New Zealand was catapulted kicking and screaming from the Stone Age to the Space Age within 200 years of Captain Cook setting foot there, becoming the last major landmass in the world to be settled by humans.
Who really got to New Zealand first? Did a monster comet strike in the 1400s wipe out evidence of much earlier human settlement?
And what of New Zealand's infamous founding document, the Treaty of Waitangi: which version is the most accurate translation? Did the Treaty ever set up a 'partnership' to rule the country? Why did Maori chiefs sign it?
The Great Divide is a fascinating and definitive read on the history of New Zealand and the events that shaped it.
Highlights from inside:
IT IS A STORY THAT WILL SURPRISE YOU:
The biggest known earthquake-caused tsunami can create 60 metre walls of water – around six times larger than the Japan tsunami. This New Zealand one created by what is now known as the Mahuika comet strike – after the Maori god of fire – was what scientists call a “mega-tsunami”, 220 metres tall, 22 times higher than the Japanese tsunami, as it thundered up the South Island’s east coast. Waves that high have been known to penetrate up to 45km inland in other parts of the world. To put this in perspective, if you were dining in the revolving restaurant at Auckland’s Sky Tower, 190 metres off the ground, you would still be 30 metres (100ft) underwater.
A STORY THAT STAYS FOCUSED:
Once again it is fascinating but ultimately irrelevant to Treaty issues whether Egyptians, Libyans, Greeks, Phoenicians, the Portuguese or the Druid Getafix with his mates Asterix and Obelisk set foot on New Zealand first – the important part is that they didn’t get back to boast about it or, if they did and they mapped it, they kept it very quiet and didn’t claim the land. Not even Tasman claimed New Zealand for the Dutch. It was left to a British naval commander, Captain James Cook, to be the first European to set foot on New Zealand soil and live to tell the tale.
A STORY TOLD WITH HUMOUR:
When dawn broke the following morning, more canoes pulled alongside and translator Tupaea remarked to Cook the overnight guests were yelling over the rails to their friends, “It’s OK to come on board, the white men don’t eat people!”
“From which,” Cook wryly and cautiously noted in his journal, “it should seem that these people have such a Custom among them.”
IN THE VOICES OF THOSE WHO WERE THERE:
“About dinner time three canoes came alongside of much the most simple construction of any we have seen, being no more than the trunks of trees hollowed out by fire without the least carving or even the addition of a washboard on their gunnels.
“The people in them were almost naked and blacker than any we had seen – only 21 in all – yet these few despicable gentry sang their song of defiance and promised us as heartily as the most respectable of their countrymen that they would kill us all.”
A STORY OF PASSION:
“These natives are greatly given to embracing each other, but they display in these caresses a most noticeable ferocity. They are peculiarly fond of kissing each other, and this they do with great intensity.”
A STORY OF MISPLACED TRUST:
Turning to Lieutenant Roux, du Fresne added: “How can you expect me to have a bad opinion of a people who show me so much friendship? As I only do good to them, assuredly they will do me no evil.”
AND THE CLASH OF CULTURES:
By seven pm, word came through from the ships that “a great many more canoes, full of natives, had landed on the island.” This was an all-out war involving, on one side, a battalion-strength team of Maori warriors drawn apparently from numerous tribes (about as many warriors as the current New Zealand Army can comfortably muster for any single military tour at the moment), and on the other 50 armed Frenchmen, most of them sailors. One side, of course, had gunpowder. The other side desperately wanted gunpowder.
ALL THIS, AND MUCH MORE .
Read The Great Divide: the story of New Zealand & its Treaty complete books online for free. Reading The Great Divide: the story of New Zealand & its Treaty full free books online without downloading.
Looking up to the full article E-Books free download? Here you can read.
