James Cowan: Autobiographical Historian and Traveller in Time

James Cowan’s childhood, growing up on the family farm built on the site of the Battle of Ōrākau, has always been seen as an influence in his writing, particularly as a historian. This article explores Cowan’s world on the frontier, as a child in the 1870s, but more importantly as an adolescent in the early 1880s. Not only was Cowan’s experience of these tense and sometimes turbulent decades a major influence on his writing, they also help us explain some of the contradictions presently seen in work. On the one hand, Cowan echoed nineteenth-century notions of colonial virtue and argued that the wars drew Māori and Pākehā closer together. At the same time, he was prepared to call confiscation of Waikato land theft on a massive scale. Cowan’s ability to be a historian of the time, while also reflecting a critical perspective of colonisation, reflected the world of the frontier in the early 1880s. Attempts to make peace between the King and the Queen created an atmosphere of reconciliation, where the protagonists of the 1860s, including Rewi Maniapoto, Wahanui Huatare and Te Kooti Arikirangi te Turuki negotiated for a new peace with old enemies, George Grey, John Bryce and William Gilbert Mair. Cowan’s writing reflected familiarity with these peace makers, but also made him conscious of the failure of the negotiations to resolve grievances over confiscations. Cowan’s was a personal history, forged not in archives, but through personal relationships built on interviews and correspondence

Settler Anxiety at the Outposts of Empire: Colonial Relations, Humanitarian Discourses, and the Imperial Press

While New Zealand historians have sometimes been influenced by the new imperial history, this increasing body of work focusing on empire in its international and comparative dimensions has remained on the periphery of the country’s historical imagination. This is even true in the study of nineteenth-century colonialism. Despite the central role of humanitarianism in New Zealand history, many historians have been more concerned with exploring Māori history in increasingly local settings than considering the broader pattern of imperial relationships. Tony Ballantyne’s work is a leading exception, and a number of legal historians have explored issues of Aboriginal title, while sharing a limited subset of the concerns explored by the new imperial history.&nbsp

James Cowan: Autobiographical Historian and Traveller in Time

James Cowan’s childhood, growing up on the family farm built on the site of the Battle of Ōrākau, has always been seen as an influence in his writing, particularly as a historian. This article explores Cowan’s world on the frontier, as a child in the 1870s, but more importantly as an adolescent in the early 1880s. Not only was Cowan’s experience of these tense and sometimes turbulent decades a major influence on his writing, they also help us explain some of the contradictions presently seen in work. On the one hand, Cowan echoed nineteenth-century notions of colonial virtue and argued that the wars drew Māori and Pākehā closer together. At the same time, he was prepared to call confiscation of Waikato land theft on a massive scale. Cowan’s ability to be a historian of the time, while also reflecting a critical perspective of colonisation, reflected the world of the frontier in the early 1880s. Attempts to make peace between the King and the Queen created an atmosphere of reconciliation, where the protagonists of the 1860s, including Rewi Maniapoto, Wahanui Huatare and Te Kooti Arikirangi te Turuki negotiated for a new peace with old enemies, George Grey, John Bryce and William Gilbert Mair. Cowan’s writing reflected familiarity with these peace makers, but also made him conscious of the failure of the negotiations to resolve grievances over confiscations. Cowan’s was a personal history, forged not in archives, but through personal relationships built on interviews and correspondence

What for the future, from learning the past? Exploring the implications of the compulsory Aotearoa New Zealand histories curriculum

Important curriculum development work has progressed since the 2019 announcement that Aotearoa New Zealand histories would become compulsory learning across all schools. Much effort has gone into considering how learning ‘our’ histories can engage, inspire and empower children in schools through years 1 to 10, and recent writing has focused on how to address challenges in building knowledge and capability to meet those aims. However, what will be the effects beyond those years? Will students still be drawn to choose history in their senior school years, or will they be ‘over it’? In a quest to gauge the implications of the new curriculum, our research team surveyed secondary school history students on their motivations and areas of interest in learning history, and their views on Aotearoa New Zealand history becoming compulsory for Years 1-10. Findings from our research confirmed that students’ past engagement with history influenced their ongoing interest, motivation and understanding of the subject. However, the positive learning that had drawn them to history was often about everyone else’s history rather than their own. Students identified international histories – often involving war or conflict – as favourite topics. So, while most supported the implementation of the new curriculum, they equally expressed concern that the local focus should not be at the expense of wider perspectives. They felt history could become repetitive and boring; elements which could put students off engaging with history in future.  We conclude by presenting important considerations for ensuring such negative impacts do not occur

Consulting the Past

In many countries, the development of national history curricula has been politically controversial, causing great public interest and concern. Such controversies tend to bring into tension diverse political, social and cultural voices and their interests in a nation’s history, expressing the historical consciousness of a society. At the extreme, ‘history wars’ emerge over what is prioritised for learning, and how it is learnt, especially when historical interpretations clash with political agendas. In this article we explore these ideas through the responses of different sectors to the development of Aotearoa New Zealand's first national history curriculum. By looking at the responses of teachers, academic historians, politicians and the community at large, we attempt to explain why the debate so far has been professional rather than polemical, and why the country’s ‘history wars’ have only involved a few skirmishes at the edges of political debate

Trajectories of childhood immune development and respiratory health relevant to asthma and allergy.

Events in early life contribute to subsequent risk of asthma; however, the causes and trajectories of childhood wheeze are heterogeneous and do not always result in asthma. Similarly, not all atopic individuals develop wheeze, and vice versa. The reasons for these differences are unclear. Using unsupervised model-based cluster analysis, we identified latent clusters within a prospective birth cohort with deep immunological and respiratory phenotyping. We characterised each cluster in terms of immunological profile and disease risk, and replicated our results in external cohorts from the UK and USA. We discovered three distinct trajectories, one of which is a high-risk 'atopic' cluster with increased propensity for allergic diseases throughout childhood. Atopy contributes varyingly to later wheeze depending on cluster membership. Our findings demonstrate the utility of unsupervised analysis in elucidating heterogeneity in asthma pathogenesis and provide a foundation for improving management and prevention of childhood asthma

Native American Children and Their Reports of Hope: Construct Validation of the Children's Hope Scale

Child reports of hope continue to be utilized as predictors of positive adjustment; however, the utilization of the hope construct has not been assessed within the culturally diverse Native American child group. The present study investigated the applicability of the Hope theory among 96 Native American children in the Midwest. Measures included the Children’s Hope Scale and a Hope Interview. Native American children in the current sample appear to conceptualize hope as a way to reach goals as did the children in the normative sample. Results from the factor analysis demonstrate that the factor structure found in the current study was similar to the factor structure found in the standardization sample. Because of the similar Hope theory conceptualization and factor structure, interventions focused on the positive psychology construct of hope may be applicable within a Native American child population

Performing Identity Entrepreneurship During the Colonisation of New Zealand: A Rhetorical Construction of ‘Loyal Subjects of the Empire’

A thematic analysis of New Zealand’s historical Speeches from the Throne (10 speeches, from 1860-1899) investigated rhetorical strategies used by Governors during colonisation, to mobilise both settler and indigenous people’s participation in the British Empire. Identity leadership (Reicher & Hopkins, 2001, https://doi.org/10.1111/0162-895X.00246), augmented by critical theories of emotion (Williams, 1977, Marxism and literature. Oxford University Press) under the cultural framework of hierarchical relationalism (Liu, 2015, https://doi.org/10.1111/jtsb.12058) was applied to show how unequal but reciprocal relationships were invoked by Governors, as representatives of the Crown and advocates for the general public in New Zealand. Governors attempted to mediate a positive shared identity within the British Empire; but at the same time to isolate those who excluded from subjecthood by their hostility to the Crown. Governors alternated between efforts to mobilise people against indigenous Māori who challenged them, and offers to include Māori who conformed to the conventions required of a hierarchical relationship between Crown and subject. We reflect on how these dynamics of rhetorical performance may still be relevant today, especially in contexts of hierarchy and in the domain of leader-follower relations more broadly