The man who put our past into perspective

KERRY HOWE assesses how Michael King helped to make history a part of the mainstream of New Zealand culture


Michael King's death this week led to an amazing outpouring of sympathy and accolade. It is indicative of fundamental changes in national sensitivities that a historian rather than a sportsperson can now be widely regarded as a great New Zealander.

King's work has not only been received in this changing context - a kind of national metamorphosis in taste from Lion Red to chardonnay, from rugby to arts festivals - but he has helped to bring about this change by encouraging a national awareness of New Zealand's past.

How has a historian - one of a breed hardly prevalent as iconic figures - managed to achieve an elevated personal status and to reveal us empathetically to ourselves?

It results from a complex mix of his talent as a very good historian, his insistence that history should not be written simply for other historians but should engage the wider community, and his particular time and place.

King cut his baby historical teeth in the later 1960s, a time of nascent "isms", such as internationalism, feminism, environmentalism, and, above all, post-colonialism.

New Zealand history for the first time became a popular subject at university, and particularly an interest in Maori-Pakeha relations. Research on culture contact flourished. That was due to pioneering work by Sinclair, Sorrenson, Binney and others, and also reflected the broader international trend of examining the experience of colonised peoples - crossing to the other side of the frontier, as it was called.

It was also a time when the Maori voice, in protest and co-operative endeavour, was heard loudly for the first time since the 19th century.

In the 1970s, King established himself as a key interpreter for Pakeha (and probably for most Maori) of the Maori historical experience in his writings (such as Moko, Te Ao Hurihuri, Tihe Mauri Ora) and on television with the Tangata Whenua series.

His reputation was consolidated with his biography of the King Movement leader Te Puea (1977). It was as notable for his level of understanding of a Maori world as for the remarkable story that it was, one that for many Pakeha was simply eye-opening.

In the public monocultural world that was then New Zealand, he sensitively revealed matters Maori in a way which no modern Pakeha historian had done to that point.

King also popularised history at a time when that was not fashionable. Moreover, unlike many of those who do popularise the subject, he was technically an excellent historian who did the hard yards of research. Even his critics acknowledged that.

But the public success of this work brought about an early downfall. Certain Maori voices began to oppose his alleged gatekeeping of Maori history - for all his linguistic and cultural skills in a Maori context he was not Maori.

It was a time when the dreaded accusation of white academic imperialism was heard in New Zealand and elsewhere. A public debate took place in the Listener in 1978.

King defended his right to write about the shared New Zealand past but, along with a generation of young Pakeha historians, bowed to pressure and went in search of less stressful historical topics.

Culture-contact research and publication virtually came to an end, and was eventually replaced in the 1980s by Tribunal dominated work that fundamentally sought to depict Maori as victims and the Crown as the guilty party in the bad, bad world of colonial enterprise.

That mode of interpretation - grievance history some call it, others call it sovereignty history - continues still, though is fortunately on the wane.

The 1980s and 1990s were the dark ages of New Zealand history writing. They were especially difficult for King but he chose not to climb on the Tribunal band wagon, as he so easily could have done. He knew that New Zealand history was far too complex, and Maori especially were far too resourceful, to be subject to the simplistic judgments of a court and lawyers.

His historical work diversified in the 1980s - such as a biography of Andreas Reischek, and a study of New Zealanders at war - yet, while out of the Maori-interpreting spotlight, he nevertheless quietly worked away on aspects of Maori history.

In the early 1980s he brought out his biography of Whina Cooper, though defensively claimed that he was simply her mouthpiece, plus a gentle photographic and social history of Maori.

But his most remarkable work, and perhaps the one that he will most be remembered for, was his Being Pakeha: An Encounter with New Zealand and the Maori Renaissance (1985).

If Maori reidentified themselves in the aftermath of their post-war migration to the towns and cities of New Zealand, King believed that Pakeha needed to reidentify and affirm their cultural heritage and values in the face of the new Maori "challenge".

Pakeha were not simply imported "Europeans" but had developed their own characteristics in a South Pacific country. It was not any call to arms, but a sophisticated argument about mutual respect for self and other.

And it was a courageous call in a political climate where Pakeha were increasingly encouraged to feel guilty about the sins of their forefathers.

King affirmed his strong belief that Maori and Pakeha can embrace a landscape, even if differently, often revealing that in any case the differences may not be so great. King was ever the passionate nationalist, but it was an inclusive, shared sense of country, not a yours/mine mindset.

He took as much pleasure in Maori feelings for place as in his own, because it is the same place and because since 1769 there has actually been an intimately shared past.

Everything he ever wrote, including his ostensibly non-historical works, he imbued with a sense of place and captured its historic essence.

In the 1990s the literary biographies of Frank Sargeson and Janet Frame consumed much of his time. I think they will not be his most significant legacy in the long run. There was also Moriori, a remarkable history of the Maori on the Chatham Islands, together with his Nga Iwi O Te Motu: One Thousand Years of Maori History.

King was certainly now back in his position of prominent commentator, and now less criticised for that. What had changed was that Maori felt far less culturally insecure than in the 1970s, and also, and in part thanks to King, there was a wider acceptance of a linked rather than separatist historical experience. As he had kept saying, "we're all in this together".

His cumulative historical efforts, which had embraced Maori and Pakeha worlds, was the perfect platform for what tragically is his last book - The Penguin History of New Zealand (2003). Its major contribution is a refreshing reassessment of our past.

Not since Keith Sinclair's Short History of New Zealand (1959) has there been a substantive general history that has not sometimes been whingeing or denigrating about the past.

King's History is not a celebratory account. It acknowledges complexity. It tries to understand historical events and people in the context of their values and aspirations. Maori were not always hapless victims. Pakeha were not always imperialist rogues.

He highlights the human capacity in this country for compassion and co-operation, for practical fair mindedness, for plain decency. It is far from a neutral history - there is good and bad - but it is not ideologically driven.

This eloquent yet simple message, plus his wonderful ability to write in ways about New Zealand's history that non-historians can readily grasp, produced a book exactly for the times. King's History offers hope for the future. It is upbeat and uplifting. It is no wonder that it has been selling in its tens of thousands.

Yes, history is important. Even historians can sometimes make a difference. King has made more of a difference than most. And people know it, which is why his death is so widely lamented.

* Kerry Howe is a Professor of History at Massey University and author of The Quest for Origins: Who First Discovered New Zealand and the Pacific Islands?