The Lives of Colonial Objects

by Annabel Cooper (Editor), Lachy Paterson (Editor), Angela Wanhalla (Editor)

The Lives of Colonial Objects is a sumptuously illustrated and highly readable book about things, and the stories that unfold when we start to investigate them. In this collection of 50 essays the authors, including historians, archivists, curators and Maori scholars, have each chosen an object from New Zealand’s colonial past. Some are treasured family possessions such as a kahu kiwi, a music album or a grandmother’s travel diary, and their stories have come down through families. Some, like the tauihu of a Maori waka, a Samoan kilikiti bat or a flying boat, are housed in museums. Others—a cannon, a cottage and a country road—inhabit public spaces but they too turn out to have unexpected histories. Things invite us into the past through their tangible, tactile and immediate in this collection they serve as 50 paths into New Zealand’s colonial history.

Genres: History

376 pages, Paperback

First published October 1, 2015

Reviews

[Thomas Isern · Rating 4 out of 5]

The serious treatment of objects, artifacts, has spread beyond the ranks of curators and the field of material culture studies to involve many historians who recognize the compelling power of objects in historical narrative. This work demonstrates such power and appeal, although the whole may be less than the sum of the parts. It is an edited work, bringing together contributions of many authors, and there's the rub. In the first place, in my opinion, the focus is diffused and the power diminished by departure from the model of one-scholar-examining-one-object. Some essays treat classes of artifacts. Others treat paper documents, photographs, or other two-dimensional stuff. Yes, technically and intellectually, these also are artifacts, but still--focus. Some treat buildings or landscape features, and again, yes, but no. Second, although the introduction and the epilogue are good, they do not quite make the full case for artifacts in the broader intellectual picture. My favorite essays are the ones that treat artifacts that are products of hand craftsmanship and are invested with story embedding them in personal or cultural context. Steve Austin's essay on the eagle lectern made by William Ah Gee, for instance.