Vol. 46, 2014 explores some of the many cultural contexts of the First World War in New Zealand, how civilian concerns shaped New Zealanders’ responses to war, and how aspects of everyday life were transformed by it.
Articles include:
E te Iwi, Whitiki! Whiti! Whiti! E! Call To Arms: The Formation of the Māori Contingent in the First World War. Monty Soutar considers the decisions and practical matters involved in the recruitment and training of the Māori Contingent, including contemporary iwi and hapū political concerns.
The News in New Zealand Newspapers During World War One. Ian F. Grant examines the production of newspapers and what New Zealanders were allowed to read, highlighting constraints such as censorship, and how wartime reading connected communities within New Zealand.
World War One at Home: In Ephemera. Barbara Lyon’s pictorial article pays close attention to printed ephemera and the way it reveals the texture and tenor of culture and society of the war years.
‘Kia Mau ai te Ora, te Pono me te Aroha ki te Ao Katoa’: The Māori First World War Memorial at Whanganui. Ewan Morris highlights the complex legacy of colonisation both on the way the war was remembered by Whanganui Māori, and on society’s recognition of Māori roles.
Tui on Tour: The War Diary of Oliver Foote, 1918-1919. Chris Bourke’s article demonstrates a wartime concert-party entertainer’s ambivalence about his position: Foote wrestled with guilt that he was a khaki-clad singer and not a fighting soldier, and fretted for his girlfriend back home.
Notes on Contributors
Chris Bourke was the National Library’s Research Fellow in 2006. His book Blue Smoke: The Lost Dawn of New Zealand Popular Music 1918–1964 was published in 2010. It won the ‘Book of the Year’ and ‘Reader’s Choice’ awards at the 2011 New Zealand Post Book Awards.
Ian F Grant was a founding director of National Business Review and founded the New Zealand Cartoon Archive at the Alexander Turnbull Library in 1992. He is currently Adjunct Scholar at the library and is writing a history of New Zealand newspapers.
Barbara Lyon has been Curator of the Ephemera Collection at the Alexander Turnbull Library since 1991 and enjoys illuminating its minutiae. In 2014 she curated the Turnbull Gallery exhibition, ‘The Limelight Moment: Rediscovering Our World Screen Stars’.
Ewan Morris is a Wellington-based historian. He is researching memorials at Pākaitore/Moutoa Gardens as part of a larger project looking at what debates over flags, anthems, memorials, place names and holidays can tell us about relations between Māori and non-Māori.
Monty Soutar is a senior historian with the Ministry for Culture and Heritage. For the past two years he has been the co-ordinator of the 28th Māori Battalion website. Following on from the success of Nga Tama Toa, the book he wrote on the Māori Battalion in the Second World War, he is writing a book on the Māori contribution to the war effort during the First World War.