by Jared Davidson. Published by Bridget Williams Books, 2021. (NZD 14.99). Reviewed by Ann Hassan

What a fascinating little book this is. Jared Davidson gives a “microhistory of collective revolt” in his account of emigrant labourers taking action against their employer, the New Zealand Company, in Nelson in 1843.

There’s a (false) narrative about the history of New Zealand colonials: that they escaped the class confines of Britain and established here, on the other side of the world, a society of equals — or at least a meritocracy where “hard work” would pay off.

Davidson begins by showing how reductionist this is — that, from the outset, the colonising effort was intentionally founded on a class-based economy that ensured land-owning settlers could rely on a steady stream of landless labourers. New Zealand’s economy — and that of Edward Gibbon Wakefield’s New Zealand Company — relied on an overt class ladder.

The History of a Riot is an impressive piece of research. Davidson has scoured Company records to identify the 70 men and their wives who participated, charting its origins and documenting the fallout (and failure) of the revolt.

It’s hard to imagine sunny Nelson as the locus for mass violence — but it was. What’s even more mystifying, though, and unnerving, is how stories like this have been erased from our history, replaced with cosier, self-serving tales of colonial heroism.

Tui Motu Magazine. Issue 274 September 2022: 27