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This paper addresses the now entrenched historiography of the Australian Settlement and New Zealand variations thereof. Against the central premise of this historiography, that a particular regime of domestic insulation and external orientation to the British market constrained development and persisted unchanged until the neo-liberal restructuring of the 1980s, it is argued here that the political economy of the beginning of the 20th century was profoundly destabilized by the Depression. As a result, a new, Keynesian regime was established in New Zealand from the late 1930s and in Australia a few years latter. The entrenchment of this regime depended upon adoption by remade conservative parties by the end of the 1940s. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite an assumption that Christchurch - the Garden City of New Zealand - has historically been viewed as the manifestation of a utopian dream, the experiences of the city's gardeners reveal a variety of sentiments about the meaning of gardens. Hillside gardeners, in particular, tended to see their gardens and their place in them in very different ways from their counter-parts on the flat. These hillside gardens were places that allowed for an explicit appreciation of internationalism, localism, and an often spiritual connection with the world at large. They were 'celestial', paradisical, and I therefore argue that tropes of utopias and paradise may sit uneasily with each other in colonial discourse. This point requires further attention from historians. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The upsurge in cultural nationalism in New Zealand has failed to produce a good case that New Zealand is an exceptional society. The reason for this is that New Zealand has not had a chance to develop a culture that is autochthonous in significant respects New Zealand's domination by the cultures of Britain, Australia and America in the 19th and 20th centuries prevented its history from taking a significantly different path. The lack of autochthony is attributed to the structural effects of physical isolation. Remoteness made its human history unusually short, led it to be exceptionally exposed to the global revolution in transport and communication from the mid-19th century, and severely constrained its population size. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]