James Cowan wrote a history of New Zealand's colonial days. (Alexander Turnbull Library)
James Cowan wrote a history of New Zealand's colonial days. (Alexander Turnbull Library)
The contemporary Herald would have chosen James Cowan as New Zealander of the Year after the publication of the first volume of The New Zealand Wars and the Pioneering Period.
It was, said the Herald reviewer, the first connected, complete narrative of the wars yet written.
"It represents the research of years, it is exhaustive, and it is written in a most attractive style. It is real history."
For many years Cowan's was the standard account and there was much to commend it, notably his pioneering methods in oral history and his sympathetic portrayal of the Maori.
However, with hindsight, he romanticised the wars and the role they played in forming New Zealand's idea of itself. In his account, the fighting was crucial in overcoming the contempt Maori and British felt for each other.
"The wars ended with a strong mutual respect, tinged with real affection, which would never have existed but for this ordeal by battle," he wrote, glossing over the deep grievances Maori had about the loss of their land and autonomy.
Cowan's notes have been enormously helpful in re-examining the history of the wars but his interpretation has been largely superseded by more sophisticated work, notably James Belich in The New Zealand Wars and the Victorian Interpretation of Racial Conflict, published in 1986.
IN HINDSIGHT Another book by a New Zealander also attracted a lot of attention in 1922 but for quite different reasons.
Safe Marriage was by Ettie Rout, who had bravely campaigned in World War I to provide troops with contraceptives to help stop the spread of sexually transmitted disease.
Safe Marriage was a contraceptive guide for women; it was no less controversial in New Zealand than her wartime work and was promptly banned much to the disgust of prominent doctors in Britain.
All diseases used to be regarded as manifestations of the wrath of the deity, thereby deflecting attention from sanitation, said one medical superintendent.
"These ideas, though evidently still current in New Zealand and Darkest Africa, have been or are being abandoned in civilised states.
"I wonder if anyone can tell me what New Zealanders do read."
With hindsight, then, Ettie Rout is our New Zealander of the Year for 1922 for helping people to face a taboo subject.
Ettie Rout was an early campaigner for family planning. (Alexander Turnbull Library)
