Resumo de The New Zealand Wars

(By the original reviewer) Largely unknown outside of New Zealand, these wars comprise of a series of conflicts dating from roughly 1845 - 1872, although some people I have spoken to about it say the fighting continued on a much smaller and more sporadic scale up until the turn of the century. The New Zealand Wars is an excellent record of the struggle between essentially the Maori tribes, or Iwis, and the European colonists, or Pakeha in Maori, and the British redcoat, and, like the Boers that came after ( in the Boer War of 1899 - 1902, although there was a smaller conflict in the early 1840's ) the Maoris managed to not only hold an empire at bay, but also could quite possibly have swept the pakeha out of New Zealand.
When Belich compares the number of troops put into the colony to fight with the number of Maori, it compares to having something like fifty million soldiers in India to do the same job - a staggering statistic. Also you must take into account that the Maoris also had their families and farms to tend and indeed had to leave the field for many months at a time when it came to harvesting, planting etc. One must also take into account the tribal system itself: not all the iwis would fight for each other at the same time; in fact ranged against the iwis were not only colonists and redcoats, but also other iwis who had traditional or tactical reasons to fight on the side of the British...and if not actually fighting for the pakeha, they would certainly at least be available as support if need be.
The book goes into great and exhaustive detail when it comes to casualties, and one can only admire Belich's research capabilities. The casualty figures themselves can at times make you wonder what all the fuss is about when compared to battles say, in India, or in the Crimea, and especially when compared to the carnage of 1914 - 1918, however you must not let yourself forget the numbers of combatants involved, and the effects of the battles on tribes, the economic system they relied upon, and the effect of the battles on both sides as a whole.
You also, when reading this fine work, gather Belich's admiration, and rightly so, for the Maori tactics, ie: their modern fortifications which effectively nullified artillery ranged against them; their attacking of communication lines, and also of supply lines. The Maoris managed to fight their way, using the land and excellent defensive tactics to their advantage, and avoid facing the redcoats in a massive and decisive pitched battle - the kind of battle the British army had pretty much won most of the time in Europe and India. The Maoris sucessfully frustrated the pakeha, and ground them down by if not actually winning battles, by most definitely not losing them - and if the British trumpeted a victory, it was certainly a costly and undecisive one.
Many stereotypes are shown to be just that, and the book also covers the political history of the Wars. It gives the major campaigns much scrutiny; the tactics involved on both sides and the reasons for their success and failure; the response of the public and noted figures is also well documented, as is a new chapter regarding the British interpretation of the Wars as they happened. A lot of parallels with the press of today can be drawn I think, when it comes to how conflicts are reported by a flag waving jingoistic media. Maps scattered throughout the book give very useful ideas about the positioning of troops, their movements, and the areas of conflict in general...and although I have spent a little time in New Zealand with the Maori names and words, it is still quite challenging in a good way to get your tongue around the Maori language!
To conclude: a superbly researched book, loaded with figures and extracts from personal journals and diaries of the time, and also an excellent debunker of the myth of the 'noble savage' etc. as most books that concentrate on facts are. Once you get into reading it, it is hard to pwn. Very readable military history.

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