 years ago, Te Ra has been held for many years in the British Museum in London. Now, Te Ra returns to Aotearoa New Zealand.
Lyrically written by Ariana Taikao as if from the point of view of Te Ra and beautifully illustrated by Mat Tait, this book commemorates the homecoming of one of our oldest taoka, an ancestor of our nation.
NZ$25.00 + delivery.
This is the biography of the mighty ceremonial waka taua Ngatokimatawhaorua that rests on the Treaty Grounds at Waitangi. The inspiration for its construction came from Te Puea Herangi. In the late 1930s the Waikato leader held a dream to build seven waka taua for the 1940 centennial commemorations at Waitangi.
By 1937 two waka had been commissioned. Carved in Northland under the guidance of Pita Heperi (Te Tai Tokerau) and Piri Poutapu (Waikato), Ngatokimatawhaorua was one of them. But it was to be many decades before the true power of the waka to inspire a people was realised. In 1974 Ngatokimatawhaorua was refurbished by the late Sir Heke-nuku-mai-nga-iwi 'Hec' Busby for relaunching during Waitangi Day ceremonies. It was then that Te Puea's dream turned into reality.
By 1990, The Year of the Waka, 22 waka and their 2000 crew gathered at Waitangi. Ngatokimatawhaorua and others became symbols of Maori unity and pride and an important part of the renaissance of the traditions of carving and voyaging around Aotearoa and beyond. Ngatoki is the story of this great canoe, the longest to be built in modern times, and those who carved and crewed it over the last 80 years.
NZ$50.00 + delivery.
John Thomson, aged 17, leaves Scotland bound for Port Chalmers, New Zealand in 1861.
In this book first published in 1912, he describes his experiences; as a ‘new chum’ on the Otago goldfields in 1862;
his philosophical discussions with Te Whiti-o-Rongomai at Parihaka; and his ocean voyages under sail around the south coast of NZ and across the world’s great oceans.
His description of life at sea including his encounters with whalers, pirates, and sealers culminates in the four months he and the crew of the Bencleugh spent shipwrecked on sub-Antarctic Macquarie Island in the winter of 1877.
The introduction by Rosy Fenwicke backgrounds the man, his family and why they left Scotland for an unknown land on the other side of the world.
Placed in context alongside this story, is the history of Southern Maori up to and including the arrival of the first Scottish settlers of Otago, New Zealand.
NZ$45.00 + delivery.
After Abel Tasman’s visit of 1642 New Zealand remained an enigmatic coastline tentatively drawn on most mas of the Pacific. For one hundred and twenty-seven years no European ships ventured near. Then in December 1769 came two ships on unrelated voyages of discovery. Beating up the eastern coast towards North Cape as James Cook’s Endeavour with her well-fed, well-disciplined, scurvy-free crew; only seventy miles away, sailing along the western shore, was Jean de Surville’s St Jean Baptiste, driven there by sickness, misfortune and desperation.
Their meeting, so incredible, yet now so probable, almost inevitable, was not to be. The storm that blew the St Jean Baptiste up to the cape blew the Endeavour out of sight of land long enough for the two to pass. When the Endeavour struggled back to the coast it was as empty and desolate as ever.
Cook sailed on to fame; de Surville to death and almost complete oblivion. His stay among the Maori of Doubtless Bay has sometimes received brief, often inaccurate, mention from historians, he himself condemned as a kidnapper, but it is as though the French ship had appeared suddenly out of the mist and disappeared again as soon as she left New Zealand shores. Yet the story of this expedition in search of a fabulous South Seas Eldorado is as dramatic as fiction.
NZ$40.00 + delivery.
“…Christmas Day 1847 we were in a gale of a wind in the Bay of Biscay, the ship being deeply laden made rather bad weather of it. One of the boats was struck by a heavy sea and smashed and the First mate had his leg broken. The Cook…told me that I would never see my mother again…”
So began the adventures of Captain Henry Rose, who went to sea as a 14-year-old apprentice and rose to command some of the fastest clipper ships in the world. He sailed the trade routes between England and China, the West Indies and the American seaboard carrying soldiers and horses, slaves, coolies and convicts. He took part in the tea clipper races of the 1860s, and he captained the immigrant ship Merope on her record-breaking voyage across the Southern Ocean to New Zealand.
Henry joined the newly-formed New Zealand Shipping Company in 1873, relocating with his family from London to become NZSC marine superintendent for the colony. He later joined the newly-commissioned Wellington Harbour Board and played a major role in developing harbour facilities here.
Driven by the Wind is based on a memoir Captain Rose wrote for his family in 1911. It has been extensively researched and expanded and is published at the behest of his great grandson.
NZ$50.00 + delivery.
Patrick Norton was 20 years old when he appeared before the judge at County Galway on a charge of theft. Convicted and sentenced, he was transported to New South Wales in 1810 and never returned to his native Ireland.
This detailed and meticulously-researched narrative describes the seven-month voyage of the convict ship Providence from Cove of Cork to Sydney Harbour, the serving out of Norton’s seven-year sentence and his career as a sailor and whaler. He crewed on coastal trading vessels, faced the dangers of the southern ocean on sealing ships and then became a pioneer settler and shore whaler at Te Awaiti in the Marlborough Sounds. A decade before the Treaty of Waitangi was signed, legendary whalers such as Patrick Norton, James Heberley, Jacky Guard, Joseph Thoms, William Keenan, John Love and Jimmy Jackson lived and worked with Maori under the fierce control of Ngati Toa chief Te Rauparaha.
Author Don Wilson, who descends from Patrick and Tangitu Norton and other Te Awaiti pioneers, traces their life and times and those of their descendants, the grandsons who went whaling at Campbell Island and fought in World War One and the great grandson who harpooned the last whale in 1964.
NZ$50.00 + delivery.
One of the most controversial figures in 20th Century Pacific History, Count Felix Von Luckner arrived in New Zealand in 1917 as a Prisoner of War, and as such, had to be protected from outraged members of the Public as anti-German sentiment was at a peak. However, his gentlemanly conduct towards all the hundreds of British and Allied crewmen he captured during his daring sea raids and his audaciuos escape from Motuihe Island (to the embarrassment of the New Zealand Authorities) turned him into a folk hero.
In this comprehensive and extremely readable history, James Bade seperates the fact from the fiction and delivers an authorative, even-handed examination of the 'Sea Devil' - Pirate of the Pacific and daring swashbuckling Folk Hero.
NZ$50.00 + delivery.
Two special commissioners were sent to either close the venture down or move it elsewhere, and a bitter struggle developed, with Charles Enderby refusing to admit defeat and Governor Sir George Grey reluctantly becoming involved. Nevertheless, the settlement collapsed and the few Maori settlers on the islands, who had preceded and benefited from the colonists' presence, left soon after.
Little trace of the colony remains, and the Auckland Islands are much as they were before Charles Enderby's arrival: uninhabited, isolated, wild, and beautiful, and now of World Heritage status.
NZ$50.00 + delivery.
Set against a broad sweep of European and Pacific history, this comprehensive new biography of explorer Jules Sébastien César Dumont d’Urville (1790–1842) reveals his life and times as never before. Dumont d’Urville (1790–1842) is one of the most famous explorers of the age of sail, an exceptionally erudite navigator who has been called France’s Captain Cook. D’Urville cultivated a profound engagement not only with maritime exploration but also with botany, entomology, ethnography and the diverse languages of the world. He lived through a tumultuous period of revolution, territorial expansion and scientific discovery. As a young ensign he was decorated for his pivotal part in the acquisition of the famous Vénus de Milo.
This book also surveys d’Urville’s scientific contribution and the plant and animal species he collected. And it discusses his conceptualisation of the peoples of Pacific—it was d’Urville who coined the terms ‘Melanesia’ and ‘Micronesia’. D’Urville made an invaluable contribution to Pacific exploration as well as to the ethnography and natural history of Australia and New Zealand.
Using primary documents that have long been overlooked by other historians, including D'Urville's personal journal, author Edward Duyker charts the multiple facets of d’Urville: his passionate but emotionally fraught marriage; his scientific legacy in the Pacific, Australia, New Zealand and Antarctica and his secret orders to search for the site for a French penal colony in the Antipodes.
This is an unrivalled biographical work, fully encompassing the private and public world of this indubitably larger than life figure.
NZ$70.00 + delivery.
NZ$90.00 + delivery.
Long before Western man ‘discovered’ them, the People of the Sea, as many inhabitants of the South Pacific islands called themselves, had a vibrant, socially sophisticated culture in which travel on water played an essential part.
For sixty-five years James Wharram has designed, built, and sailed craft of Polynesian double canoe form, demonstrating with them that the sea, far from being a barrier between the islands, is their highway.
The ocean voyages of James and his team culminated in their circumnavigation in the stunning 63ft Spirit of Gaia, during which they explored the lands and cultures of their craft’s spiritual home — the Polynesian islands.
About the Author: James Wharram’s life was changed forever when, in his early twenties, he saw Thor Heyerdahl’s film of the Kon Tiki voyage, and then encountered a book on Polynesian double canoe sailing craft.
He determined to disprove Heyerdahl’s assertion that Polynesia could have been settled only from South America, and not from south-east Asia,
which would require craft more sophisticated than a balsa raft.
He has dedicated his working life to demonstrating the seaworthiness, windward ability and practicality of the Polynesian double canoe form, and has probably sailed more sea miles in craft of this pattern — all to his own design — than any other person.
NZ$50.00 + delivery.
The arrival of the Polynesian people in Aotearoa was the final step in a series of remarkable voyages which saw them touch every spot of land through out the South Pacific.
Much information has been passed down about the waka and their journeys, but this knowledge has never before been combined into onbe book. Nga waka o Nehera fills a major gap in New Zealand historical reference literature by bringing together for the first time the written traditions of those waka remembered as having voyaged to Aotearoa.
This book features:
NZ$50.00 + delivery.
The sublime accomplishments of James Cook have cast a long shadow over the period of Global seafaring and exploration by the French in the 18th Century, during which time Europeans first visited and charted (most) of the islands of the South Pacific, but as historian James Belich put it: ‘There is little doubt that Cook has been emphasised to the unfair exclusion of the massive French contribution to European knowledge of New Zealand.’
This book seeks to redress this balance, drawing in the main on primary sources (both here and in France, and including primary research from original French documents never before translated into English) and scholarship from key researchers in this field.
As well as fascinating descriptions of what the French saw when they travelled around NZ’s coast, Lee focuses on the key characters of this age of French exploration (names such as de Surville, du Fresne, La Perouse, D’Entrecasteaux, Duperrey, Freycinet, D’Urville and Lesson), their relationships with Maori and the desire of France to complete with the British in the Pacific.
NZ$70.00 + delivery.
AWARDS AND COMMENDATIONS:
Congratulations Andrew. What a fantastic achievement.
The Voyaging Achievements of Maori and their Polynesian Ancestors.
Pathway of the Birds explores a neglected epoch of world history, one that saw Polynesians expand their territory across the world's largest ocean in one of the most expansive and rapid phases of human migration in prehistory.
Were Polynesians adept at navigating return voyages or had they settled the Pacific in a more random fashion? In an effort to find out, Crowe surveys a wealth of evidence from surprisingly diverse sources, including archaeology, palaeoecology, genetics, ethnology and linguistics, and presents it here in the context of Polynesian poetry, the long-distance migration of birds, non-instrument navigation, and wind tunnel experiments. From this, a spell-binding picture emerges of a people who have been deprived of recognition for some of their most illustrious achievements.
With an engaging narrative, integrating a diversity of research and viewpoints, and over 400 maps, diagrams, photographs and illustrations, Crowe conveys the skills, innovation, resourcefulness and courage of the people that drove this extraordinary feat of maritime expansion
NZ$50.00 + delivery.
From a variety of sources, including the diaries of passengers on a number of emigrant ships - mostly sailing vessels but also a few steamships - the author has told the story largely in the words of the participants themselves, thus giving a unique insight into what life was like during the long voyage (up to five months) down the Atlantic, around the Cape of Good Hope and through the storms of the southern ocean to New Zealand.
The reasons for emigrating, the tearful farewells, the onslaught of seasickness, quarrels , epidemics, storms, fires, shipwrecks, shipboard activities, the fun of "crossing the line" into the southern hemisphere, and finally the excitement of viewing for the first time the land that they had gone through so much discomfort to reach - all are told in highly readable, if not entertaining, way that exposes the reality of life on an emigrant ship in the days of sail.
NZ$45.00 + delivery.
NZ$40.00 + delivery.
This book offers a straightforward account of how and why Polynesian seafarer's made their journey south to New Zealand. The first part of the book discusses the origins of the voyages, legends of the homeland and the explorer Kupe, traditional Polynesian navigation techniques, and the preservation of seafaring knowledge by Maori. The second part of the book presents a gripping account of the canoe Hawaiki-nui retracing the route from Tahiti to New Zealand in 1985 using traditional voyaging methods.
Richly illustrated with photos, maps and drawings, this is an essential guide to a great story of discovery.
NZ$40.00 + delivery.
A Maori war canoe being paddled at full speed is an awesome sight. Thanks to the renaissance in canoe building, more and more traditional waka taua are on the waterways, and feature in major events like the Queen's Jubilee. Waka Taua gives a concise introduction to all aspects of the war canoe: its history, recent revival, types and variants, phase of building, parts of the waka, crew responsibilities and paddling techniques. With numerous historical and contemporary photographs and drawings, this easy-to-read book is the perfect reference for these amazing craft.
NZ$35.00 + delivery.
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