Reproduction of the original: An Old New Zealander by T. Lindsay Buick

Spanning nearly two centuries from first contact through to settlement and apology, ​this major work focuses on the human impact of the war in the Waikato, its origins and aftermath.

DigiCat Publishing presents to you this special edition of "An Old New Zealander; or, Te Rauparaha, the Napoleon of the South" by Thomas Lindsay Buick. DigiCat Publishing considers every written word to be a legacy of humankind. Every DigiCat book has been carefully reproduced for republishing in a new modern format. The books are available in print, as well as ebooks. DigiCat hopes you will treat this work with the acknowledgment and passion it deserves as a classic of world literature.

History of New Zealand and its Inhabitants is the English language translation of a lively, opinionated book by Dom Felice Vaggioli, an Italian monk who was one of the first Benedictine priests to be sent to Aotearoa NZ. While working in Auckland, the Coromandel and Gisborne during the years 1879-1887, he observed lifestyles and customs and gathered information about the country's history, including first-hand accounts of the signing of Te Tiriti and the conflicts in Taranaki and Waikato. Back in Italy, he published his history of New Zealand in 1896, only to have most of this Italian edition destroyed by the British because Vaggioli, who was not backward in coming forward with his anti-Protestant and anti-British views, was so critical of the colonialist project. The book nearly disappeared completely, but a few copies survived. About a century later, John Crockett was doing some research in the archive of the Auckland Catholic Diocese when the archivist showed him an old book in Italian - Storia della Nuova Zelanda by Dom Felice Vaggioli. Crockett realised he was holding a unique interpretation of the impact of colonisation on Maori and set about translating the book into English. Crockett's vivid translation of Vaggioli's work was published by Otago University Press in 2000. Out of print for several years, that edition is hard to find and much sought-after. Now reprinted with a striking new cover, the 2023 edition of History of New Zealand and its Inhabitants brings Vaggioli's unique document into the public eye once more. This lively and sometimes controversial account of prominent historical events in nineteenth-century Aotearoa New Zealand provides a remarkable resource for people interested in Maori-Pakeha relations or the history of colonisation.

In Old New Zealand (1863), F.E. Maning recalls living alongside Maori in "the good old times before Governors were invented, and law, and justice, and all that." His account of the early contact period is widely acknowledged to be a masterpiece of some sort, but the extent to which it is fiction, autobiography, ethnography, history, or satire remains a matter for debate. This is the first scholarly edition of Maning's writings. It includes a revealing selection of Maning's unpublished letters, and Alex Calder contributes an introduction and notes that illuminate the works' historical, ethnographic, and literary contexts, showing how settler colonialism is an incomplete and contested process, the problems of which are enacted in Maning's writings, and repeated in the history of their reception.>