Search

This paper addresses the now entrenched historiography of the Australian Settlement and New Zealand variations thereof. Against the central premise of this historiography, that a particular regime of domestic insulation and external orientation to the British market constrained development and persisted unchanged until the neo-liberal restructuring of the 1980s, it is argued here that the political economy of the beginning of the 20th century was profoundly destabilized by the Depression. As a result, a new, Keynesian regime was established in New Zealand from the late 1930s and in Australia a few years latter. The entrenchment of this regime depended upon adoption by remade conservative parties by the end of the 1940s. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The upsurge in cultural nationalism in New Zealand has failed to produce a good case that New Zealand is an exceptional society. The reason for this is that New Zealand has not had a chance to develop a culture that is autochthonous in significant respects New Zealand's domination by the cultures of Britain, Australia and America in the 19th and 20th centuries prevented its history from taking a significantly different path. The lack of autochthony is attributed to the structural effects of physical isolation. Remoteness made its human history unusually short, led it to be exceptionally exposed to the global revolution in transport and communication from the mid-19th century, and severely constrained its population size. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]