Making Peoples: A History of the New Zealanders: From Polynesian Settlement to the End of the Nineteenth Century

by James Belich

The first of two planned volumes, Making Peoples begins with the Polynesian settlement of New Zealand and the development of Maori tribes in the eleventh century.

Genres: History, Nonfiction

497 pages, Hardcover

First published October 1, 1996

About the author

James Belich is a historian and academic whose writing has focused on reinterpreting nineteenth-century New Zealand history, particularly the New Zealand Wars. His scholarship on Maori and Pakeha relations has received critical recognition and his book, The New Zealand Wars and the Victorian Interpretation of Racial Conflict (1980), won the international Trevor Reed Memorial Prize for historical scholarship. He is a Professor of History, and in 2006 he was made an Officer of New Zealand Order of Merit.

Reviews

[Nara · Rating 3 out of 5]

Belich is clearly both an excellent writer and a good historian. This is probably, hmmm. A tertiary text? Like, it's not for lay reading really, it's for historians, but it's still not focused and specific enough to be a secondary text. College students doing introductory New Zealand history might have it as a course text. What I'm saying, basically, is that if you don't already have a significant amount of interest in the subject, this is not the book to interest you. That said, Belich seemed quite balanced and clear in his presentation of events (I haven't read a great deal of other NZ history, but I was impressed by his consideration of multiple interpretations on many counts) and he has a sly sense of humor that had me occasionally backtracking to snort at some outrageous phrase or other that he had sneakily stuck in among drier fare. The book was divided into two parts, "Making Maori" and "Making Pakeha." This, in the end, was not a choice that worked well for me, though I perhaps understand why it was done. I ended up devouring the first half and slogging through the second - I used it mainly as a cure for insomnia, I'm afraid. Whether this is just my own bullshit - am I fascinated with the exotic "otherness" of the Maori? Do I have an "authenticity" thing about non-European cultures? Please God let me not be That Sort Of Person - or whether I've just read far more about European colonization and frontier cultures in my life and am thus less interested in them as a whole, it made the book only half of what I'd wanted to read. And there was so much information I had trouble absorbing it in any way that would allow me to recall it organically; I will have to use the book itself for reference if I want to access any of the facts, even after reading it cover to cover. That last, however, I suspect is a function of my reading speed and absorption habits rather than anything else.

[Sophie · Rating 4 out of 5]

A very kiwi history of New Zealand

It is not like there are a lot of NZ histories to choose from. Still, I would choose Belich again.
This is pitched as an accessible, public book and it’s easy to read even before bed. However, Belich’s attempts to be a neutral narrator, and his layered use of metaphors, sometimes multiple per section in a chapter, is very confusing. The tone is informal; Belich is chatting at the bar not giving an argument at the lecture podium. This, I guess, goes down well of New Zealanders, in general skeptical of academic knowledge unless it is utterly accessible and has an explicit, immediate practical use. But when he talks, for just one example, about society as a cake rising as whole, even it’s crumbs, and then splitting into crumbs, I’m not sure it helps people understand anything.

This book spends a lot of time on the social and economic history of colonization of New Zealand. As someone only recently living in New Zealand, I found this very helpful - necessary, in fact - to understanding contemporary political debates but also the micro culture among New Zealanders. While it inevitably references prices for wool and wages, it also references letters and everyday life, across classes of white migrants (if not adequately, from the Maori perspective). Importantly, it reflects on the socio-economic situation in sending countries, largely the various British Isles, at the time. There is a useful, if brief, comparison with colonization patterns to the US and Canada.

Belich says throughout that myths matter because they become true. Which is of course true. But there is little time spent on the nature or source of New Zealand’s myths, the intellectual or political history or the ideas that powered the colonist crusaders and the migrants. Perhaps this reflects that New Zealand was not primarily an idea-driven project, compared to the US?

Belich is at pains throughout not to sound too clever, but, as in my experience with many New Zealanders, he is very thoughtful and knowledgeable. For example, and I write as a sociologist, his discussion of class in colonial New Zealand in the latter chapters is insightful, original, and he does give due attention to gender in it, for example with the importance of servants to holding higher class and escaping lower classes, of marriage and fertility patterns and so forth - all with a interest not only in the numbers but the emotions behind them.

On the vital issue of Maori experiences, the treatment, for example, of the land wars seems honest, stresses Maori resilience and certainly doesn’t portray the British Crown favorably. Though, of course, I am unable to say how accurate it is, and will have read more widely to get a Maori perspective on the colonial period. The time spent on Maori ‘colonizing’ the NZ islands seems too great to me - there is surely no comparison in terms of the violence wrought against people or the natural environment, although Belich does acknowledge that. His argument here, I think, is that Polynesian, not just European, peoples also change their ways, and are made in interaction, and reaction to other people and places. But it could be too easy read as an excuse, for, a false equivalencies to, white colonialism.

In its style, the book is a very ‘kiwi’, aiming toward consensus and balance with muted emotions. This book works very hard to provide balance, nuance and communicate the uncertainty there is about almost all aspects of the history. The loss, though, is a clear narrative arch or passionate argument.

All this is a reminder that histories are a product of history. Although Belich studied abroad, he has written as a New Zealander, and principally for New Zealanders. American and British histories (of their own nations) would more likely come, for a start, with a progressive or conservative prefix. Making Peoples is the product of the less extreme, and hysterical, politics in New Zealand, but it will aid that tone too. Certainly I shall go straight, enthusiastically, to reading the sequel on 20th Century N.Z.

[Thomas Isern · Rating 4 out of 5]

Making Peoples is the first volume of a comprehensive history of New Zealand, a treatment that goes beyond any previous historian's work. Belich has some mannerisms that can be grating (chief among them, the too-clever coinage of terms and phrases), which keep the work from being quite magisterial, but it is nonetheless impressive. Belich sorts through every familiar topic, weighing the arguments, and where there are gaps, triangulates to reach a best guess. Perhaps he tries at times to be a little too statesmanlike. For instance, the volumes closes with an assessment of Miles Fairburn's atomisation thesis. Belich tries too hard to handle the matter, when he needs to be forceful. He sounds more like a graduate student writing comps than his country's foremost historian. The genius of Belich is his ability to take a fresh look at things, to ask different questions about the past. Often the tone of the work is conversational, and that is when Belich is at his best.

My 2011 reading of Making Peoples is a re-read, preparatory to teaching the history of Australia and New Zealand again in January. The work is substantial enough to enlighten most any major topic it touches.

[Evan Micheals · Rating 4 out of 5]

Ten years ago, I bought this book out of necessity, having left my e-reader at my mother’s place before an eight-hour flight from New Zealand back to Townsville. As a New Zealander with a long-standing interest in history, I picked it up in an airport bookshop thinking it might at least keep me occupied. Once my e-reader arrived in the post, I placed the book in my “to read” pile, where it then sat untouched for a decade. Only recently did I return to it. I chose to read and review it in two parts, following Belich’s own structure of Making Māori and Making Pākehā. I am glad I did. Both halves offered insights that surprised me and challenged assumptions I had absorbed over the years.

The first half, Making Māori, had been sitting in the back of my mind for years because of Belich’s discussion of archetypes — or, as he calls them, “lenses” — through which Europeans viewed Māori. As a Jungian-aligned therapist, I found these lenses profoundly resonant. They articulated something I had sensed in the historical record but never seen expressed so clearly by a historian. Belich identifies seven lenses — clear, grey, white, black, red, brown, and green — a spectrum of distorted perspectives that Europeans projected onto Indigenous peoples. These lenses shaped everything: first encounters, missionary work, trade relationships, and later colonial policy. The most striking point is that the “clear lens,” which attempted a relatively unbiased view, was always smudged by ethnocentrism; some Europeans saw Māori more clearly than others, but no one saw them perfectly. Even so, Belich argues, the European record remains usable if handled with care — a point that feels particularly relevant to anyone working with symbolic systems or collective narratives.

Belich’s reconstruction of early Māori history relies on archaeology, oral traditions, and careful inference. He estimates Māori arrival around 1000 CE, accompanied by the familiar human pattern seen in Australia and the Americas: swift exploitation of megafauna (moa and seals), rapid population growth, and then collapse once resources disappeared. By the 1500s Māori had developed sustainable social, agricultural, and political structures. Belich describes this period with a kind of respectful clarity: Māori were neither “noble savages” nor “brutish primitives,” but a people navigating ecological constraints and human realities.

European contact began in 1642 with Abel Tasman, whose first encounter ended violently with four of his men killed — and, according to Māori oral history, eaten — at what is now Murderers Bay. Cook’s arrival in 1769 initiated more sustained contact, but Europeans repeatedly misread Māori motives and capacities. Early settlers who assumed Māori were simple or subordinate quickly learned otherwise. Modern revisionists still sometimes revert to this simplistic frame, ironically repeating the same mistake in a different ideological costume. Māori chiefs, Belich argues, often treated missionaries and traders as sources of mana, assets to be managed — not authorities to be obeyed. For much of the early contact period, Māori acted as protectors of Europeans, not dependents.

The Musket Wars of the 1820s and 1830s were among the most transformative events in Māori history. Māori uptake of muskets was rapid and sophisticated. Belich estimates that the population may have halved during this period due to war, enslavement, and displacement. He describes scenes that overturn the idea of Māori as passive victims: victorious tribes killing enemy men, selling women and children into slavery, and participating in complex regional trades. One of the earliest commodities was sex. Europeans wanted it; Māori supplied it. The cultural misunderstandings were extraordinary. Māori initially thought European sailors must all be homosexual because they travelled in all-male groups, and so first offered boys and young men before recalibrating their assumptions.

Belich summarises European expectations of empire in three categories: conversion, conquest, and fatal impact. New Zealand never neatly fit any of these. In the twenty years after 1840, he describes three overlapping New Zealands — independent Māori territories, the early-contact interface, and the settler-dominated colony. Contrary to folk history, the first two did not disappear instantly with the signing of the Treaty of Waitangi.

His discussion of the Land Wars in the 1860s was especially challenging to read, because it undermined several assumptions I had carried since childhood. Māori were not a single, unified people resisting the Crown. Nor were settlers a unified bloc supporting it. Alliances were pragmatic, relational, and often opportunistic. Māori tactical adaptation was remarkable. They shifted from hilltop pā to trench-based earthwork fortifications that neutralised British artillery. They had abundant guns from decades of trade and even developed technological innovations of their own, such as flax armour that could stop musket rounds. Belich argues the war could easily have gone the other way had there been small differences in manpower. The outcome was not a crushing conquest but a partial, ambiguous, negotiated settlement.

This leads to Belich’s critique of the black armband narrative that Māori were easily tricked or overwhelmed. He shows convincingly that Māori retained autonomy far longer than most New Zealanders appreciate. In some periods, if a chief disapproved of a relative being jailed, they simply arrived at the lock-up and demanded the prisoner be released — and the Crown complied. Māori independence in substantial parts of the country persisted into the 1880s. Empire came slowly, and its slowness mattered.

Belich closes Making Māori with a meditation on mythmaking: myths obscured Māori resilience, exaggerated European success, and became self-fulfilling. They shaped British intervention, fuelled the 1860s wars, and later created the illusion that Māori independence had disappeared long before it actually had. He argues that the most striking fact of New Zealand history is not Māori bending, but their not breaking — that Māori resilience, adaptability, and cultural endurance deserve far more attention than they usually receive.

Making Pākehā

I originally bought this book expecting to learn something about Māori history; I didn’t anticipate learning so much about Pākehā identity. The second half, Making Pākehā, charts the extraordinary marketing campaign that sold New Zealand to Britain as “Greater Britain,” a prosperous and near-utopian land blessed with giant vegetables, abundant opportunity, and easy social mobility. It was advertising on a grand scale. Reality rarely matched the promise. Compared with closer frontiers like America and Australia, New Zealand was expensive, remote, and much harder to thrive in. But once settlers arrived, returning home was difficult and often socially impossible. New Zealand was, for many, a one-way ticket to a fabricated dream.

Belich emphasises that the Gentry — New Zealand’s early political elite — relied heavily on exaggeration to finance infrastructure. Their strategy was essentially “act first, justify later.” They secured loans from Britain on optimistic projections of future wealth, and then used the borrowed money to build the infrastructure that might one day justify the projections. It was a national version of “fake it till you make it,” and surprisingly, it worked. Infrastructure created its own demand. Gold, immigration, and conflict all stimulated growth temporarily, but it was the steady expansion of roads, ports, and railways that built the colony’s long-term economic base.

Social mobility was far more accessible than in Britain. Settlers could rise quickly, and the Gentry were often expected to work alongside labourers. Many migrants intended to be servants only temporarily; they aspired to own land and improve their status. Labour shortages raised wages, and Pākehā men enjoyed freedoms — hunting, eating well, land opportunities — they would never have had in Britain. Demographically, the colony suffered from a surplus of men and a shortage of women, which created its own social tensions, especially since many of the women were Irish Catholics unwilling to marry outside their faith.

Women in early New Zealand occupied an unexpectedly strong social position. Work was plentiful and often paid twice the English rate. Because they were scarce, women had genuine agency in choosing partners, or choosing none. Widows commonly ran farms or businesses. Despite spending much of their adulthood pregnant — Canterbury women averaged nine children — life in New Zealand was often materially and socially better than what they had left behind. It’s unsurprising, as Belich notes, that New Zealand became the first country to grant women the vote.

Money in early New Zealand circulated largely as credit, not currency, reminding me of the parable of the travelling salesman and the $100 note: wealth emerging from movement rather than accumulation. “Kiwi ingenuity” likewise emerged from necessity. With no practical ability to return broken machinery to England, settlers had to fix everything themselves. Farming was largely for local consumption; exports were too expensive. Many farmers needed second jobs. Horses and bullocks powered the colony, making oats the largest cash crop despite its inability to generate export revenue.

Merino sheep, imported from Australia, were crucial to early economic growth, sometimes offering returns of 200 percent within a few years. Gold mining, by contrast, created population spikes but rarely lasting wealth. Miners were often reduced to a form of serfdom due to the capital-intensive nature of the work.

Belich highlights the dramatic transformation of communication systems. In 1840, it took weeks for messages to travel between Auckland and Wellington. With the arrival of the telegraph, communication became almost instantaneous, with seismic effects on politics and identity. National unity was not inevitable; the provinces did not commit to forming a single country until the 1870s. Only after the Land Wars were considered “settled” did the South Island agree to merge its fate with the North.

Reading this section deepened my sense of Pākehā identity. Pākehā built a functioning society at the far edge of the world on a mixture of exaggeration, optimism, and sheer audacity. They had no choice but to make things work because distance ruled out retreat. Everyone came from somewhere else. Embedded in this heritage is a familiar psychological posture: a willingness to gamble everything on something better, and to trust — despite evidence — that things will work out. For good or ill, that attitude remains recognisable today.

[Jordan · Rating 4 out of 5]

An ambitious revisionist history of early Aotearoa New Zealand, tracing the development of both Māori and Pakeha societies from Māori settlement through to the late nineteenth century. I was both excited and nervous to take on the challenge of reading it – doing so was rewarding and exhausting.

The first part of the book, “Making Māori” deals with early Māori history. Belich does a wonderful job of explaining how to approach this historiographically (including the role of archaeology and “myth”), as well as breaking down a rainbow of common, over-simplified stereotypes about early Māori society – such as ‘Red’ Māori warriors and ‘Green’ Māori environmentalists. He argues that early Māori developed a complex, “hunter gardener” society as they expanded across the motu. However, crisis came around the 1600s as big game birds became extinct, leading to social, economic and political upheaval. I was least familiar with this period of history, and so I found this part of the book to be particularly gripping. Although I understand that some of Belich’s arguments are now seen as dated (including his dating of first Māori arrival), Belich's overall approach is engaging and careful.

The second part of the book is called “Contact and Empire”, describing the first decades of encounters between Māori and Europeans. One of the key themes is the sheer adaptability and skilful agency of Māori society to early European contact up to around 1860. Belich’s accounts of Te Tiriti are insightful, although parts may need to be reconsidered in light of the more recent scholarship from the likes of Ned Fletcher. As settlement expanded, however, Belich describes Māori sovereignty becoming gradually subordinated to British power, occurring in three main ways: “conquest” (direct military force, probably least ‘successful’ from the British perspective), “swamping” (Māori becoming geographically and socially interspersed with Europeans, thus losing the ability to set terms of engagement), and “conversion” (Māori assimilating into Pakeha life to varying degrees). Each of these approaches had major, usually devastating effects on Māori society, and Belich’s explanations are vivid and detailed – particularly around the New Zealand Wars (which is Belich’s specialty).

The third and final part of the book is “Making Pakeha”, which describes the creation of a British settler colony in New Zealand. A good portion of the history here deals with the “myths” used to promote this venture and build a society, including the idea of New Zealand as a “Better Britain”. (I hadn’t realised that this myth was propagated, in part, because of the difficulty in persuading people to move here!). Otherwise, the history has a socio-economic focus, dealing heavily with matters such as social class and prejudice, as well drier matters finance. Some of this is fascinating, but I found this part of the book to be particularly heavy.

Belich’s writing style is a blessing and a curse. He has an informal and humourous approach which makes the book very easy to pick up. At the same time, however, the writing can be so intensely layered with historiography and metaphors that it can be hard to keep track of the points Belich is trying to make. Worse, the metaphors often become bogged down with details. This meant that this already long book feels like a tough slog at times – despite the breezy, funny tone. Sadly, I think this means the book cannot realistically become a widely-read history of Aotearoa in the same way as Michael King’s book.

All that said, Belich’s history of Aotearoa New Zealand is extremely impressive, spanning hundreds of years, and skilfully weaving together the stories of Māori and Pakeha societies. His revisionist approach is balanced – different parts have the potential to irritate both more conservative scholars and those with a more progressive/post-colonial approach. I don’t think it is necessary to read Making Peoples from cover to cover, and I see that it can be useful for readers to even just focus on the parts that interest them. But whether read in whole or in part, this should remain a landmark work in New Zealand historiography, including as we try to chart a way forward for Aotearoa today.

[David Watson · Rating 5 out of 5]

A fantastic general history of New Zealand to the end of the 19th century.
I found it a bit hard-going at first; as Belich admits in those early pages, he's a historian and not an ethnographer or archaeologist; thus the first 50 pages or in which he traces New Zealand's prehistory are a bit wonky.
But once he gets into the territory of the historian he is - the era of written accounts and documents, and the works of other historians - it's fabulous, informative reading.
The strong division between the book's two sections - Making Maori and Making Pakeha - seems a bit arbitrary at first, but you have to remember the two peoples lived in largely separate spheres in those decades.
Making Maori competently covers Belich's already great work on the New Zealand Wars and more but what really made Making Peoples a great read was the Making Pakeha section. It really gets to the heart of what colonial, white New Zealand was like in the last third of the 19th century. A fascinating snippet is that in those years, oats were a major farm crop - to feed the huge number of horses per head of population that New Zealand had (a much higher ratio than Britian at the time).
The divide between the genteel (the aristocratic ruling class) and the respectable (basically comfortably-off bourgeois tradesmen and businessmen) is a fascinating insight; as is the fact that the ruling class, while an unashamedly elite group, knew that they ruled with the consent of the respectables and lower orders.
Belich analyses and rebuts the work of other historians but always notes what he believes they did get right; there is none of the slugging that sometimes goes on between historians with differing views.
His final insight - that while New Zealand is a small and isolated nation on the world stage - going from a handful of pakeha (white settlers) to half a million in a half a century, at a time when getting to NZ meant a hugely long voyage, is pretty remarkable - certainly rings true.

[Andrew Slaven · Rating 5 out of 5]

Detailed. Excellent

[iris · Rating 5 out of 5]

james i would die for you

[Arjan Walia]

Got to read the first two sections of this book (a bit more than half).

[Bevan Lewis · Rating 5 out of 5]

James Belich is the best 'big picture' historian New Zealand has produced, in my opinion. He provides a great overview of New Zealand's history, and weaves a story and interpretation which, although not everyone will agree with it, offers a lense through which to understand our past. The story of immigration and colonisation by Maori and European is the central theme of this volume. It is a pleasure to read.

[Henry · Rating 5 out of 5]

not as good as paradise reforged but still absolutely masterful. every now and then you get sick of his thousands of personal concepts, particularly with the whole crews v atoms thing. BUT his whole meta-narrative of recolonisation - of NZ striking out as a possible succeeder to Britain, before deciding to become subservient to it again, is fantastic and interesting. very good dive into prehistory too - and into how māori invented trench warfare.

[AskHistorians]

Book one in a two book series, James Belich begins his often controversial project of a cultural history of New Zealand. Part one covers Polynesian background, Māori settlement and pre-contact history. Part two looks at Māori-European relations to 1900. Part three discusses Pakeha colonisation and settlement.

[Jenny Housley · Rating 5 out of 5]

I took this away on holiday with me. Not exactly a light read but very informative and well written by a well respected writer

[Renee · Rating 4 out of 5]

awesome reference for any New Zealand history student. A tad dry though.