A short history of my homeland, Aotearoa

A little bit of background📃

I returned to Wellington, the place of my birth, in November 2025. This was a homecoming of sorts, as I hadn't been back to my homeland for ten years and not to Wellington since I was a teenager. I wanted to come back to Australia with a book for my personal library on the history of my homeland. Browsing in a reputable and comprehensive bookshop in Wellington, Gordon McLauchlan's book was the only one of the sort I could find.

A short history of New Zealand | First published in 2004 | New edition published in 2014 | Read May 2026

The author✏️

Gordon McLauchlan was born in Dunedin in 1931 and died in January 2020, a few days after his 89th birthday. He was a well-known New Zealand writer, cultural critic and social historian and became a popular media personality through his radio and television work. He wrote several books about the social history of New Zealand and was appointed an Officer of the New Zealand Order of Merit in the 2019 Queen's Birthday Honours for his services to historical research.

The subject matterℹ️

A short history of New Zealand makes a claim to indeed posses the ingredients as advertised on the tin. The book is only 220 pages long, with sixteen chapters briefly covering the origins of the land and its original inhabitants and the development of New Zealand from discovery in 1769 to the formation of the settler colony we know today.

My thoughts on the book💭

I had high hopes for the book given the author's pedigree. It started off quite well and I was completely immersed in the opening chapters on the origins of Maori and of the discovery and colonisation of the country by Captain James Cook. However, the book rapidly descends into a political textbook on white men, and the Maori and female voice disappears. As the book progresses, it becomes increasingly drier, almost completely devoid of social, natural or cultural history. I was baffled by my reading journey, especially given New Zealand's place in women's suffrage and its three female Prime Ministers.

I understand that the book is a "short" history, but colonised Aotearoa IS a short history. That said, there is so much richness to explore and a unique story that springs from the 1840 Treaty of Waitangi. The country's cultural history since colonisation is a very different story from my adopted home in Australia, and it was such a shame to see the book descend into a description of successive governments and their politicians. The book also came to an abrupt end, with no summary of the social, cultural and political history of the country nor any insight into that history to leave the reader with some final messaging.

My key learnings🪴

It felt like I was back in the place of my childhood when I started reading the book, with a timely reminder of the history of the country in which I was born and grew up. The book was also a nice reminder of why I've always felt so British - New Zealand is a much more British country than Australia, settled as an outpost of the motherland rather than a place to dump unwanted convicts from overcrowded prisons. The visibility and warrior nature of Maori culture is also something I notice is so different to the indigenous culture of my adopted country. It was frustrating, then, to see that culture disappear as the book wore on. And to see women's voices largely absent. So, my key takeaway is that a bunch of crusty old white men were the most responsible for the development of the nation. Pfft.

In sum📝

I struggled to rate A short history of New Zealand as it started off with such promise. I'm giving it a generous three stars for that promising start. There's plenty of factual information, but the book surprisingly lacks heart for something written by a social and cultural historian. The Interwebs tell me that Michael King's The Penguin history of New Zealand is much better. Such a shame then, that it wasn't in the bookshop when I was browsing on a lovely spring afternoon in Wellington.

Rating: ⭐⭐⭐