New Worlds? The Comparative History of New Zealand and the United States

NZ-US Education Foundation, Stout Research Centre, 1989. Spine faded.

The settler societies of New Zealand and the United States have both seen themselves as New Worlds distinguished from the corrupt Old World of Europe. Both shared a British and Protestant background. Both were formed by migration to a rich land which they wrested from an indigenous population. Both established settler democracies with an emphasis on self government. Both had a strong belief that they were unique experiments. In this challenging book drawn from the Fulbright Seminars, leading historians of New Zealand and the United States examine the two societies and ask just how similar they really were. Their answers throw a revealing light upon the nature -- and indeed the distinctiveness -- of the histories of the two countries.