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New Zealand Wars #1
Season of the Jew
A New Zealand Maori leads his people leads his people in a revolt against the colonial power.
496 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1986
6 people are currently reading
635 people want to read
About the author
Maurice Shadbolt
39 books22 followersMaurice Shadbolt was a major New Zealand fiction writer and playwright. He published numerous novels and collections of short fiction, as well as novellas, non-fiction, and a play. His writing often drew on his own family history. Shadbolt won several fellowships and almost every major literary prize, some more than once. He was capped Honorary Doctor of Literature by the University of Auckland in 1997.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 46 reviews
February 10, 2018
One of those trilogies to reread ... definitely ... would like to have traveled through the country described. Did hitch-hike North Island in 1968. Couldn't get to South Island, then, due to a ferry strike.
First read Shadbolt's non-fiction, about islands in the Pacific. In "Season," he showed me an era of New Zealand history that is reflected in the following copied L A Times review :
"'The Season of the Jew' is a novel about the war between the English settlers in New Zealand and a band of Maori tribesmen who rebelled in the 1860s against the growing colonial occupation of their lands.
In form, it is a superior, though rather clogged, example of the historical fiction genre. What gives it a special quality is that it possesses a passion as well as a story. The passion is the author's quarrel with history or, at least, with historical fashions.
It is not, of course, an American reader's quarrel. And yet there is a benefit in it. It provides energy to a story that might otherwise seem remote and overdetailed.
Maurice Shadbolt, the author, makes it clear throughout and particularly in a series of notes at the end that he rejects the version of history that proclaimed the English in New Zealand to be the benevolent bearers of civilization. But he also rejects more recent versions that stress the virtues of Maori resistance and understate the cruelty that went with it. Historical judgment, as he puts it in the mouth of his protagonist toward the end of the book, is simply an argument over "whose arse is blacker."
First read Shadbolt's non-fiction, about islands in the Pacific. In "Season," he showed me an era of New Zealand history that is reflected in the following copied L A Times review :
"'The Season of the Jew' is a novel about the war between the English settlers in New Zealand and a band of Maori tribesmen who rebelled in the 1860s against the growing colonial occupation of their lands.
In form, it is a superior, though rather clogged, example of the historical fiction genre. What gives it a special quality is that it possesses a passion as well as a story. The passion is the author's quarrel with history or, at least, with historical fashions.
It is not, of course, an American reader's quarrel. And yet there is a benefit in it. It provides energy to a story that might otherwise seem remote and overdetailed.
Maurice Shadbolt, the author, makes it clear throughout and particularly in a series of notes at the end that he rejects the version of history that proclaimed the English in New Zealand to be the benevolent bearers of civilization. But he also rejects more recent versions that stress the virtues of Maori resistance and understate the cruelty that went with it. Historical judgment, as he puts it in the mouth of his protagonist toward the end of the book, is simply an argument over "whose arse is blacker."
October 26, 2014
This book is surprisingly little known, for its quality. Especially since the topic it covers - New Zealand and the Maori-Colonialist conflict - is not covered by heaps of other authors.
I got the recommendation for it from the website of the author Mary Doria Russell, and I can certainly see why she would enjoy that book. There is in it a certain type of incredibly witty dialogue that manages to get in large amounts of sarcasm in a single sentence that reminds me of her books, as well as the kind of underhanded cleverness you see in Terry Pratchett's dialogue. The story itself follows Te Kooti, the Maori merchant who, due to various misdeeds and offenses of the colonialists, turns fanatic, and Captain (initially Lieutenant) Fairweather, who begins the book as a disillusioned soldier,decommissioned because of "excessive humanitarianism", and ends it as... not all that different from Kooti himself.
The best parts of the book are the dialogue, which can carry an amazing amount of subtext, high quality of writing, and a level of moral uncertainty that pulls the book from cliche or "political absolution for colonialism" to something much better.
I got the recommendation for it from the website of the author Mary Doria Russell, and I can certainly see why she would enjoy that book. There is in it a certain type of incredibly witty dialogue that manages to get in large amounts of sarcasm in a single sentence that reminds me of her books, as well as the kind of underhanded cleverness you see in Terry Pratchett's dialogue. The story itself follows Te Kooti, the Maori merchant who, due to various misdeeds and offenses of the colonialists, turns fanatic, and Captain (initially Lieutenant) Fairweather, who begins the book as a disillusioned soldier,decommissioned because of "excessive humanitarianism", and ends it as... not all that different from Kooti himself.
The best parts of the book are the dialogue, which can carry an amazing amount of subtext, high quality of writing, and a level of moral uncertainty that pulls the book from cliche or "political absolution for colonialism" to something much better.
February 11, 2008
This book should be cliched but isn't. The main character is a British soldier disillusioned with the empire and its treatment of the native people of New Zealand, and a reluctant hero. Every comment he makes is a sarcastic attack on the colonials and the empire. From this description you would think you've read this a hundred times before, but you'd be wrong. Through sheer brilliance of writing, it works, and you feel as if this is how it should have been done all along.
The plot fizzed out a little toward the end, I thought, which is why I have to give it four stars instead of five. But this is a book you read for the style, and for that it is well worth it.
The plot fizzed out a little toward the end, I thought, which is why I have to give it four stars instead of five. But this is a book you read for the style, and for that it is well worth it.
July 25, 2024
I need to stop reading books about wars
September 8, 2017
My all time favourite of Shadbolt's series of historical novels. This is a real eye opener in more ways than one. It sheds light on both Maori tribal structure and how the armed forces operated in early New Zealand. This is one of the sadist stories I have ever read but don't let that put you off, there is a certain joy in knowing Hamiora's story was told.
February 20, 2019
Maurice Shadbolt is (or was) a great writer, far less well known outside his native New Zealand than he deserves. His especial forte are novels set in the era of early settlement and the Maori wars of NZ. Season of the Jew is, in my view, his masterwork, a beautifully crafted tale of a damaged, world-weary somewhat drunken ex-Army officer - George Fairweather - and the spellbinding and erudite Maori Messiah he meets, Te Kooti, who then goes on to lead the most effective Maori uprising of the conflict, in the remote fastnesses of the Urewera mountains. The title of the book is drawn from the Old Testament imagery which Te Kooti invoked to attract supporters to him, likening them to the Biblical Israelites in the wilderness. The story focusses around the corrupt and struggling colony at aptly-named Poverty Bay and how Fairweather, despite a deep affection and respect for the Maori people, is forced against his will into conflict with Te Kooti, and ultimately himself, and is destroyed in attempting to defend a young Maori rebel from the brutal hand of colonial justice. In its lyrical depiction of the wild New Zealand forests, its haunting love story and its beautifully delineated characters, this is a great book by any measure. It evokes a series of classics from Last of the Mohicans to Breaker Morant in its cry against the repression and rough justice of European colonialism, but does so better, for my money. Well worth reading, especially if you know little about NZ's fascinating history.
December 15, 2025
Maurice Shadbolt weaves, within the vague confines of historical accuracy, a vivid, complex, sobering and wearying tale of Poverty Bay, Te Urewera, Te Kooti’s war, and more broadly, Aotearoa New Zealand in it’s infancy. The liberties Shadbolt has taken in writing this tale as historical fiction serve to amplify its message: that of the violence, treachery, and anguish that our nation was born out of. This expansive retelling of the country’s savage beginnings is succinctly summed up with the preface of the book—a passage taken from The Merchant of Venice—where it reads, “If a Christian wrong a Jew, what should his sufferance be by Christian example? Why, revenge. The villainy you teach me I will execute, and it shall go hard but I will better the instruction.”
Season of the Jew sheds light on the true history of Aotearoa New Zealand, the ugly reality that our country still remains unwilling to face up to—nigh on four decades since it was first published. A commendable effort, made all the more intimate and engaging through our protagonist, George Fairweather.
Season of the Jew sheds light on the true history of Aotearoa New Zealand, the ugly reality that our country still remains unwilling to face up to—nigh on four decades since it was first published. A commendable effort, made all the more intimate and engaging through our protagonist, George Fairweather.
March 15, 2017
Just some comments. It's a long time since I read this (1990) so I'm going by what I said at the time in a diary.
Shadbolt rather curiously has the usual rider at the beginning of the book to the effect that none of the characters or situations are based on real life people, and then finishes the book with a section entitled Face and Further, which goes on to say how the main characters fared after the end of the book. Most of them were real historical personages, and did most of what Shadbolt has them do, given that he dresses it up in a fictional form.
The main character, Fairweather, is rather off-putting. Though you understand his compassion, and his later desire for revenge on Te Kooti, you often feel at a distance from him. He speaks in an epigrammatic style, almost constantly, and often you have to go back again and re-read what he said to understand it: it's so succinctly said. A large number of the conversations are in this style ˗ Fairweather isn't the only one given to this approach. It has the effect of making the people not quite alive. Their talk is often too clever by half.
The writing overall, however, is superb: the characterisation of the land is most evocative and of war, gripping. Shadbolt often uses short sharp words to great effect: a lesson to any writer wanting to get an onomatopoeic effect without using words that are unusual. Good, blunt English words.
Shadbolt rather curiously has the usual rider at the beginning of the book to the effect that none of the characters or situations are based on real life people, and then finishes the book with a section entitled Face and Further, which goes on to say how the main characters fared after the end of the book. Most of them were real historical personages, and did most of what Shadbolt has them do, given that he dresses it up in a fictional form.
The main character, Fairweather, is rather off-putting. Though you understand his compassion, and his later desire for revenge on Te Kooti, you often feel at a distance from him. He speaks in an epigrammatic style, almost constantly, and often you have to go back again and re-read what he said to understand it: it's so succinctly said. A large number of the conversations are in this style ˗ Fairweather isn't the only one given to this approach. It has the effect of making the people not quite alive. Their talk is often too clever by half.
The writing overall, however, is superb: the characterisation of the land is most evocative and of war, gripping. Shadbolt often uses short sharp words to great effect: a lesson to any writer wanting to get an onomatopoeic effect without using words that are unusual. Good, blunt English words.
October 7, 2010
Te Kooti, banished to the Chatham Islands in 1860s, sees his people as like the Israelites of the Old Testament. He steals a ship, returns to Poverty Bay, and carries out a series of massacres. George Fairweather, late of the British Imperial Army, and now a lowly painter/traveller, finds himself embroiled in the conflict.
Shadbolt takes special care in his descriptions of landscapes and weather - by contrast, physical description of characters are rare. The text is enjoyably dialogue heavy, the dialogue itself spare yet elaborate - arguably rather unrealistic but rich and occasionally funny.
He is not shy is describing the atroctites carried out by Maori (and not just Kooti's), nor is he at all complimentary about the colonial government. Perhaps Shadbolt is wondering at how a relatively good nation was born out of such inauspcious beginnings.
Grim, contemplative, yet also funny and action packed - a page turner.
Shadbolt takes special care in his descriptions of landscapes and weather - by contrast, physical description of characters are rare. The text is enjoyably dialogue heavy, the dialogue itself spare yet elaborate - arguably rather unrealistic but rich and occasionally funny.
He is not shy is describing the atroctites carried out by Maori (and not just Kooti's), nor is he at all complimentary about the colonial government. Perhaps Shadbolt is wondering at how a relatively good nation was born out of such inauspcious beginnings.
Grim, contemplative, yet also funny and action packed - a page turner.
May 11, 2017
Great read, humourous in places. Shadbolt is a natural storyteller. Fascinating in parts - great to learn about Poverty Bay and Te Kooti. I did struggle to deal with the semi-fictional nature of the book. While I want to understand everything about Te Kooti and the colonists, at times I realised the story had slipped into pure fiction and i became disheartened. Fortunately Shadbolt writes beautifully so it is pleasant reading when the author develops characters and explores relationships. I just found at these times I yearned for the true historical facts, in particular I became fascinated with Maori spiritualism and culture.
June 15, 2015
It's 3.5 to 4.0. The story is one most NZers know but there are many details and less well known aspects of the story here.
At times the writing is dense and the dialogue overly mannered. I lost my way in the sections about the fighting and some characters are insufficiently drawn.
I like Fairweather but never felt close to him. And I never really got to know Meriana.
Aspects of the story are heartbreaking and alarming but it's a background to the way things have been and still are in some respects in New Zealand.
I was more involved in the end of the story than the middle.
At times the writing is dense and the dialogue overly mannered. I lost my way in the sections about the fighting and some characters are insufficiently drawn.
I like Fairweather but never felt close to him. And I never really got to know Meriana.
Aspects of the story are heartbreaking and alarming but it's a background to the way things have been and still are in some respects in New Zealand.
I was more involved in the end of the story than the middle.
March 16, 2017
A really interesting take on Te Kooti's War in 1868-69 New Zealand. The bulk of the novel consists of dialogue which can drag a little bit at times, but the central character, George Fairweather, is compellingly drawn: a cynical wit who gets dragged into a cycle of revenge against his better judgement. Most of the characters are based on real historical figures. At the time, in the 1980s, there hadn't been a definitive historical account of Te Kooti. I'm keen to read Judith Binney's book on him published din the 1990s now.
January 4, 2023
Rated 8/10 Wasn't to sure when I started this as to whether I'd enjoy it. The story starts with Fairweather at the end of a campaign disagreeing with his superiors as is oft the case throughout. However once he moves on from the army and try's to live a normal life (such as is normal for the time and place) the story becomes more interesting. The characters are factual, so one has to guess as to whether their nature is true to life, but it does give you a great insight into the conflicts of the time. Maori resented the settlers who were taking over their land, settlers resented Maori who protested against their occupation, Maori resented Maori who sided with the settlers and their religion, and conversely resented those who did not convert/befriend the new settlers. Add in the British military and the local militia and things were always going to be difficult. Toss Te Kuiti into this mix and there is a recipe for disaster. Fairweathers attitude is somewhat laconic though enjoyably so for the most part as he quietly casts dispersion and derision on the military/militia commanders, though finds himself drawn/forced back into the militia himself. There is no doubts about the brutality of the time, Maori ability to mete out brutal punishment to the settlers they detested, Maoris' ability to inflict extreme cruelty on each other both in battle and Utu in longer standing hatreds, and equally the militia's harsh justice and the pompous British legal system both to their own and to Maori. Not an easy read but one that gives you an insight to one of the brutal periods of NZ history that does no favours for either side.
January 10, 2026
Fascinating story about early colonial days with magnificently written characters.
May 22, 2023
A New Zealand classic that I missed entirely whilst living there. But a friend recommended it and it was very good. Based on true, and very sad, events that occcured during the New Zealand wars, in what is now the Gisborne area around 1869.
December 3, 2018
not a particularly easy book to read, either in content or in style. after a relatively muted start Shadbolt gets less and less restrained in his depiction of violence as both sides of the conflict descend into increasingly brutal massacres; his dialogue is snappy and entertaining to read, but that does occasionally make it difficult to tell the characters apart.
Fairweather makes for an effective protagonist, never *entirely* sympathetic or detestable, who goes from disinterested outsider to irredeemably caught up first by curiosity, then by necessity, and finally by his sense of duty to his community and his need for revenge. despite all this the author generally manages to keep his hyper-competent laconic army officer from cliché, as he does with most of his other characters.
i did feel the last fifty or so pages of trial and its aftermath, while effective in their own way, seemed somewhat secondary to the overall story. though given the afterword, i also understand why Shadbolt felt he had to put them in.
Fairweather makes for an effective protagonist, never *entirely* sympathetic or detestable, who goes from disinterested outsider to irredeemably caught up first by curiosity, then by necessity, and finally by his sense of duty to his community and his need for revenge. despite all this the author generally manages to keep his hyper-competent laconic army officer from cliché, as he does with most of his other characters.
i did feel the last fifty or so pages of trial and its aftermath, while effective in their own way, seemed somewhat secondary to the overall story. though given the afterword, i also understand why Shadbolt felt he had to put them in.
December 2, 2016
Ok well first off, my dad gave me this novel so OF COURSE I am going to like it. The book is a real page-turner historical fiction about the NZ Maori wars. It is beautifully written, although somethings were lost on me due to my lack of complete military knowledge when it comes to maneuvers and such. The broad themes in the book (justice, humanity, war, vengeance) are very well done. The main character is a little too perfect for my liking, but I guess he has a flaw that is integral to the book. The sarcasm in the book is pretty funny, and I was often reading it an flashing a bit of a smile. The dry humor was a very good contrast to the carnage. Anyways, a good read.
Read
February 13, 2009Novels about the Maori Wars are perhaps uncommon, but the ones I’ve read are uncommon good. Season of the Jew is part farce, part Western shoot-‘em-up, and part Journey to Hell. The Maori Wars were an odd kind of conflict. They were essentially an Indian war, but fought in the temperate rain forests of New Zealand. They involved as much trench warfare as they did guerrilla warfare, for the Maori were advanced practitioners of both.
http://fireandsword.blogspot.com/2009...
http://fireandsword.blogspot.com/2009...
May 17, 2010
Publisher's Weekly (Friday, February 16, 1990):
"Based on a gory series of skirmishes near Wellington between 1868 and 1869, this novel combines a knockout of a war story, a tour of as yet unexploited Maori country, an account of British imperialism and a portrait of native life and customs to create a vivid pageant of colonial New Zealand," praised PW. Illustrated. (Apr.)
"Based on a gory series of skirmishes near Wellington between 1868 and 1869, this novel combines a knockout of a war story, a tour of as yet unexploited Maori country, an account of British imperialism and a portrait of native life and customs to create a vivid pageant of colonial New Zealand," praised PW. Illustrated. (Apr.)
July 10, 2010
Wonderful read! Shadbolt has an amazing handle on the English language. His ability to turn a phrase to express irony, sarcasm and emotion is a genuine delight. Well developed characters and moments where a good chuckle can change to horror of man's nature.
June 19, 2011
What is with loads of books about New Zealand and their sort of Jewishness in them? The back of this book compared to the Maori getting kicked off their land to the Jewish people in Europe. Or something like that. It was a fairly quick read, but I didn’t comprehend most of it.
Grade: N/A
Grade: N/A
January 19, 2012
Shadbolt's original and best. Te Kooti's War, and its impact on the local people, colonist and Maori. Some nasty stuff in here, but also some sweetness and light. Rated M for adult themes, war themes, horror scenes and infrequent coarse language. 4/5
August 21, 2012
wonderful book. kept me enthralled and gave me an appreciation for the incredibly higly evolved warfare of the Maori in early NZ and the interactions and relationships between tribes. nicely constructed... really wonderful.
March 13, 2014
I was looking forward to continuing my NZ historical journey with this novel. But what a disappointment, it is written like a 11 year old would, all spoken sentance, no substance.
I gave up on page 47, with no end in sight of the narrative improving.
I gave up on page 47, with no end in sight of the narrative improving.
October 20, 2014
I'm not a big fan of Shadbolt's writing style, finding it dull at times. He did inject a nice touch of dry wit at times which was refreshing, but I was hoping to gain more of an understanding of the background to the warring - and more action would've helped to increase the tempo
August 19, 2016
Worth pushing through to the end. Still a very colonial perspective on the Maori wars. It left me feeling very conflicted and not really that enlightened. But does give a background to the history of the Gisborne and Utuweras.
November 7, 2009
This book is about the end of the Maori Wars around l869. There were Maori fighting on both sides which led to some terrible dilemmas.
July 25, 2013
An inspiring book, bringing early New Zealand to life. I read this a few years back, and still remember sections of it.
May 21, 2017
Thanks, Vicki, for passing this one on. I found it challenging because I try not to read war books and history books, but actually was glad I read it. Enlightenment on that part of NZ history.
June 25, 2025
This is a better history book than novel. Direly unfortunate title aside, Shadbolt tells his story in a sort of aloof, removed tone that makes it impossible to connect with his characters. The story feels compressed, like the Interstellar soundtrack through a single earbud, into a clipped summary of what so-and-so did and said (interspersed with painfully contrived witty repartee) before we gallop off to the next snatch of summary about characters doing things in a vague and unrealised landscape. Perhaps it's more like reading a script than a novel: little is made concrete, nothing has any feeling, everything hinges on dialogue. Unfortunately the dialogue is not terribly strong.
As a history book, though, by which I mean a book in rather than a book on history, it's worth the read. Consider the time it was written.
Shadbolt published in 1987, smack in the middle of the so-called Māori Renaissance, when the Treaty, dispossession, Land Wars and decolonisation were firmly in the zeitgeist. Being Pakeha would have been on Shadbolt's shelf; Making Peoples was not far away. Māori resistance to the New Zealand government's seizure, occupation and alienation of their lands was gaining broad popular support: Dame Whina Cooper's hikoi for the return of land was barely twelve years in the past, recall. The Bastion Point occupation, which saw widespread participation by young pakeha in support of Māori anti-colonial protests, less than ten. The Springbok Tour, when pakeha alongside Māori would take pride and police batons for their anticolonial, antiracial views was just around the corner. Shadbolt was writing in a New Zealand boiling with anger about the imperial and colonial crimes of New Zealand's not-too-distant past.
Into the firmament of romanticised Māori resistance and voices raised against the violence of the empire, Shadbolt tossed a nuanced and thoughtful book. We are dropped into Te Kooti's War, an often-forgotten epilogue to the New Zealand Wars that broke out in 1868, when armed conflict had burned out elsewhere in these islands. Our main character is a British officer, disillusioned with the empire, cheerfully impressed by the Māori, concerned mainly that people—now the shooting has stopped—keep it that way. Very early in the novel Shadbolt shows his hand: two Poverty Bay settlers have had a baby, conceived and carried and born in Matawhero. The mother says to our main character, in Shadbolt's forced and unmistakably speaking-to-the-audience dialogue, "he's a New Zealander". This baby hasn't seen and might never see England, will have no reason to think of it as home. It's hard to argue that such 1860s births couldn't help but add some complicating wrinkles to the black-and-white thinking at work in Shadbolt's own 1980s.
Of course it will come as no surprise to anyone familiar with New Zealand's sordid history—so it will be a surprise to almost everybody—that the mother in question is exactly right. Te Kooti's War begins a few pages later, when the self-appointed prophet and warlord Te Kooti, returned from exile in Chatham Islands, raids Matawhero and massacres fifty-five people—the baby who had and would never see England included. A New Zealander indeed.
This was of course a real event. Emily Biggs, newborn son George and father (local militia commander) Reginald Biggs were among those mutilated and beaten to death by Te Kooti's warriors in what swiftly became known as the "Poverty Bay Massacre". Shadbolt doesn't shy away from either side of the story: it's true that Te Kooti had been exiled and faced land confiscations; upon his return to the mainland he'd been pursued by soldiers, including Biggs. Pakeha treatment of Māori was and remains in many ways unconscionable. But it's also true that Kooti's violence was extreme and indiscriminate. One does not excuse the other, and neither one ought to blot out the other; that seems to be the point Shadbolt wants to emphatically make. By 1987 the "Poverty Bay Massacre" had been sanitised to become, in official histories, a Poverty Bay incident. Now there's a smorgasbord of language in use, from "killings" to "so-called massacre". The victims of Te Kooti's slaughter at Matawhero and then subsequently in towns and villages up and down the coast are forgotten. Just as Shadbolt demonstrates, one reader's terrorist is another's hero: was Te Kooti the latest in a long and illustrious line of Māori defending their land and freedom against imperial encroachment, or just a mad dog in dire need of putting down? Certainly now, with the memory of his victims all but gone, Te Kooti has been rehabilitated as a warrior and fighter for freedom.
Perhaps most significant, and certainly most forgotten by those who insist that he was a plucky rebel standing up to the evil empire, is that from Matawhero through the rest of his murderous career butchering and torturing his way around the Bay of Plenty, most of Te Kooti's victims were Māori. Most of those who fought against him, Shadbolt shows us at length, were Māori as well. Te Kooti was never brought to justice: after his many massacres he slipped through military fingers and escaped into the central North Island, where he went on promulgating his bloodthirsty reading of the Old Testament—which conveniently allowed him both the power of life and death over others and to take as many wives as he liked, whether they liked it or not—and merrily burning Māori villages, slaughtering Māori people, and threatening to march on Te Kuiti to put the Māori king to the sword. The historically amnesiac reading of Te Kooti as some kind of anticolonial hero in that light becomes farcical; the rehabilitation and elision of a murderous tyrant's real nature, in less than a century, a lesson for the present.
It doesn't come through strongly in Shadbolt, but in our age of resurgent fascism it's hard to miss that in his willingness to slaughter his own people to get the world just how he wanted it, Te Kooti looks far less like an early incarnation of the participatory, national, anticolonial liberation movements of the later twentieth century; far more like the authoritarian butcher-dictators of the '20s through '40s.
As a history book, though, by which I mean a book in rather than a book on history, it's worth the read. Consider the time it was written.
Shadbolt published in 1987, smack in the middle of the so-called Māori Renaissance, when the Treaty, dispossession, Land Wars and decolonisation were firmly in the zeitgeist. Being Pakeha would have been on Shadbolt's shelf; Making Peoples was not far away. Māori resistance to the New Zealand government's seizure, occupation and alienation of their lands was gaining broad popular support: Dame Whina Cooper's hikoi for the return of land was barely twelve years in the past, recall. The Bastion Point occupation, which saw widespread participation by young pakeha in support of Māori anti-colonial protests, less than ten. The Springbok Tour, when pakeha alongside Māori would take pride and police batons for their anticolonial, antiracial views was just around the corner. Shadbolt was writing in a New Zealand boiling with anger about the imperial and colonial crimes of New Zealand's not-too-distant past.
Into the firmament of romanticised Māori resistance and voices raised against the violence of the empire, Shadbolt tossed a nuanced and thoughtful book. We are dropped into Te Kooti's War, an often-forgotten epilogue to the New Zealand Wars that broke out in 1868, when armed conflict had burned out elsewhere in these islands. Our main character is a British officer, disillusioned with the empire, cheerfully impressed by the Māori, concerned mainly that people—now the shooting has stopped—keep it that way. Very early in the novel Shadbolt shows his hand: two Poverty Bay settlers have had a baby, conceived and carried and born in Matawhero. The mother says to our main character, in Shadbolt's forced and unmistakably speaking-to-the-audience dialogue, "he's a New Zealander". This baby hasn't seen and might never see England, will have no reason to think of it as home. It's hard to argue that such 1860s births couldn't help but add some complicating wrinkles to the black-and-white thinking at work in Shadbolt's own 1980s.
Of course it will come as no surprise to anyone familiar with New Zealand's sordid history—so it will be a surprise to almost everybody—that the mother in question is exactly right. Te Kooti's War begins a few pages later, when the self-appointed prophet and warlord Te Kooti, returned from exile in Chatham Islands, raids Matawhero and massacres fifty-five people—the baby who had and would never see England included. A New Zealander indeed.
This was of course a real event. Emily Biggs, newborn son George and father (local militia commander) Reginald Biggs were among those mutilated and beaten to death by Te Kooti's warriors in what swiftly became known as the "Poverty Bay Massacre". Shadbolt doesn't shy away from either side of the story: it's true that Te Kooti had been exiled and faced land confiscations; upon his return to the mainland he'd been pursued by soldiers, including Biggs. Pakeha treatment of Māori was and remains in many ways unconscionable. But it's also true that Kooti's violence was extreme and indiscriminate. One does not excuse the other, and neither one ought to blot out the other; that seems to be the point Shadbolt wants to emphatically make. By 1987 the "Poverty Bay Massacre" had been sanitised to become, in official histories, a Poverty Bay incident. Now there's a smorgasbord of language in use, from "killings" to "so-called massacre". The victims of Te Kooti's slaughter at Matawhero and then subsequently in towns and villages up and down the coast are forgotten. Just as Shadbolt demonstrates, one reader's terrorist is another's hero: was Te Kooti the latest in a long and illustrious line of Māori defending their land and freedom against imperial encroachment, or just a mad dog in dire need of putting down? Certainly now, with the memory of his victims all but gone, Te Kooti has been rehabilitated as a warrior and fighter for freedom.
Perhaps most significant, and certainly most forgotten by those who insist that he was a plucky rebel standing up to the evil empire, is that from Matawhero through the rest of his murderous career butchering and torturing his way around the Bay of Plenty, most of Te Kooti's victims were Māori. Most of those who fought against him, Shadbolt shows us at length, were Māori as well. Te Kooti was never brought to justice: after his many massacres he slipped through military fingers and escaped into the central North Island, where he went on promulgating his bloodthirsty reading of the Old Testament—which conveniently allowed him both the power of life and death over others and to take as many wives as he liked, whether they liked it or not—and merrily burning Māori villages, slaughtering Māori people, and threatening to march on Te Kuiti to put the Māori king to the sword. The historically amnesiac reading of Te Kooti as some kind of anticolonial hero in that light becomes farcical; the rehabilitation and elision of a murderous tyrant's real nature, in less than a century, a lesson for the present.
It doesn't come through strongly in Shadbolt, but in our age of resurgent fascism it's hard to miss that in his willingness to slaughter his own people to get the world just how he wanted it, Te Kooti looks far less like an early incarnation of the participatory, national, anticolonial liberation movements of the later twentieth century; far more like the authoritarian butcher-dictators of the '20s through '40s.
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