NOT IN NARROW SEAS: The Economic History of Aotearoa New Zealand.

AuthorMcGhie, Gerald
PositionBook review

NOT IN NARROW SEAS: The Economic History of Aotearoa New Zealand

Author: Brian Easton

Published by: Victoria University Press, Wellington, 2020, 683pp, $60.

Not in Narrow Seas makes an important contribution to the history of New Zealand centred on the economy. Brian Easton sees the economy as near the heart of any society for, as he argues, 'it produces the goods and services that sustain the life of everyone within it'. In doing so, economist Easton says in a lengthy epilogue, it also shapes that life, 'sometimes even in areas that do not involve economic activity'.

Easton covers a large canvas. He focuses on the environment, on technical change and on globalisation, yet does not ignore the diversity of social groups and regional differences. New Zealand histories, he says, tend to begin with the first steps of migrants on these shores. Not only did the shores exist long before, but migrants arrived with cultural baggage accumulated in the generations before migration. So he looks at where the first Maori came from and delves back into the 17th century to understand 19th century British migrants as well as to describe the last 200 years of the Pacific Islands where an increasing proportion of New Zealand's population comes from.

The Europeans brought the market economy to New Zealand with its inevitable pattern of boom and bust. But by 1845 the whale catch had fallen to a point where it could no longer carry the colony. The question was what would? Wool turned out to be a valuable staple. But it was refrigeration that provided the long-term answer to New Zealand's economic stability. The first frozen lamb was shipped in 1882, leading to a boom in sheep farming; a dairy boom, also based on refrigerated exports, came a little later. Society changed as towns grew into cities. Politics reflected the change with the rise of the Liberals, the early welfare state and then the Labour Party. Women achieved a more prominent place in public life but boom times under the Liberal Party led to a long period of stagnation as overseas prices fell. Easton's chapter on the Great Depression, which struck in the early 1930s, provides a useful comment on how it unfolded, how we compared to other countries and gives a summary of the Kiwi experience.

In a wider context and as an indication of New Zealand's continuing attachment to the imperial centre, the leadership in 1909 donated a battlecruiser to Britain. As the First World War turned into a contest among...

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