© Columbia University Press
Scottish Ethnicity and the Making of New Zealand Society, 1850 to 1930
August, 2011
Cloth, 256 pages,
ISBN: 978-0-7486-4155-0
Edinburgh University Press
$75.00
The Scots accounted for around a quarter of all UK-born immigrants in New Zealand between 1861 and 1945, with businessmen, politicians, and social reformers of Scottish descent leaving a notable imprint on the country. Probing the powerful narratives of atomization and individualism that have been identified as key to understanding New Zealand’s colonial period, this book contends that Scots, in fact, contributed disproportionately to the making of New Zealand society.
Examining Scottish immigrant community life between 1850 and 1930, the book explores informal and formal networks, associational life and transferred cultural practices in order to capture how Scottish immigrants negotiated their ethnicity, but also how that ethnicity fed into integrated, positive social structures in New Zealand.