Becoming Aotearoa : a new history of New Zealand / Michael Belgrave.

Preface -- Introduction: is there an us? -- Vikings of the sunrise -- The mapmakers -- Wooden ships and wooden crosses -- Muskets and Christianity -- The battle over Māori sovereignty -- White savages, chancers and entrepreneurs -- Agreement at Waitangi -- Colonies of towns -- Possessing the soil -- Governor George Grey: one country -- Gold and fleece -- Looming crisis -- England's not so little war -- Pai Mārire and confiscation -- Another country: beyond the battlefield -- The great expansion -- Hard times and old-world problems -- Reimagining the New World -- Remaking the New World -- Dick Seddon's dream -- Māori landlords, Red Feds, Wobblies and Cossacks -- Fatal adventure: New Zealand and the Great War -- The war at home -- The tango on Britain's Farm -- The Depression and its nemesis -- The Second World War -- When the war was over -- Paradise shared -- Managing the present, planning the future -- Protest and performance -- The road to 1984 -- Come the revolution -- National: second wind -- Finding a third way -- Becoming Aotearoa -- Epilogue -- Notes -- Bibliography -- Acknowledgements -- About the author -- Index.

"In the first major national history of Aotearoa New Zealand to be published for 20 years, Professor Michael Belgrave advances the notion that New Zealand's two peoples - tangata whenua and subsequent migrants - have together built an open, liberal society based on a series of social contracts. Frayed though they may sometimes be, these contracts have created a country that is distinct. This engaging new look at our history examines how"--Back cover.