Remaking the Tasman World

(Paperback)

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Remaking the Tasman World explores New Zealand's most important and extensive relationship - with Australia - on a variety of levels over the past century. The authors present a combined narrative about a 'Tasman world', a working region defined by a history of traffic in ideas, policies, objects and people. This wide-ranging, fresh analysis focuses on myriad 'communities of interest' that have spanned the Tasman Sea for over a hundred years, yet have largely been ignored by national histories. The concept of Australasia - the British world south of Asia - may have become old hat, but a Tasman world still operated, and in an increasing rush from the 1960s. From early maps of Australasia to accounts of shared state experiments, of a trans-Tasman business world, sport and Anzac bonds, the authors unearth a common past and reorder it in a history infused with wit and insight. They also look forward, envisioning a fresh start for a trans-Tasman community facing the 21st century.

Author Bio

Philippa Mein Smith holds a Personal Chair in History and is Director of the New Zealand Australia Research Centre at the University of Canterbury. Her previous books are A Concise History of New Zealand (2005), A History of Australia, New Zealand and the Pacific (as co-author with Donald Denoon) (2000), Mothers and King Baby (1997), and Maternity in Dispute (1986). Peter Hempenstall is Emeritus Professor of History at the University of Canterbury. He is a Pacific historian and biographer and a frequent trans-Tasman traveller, believing that only regular transfusions of both Kiwi and Aussie culture can keep antipodeans alive and healthy. Among his books are Pacific Islanders under German Rule (1978); The Meddlesome Priest: A life of Ernest Burgmann (1993); and (with Paula Tanaka Mochida) The Lost Man: Wilhelm Solf in German history (2005). Shaun Goldfinch is a senior lecturer in the Department of Politics at the University of Otago. He is the author of Remaking New Zealand and Australian Economic Policy (2000), co-author of Dangerous Enthusiasms: E-government, computer failure and information system development (2006), and co-editor of Handbook of International Public Sector Reform (2008).