Edmund Bohan: Climates of war

Edmund Bohan is a diligent historian with a profound knowledge of 19th century politics in New Zealand - who was who, what they did and what they said to one another and the nation.

He works from primary sources: from their letters, parliamentary records, newspaper editorials they wrote, their diaries and their books. A number of the politicians were also professional journalists and all of them wrote prolifically and spoke at length in those days when their point of contact with the electorate was face to face, before radio and then television shrivelled attention spans.

Bohan has written biographies of some of them, of Premier Edward Stafford, talented but volatile Cantabrian James Edward FitzGerald and Governor George Grey.

I became immersed in the opening chapters of the book as he recreates the mood of the country and identifies the shifting alliances of partisan groups as the civil wars of the 1860s loomed and sadly tore the North Island asunder.

He also makes useful comments about what was happening in other parts of the world during the troubled decade in New Zealand, pointing out that it was a world preoccupied with war: " ... Russia's expansionism, the continuing chaos within the Ottoman Empire, the emergence of such an aggressive nation state as Prussia and, in China and the United States, perhaps the most cataclysmic but defining civil wars in history. All had some impact on remote New Zealand, perceived to be at risk from such potential Pacific marauders as France, Russia and the United States."

The book is packed with information on the leading politicians and commentators of the time. But because Bohan knows so much about them, everyone else becomes a bit player, and those men he has enshrined in biography are stars, perhaps beyond the reality of their influence.

Bohan is always up close and very personal with the leaders. He describes them and their temperaments entertainingly but often paints them in black and white with strongly pejorative adjectives. And I don't think he stands back often enough for a look at the panorama.

He is certainly very fair in appraisals of Maori rights but never gives them a voice, sees them only from a distance, almost as though they belong to the other side. He records in detail the national arguments of the time but seldom goes near the battlefield, just briefly and discursively.

The actual fighting is treated as a sort of a faded backdrop to the endless talk.

As the book progresses Bohan does have a problem telling a story - too often he doesn't know when enough detailed background quoting is enough. He attacks fellow historian James Belich on a few issues, almost as asides. I guess he didn't want to belabour their differences but I think he should either have made his arguments fully and with clarity or left them alone.

Reports of the contests among the Pakeha politicians are instructive, laying out on one hand the case for the settlers, many of whom are strikingly, selfishly anti-Maori, and on the other the case for Maori. Those not averse to war seek the expansion of land available for European settlement, not necessarily because they need it but because they want it, resenting that it was left in a state they considered undeveloped.

When Pakeha desired ownership of the Waitara Block (the cause of the Taranaki outbreak) it was, as much as anything, because of where it was and not because they needed the acreage. Bohan doesn't mention that the Attorney-General at the time, William Swainson, claimed that on the eve of the war Taranaki settlers had cultivated only 17,500ha of the 58,500ha already in their possession.

If sometimes it is hard work, reading this book is essential for anyone wanting to fully understand the genesis of the battles of the New Zealand civil war, especially for any serious student of the period.

I guess what he does include is less widely known than the detailed story of the battles he discusses so sketchily; and although his wordiness can sometimes exasperate, he comes up with information many readers either never knew or need to be reminded of. For example, the intensity of the rivalry between provinces and the seriousness of moves for some of them to have the South Island secede from the nation.

Also, the attitude of New Zealanders towards the American Civil War was overwhelmingly in favour of the Confederacy.

* Hazard Press, $44.99