Author(s): Jeff Hopkins-Weise

NZ Military

This is a ground-breaking and sure to be controversial work that highlights, for the first time in detail, the story of how the New Zealand Land Wars of the 19th century were the true birthplace of an Australian and New Zealand military tradition that would become known as the ANZAC legend.

This book shows how the military, social and economic brotherhood that is the ANZAC legend began not on the sandy beaches of Gallipoli but 50 years earlier in the damp forests and fields of the North Island of New Zealand. By the middle of the 19th century, the very existence of the European colonial settlement in New Zealand was threatened. But while Queen Victoria's Britain engaged in more important wars elsewhere, for example the Crimea, the New Zealand colony became totally dependant on its sister colonial states in Australia for military materials, manpower, logistical, financial and humanitarian support. This set in motion events as varied as the kick-starting of the Australian arms and shipbuilding industries, to the creation of an import/export sector for food and materials, to the development of humanitarian organisations, to the establishment of military settler missions and even to the creation of the basis of the New Zealand Police force.