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For the government of New Zealand, the role of high commissioner in the United Kingdom was of paramount significance. The Labour government's 1935 electoral success was followed quickly by the appointment of William Jordan to fill this role. British-born and with a very visible loyalty to the Crown and the imperial idea, during the pre-war years he was nonetheless not averse to offering stringent opinions on British foreign policy. An active participant in the League of Nations, he believed passionately in the value of collective security and the need to forcefully deter the dictators. The war's outbreak in September 1939 hit him particularly hard but his support for the British Empire's greatest challenge remained resolute. His High Commission was blessed with an abundance of talent to handle all the key issues and despite the considerable distances involved, a regular stream of visitors from New Zealand were prepared to make the arduous journey, including among them Prime Minister Peter Fraser. Their host was a complex character who was noted for a ‘volcanic’ temper and clashed regularly with members of his staff, visiting political figures from home, fellow dominions' high commissioners and even British dignitaries. Yet, for the sake of the Commonwealth alliance, all this was kept successfully behind closed doors. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The Ford thesis argued that there was a short-term causal relationship between British overseas investment and British merchandise exports in the late nineteenth century. However, economic historians since Ford have found little empirical evidence in support of this argument. Using data on bilateral British lending, this article finds that such a relationship did exist, with British ex ante lending preceding merchandise exports by 2 years. A case study of New Zealand, which had an extraordinarily high share of Britain in its imports, reveals that the relationship was conditional upon the lending being allocated to social overhead capital. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the sporting relationship between New Zealand and France, focusing on encounters between the countries in Rugby Union between 1906 and 2014. Other topics include information on the performance of different Rugby Union teams from France and New Zealand, how the introduction of the Rugby World Cup tournament in 1987 changed Rugby Union, and social and cultural ties between France and New Zealand through Rugby Union.

New Zealand's participation in the League of Nations in the 1920s and early 1930s was greatly influenced by the issue of money. Though an original member, New Zealand regarded the League as a distraction at best and at worst a threat to the British Empire. Unsympathetic conservative governments begrudged the cost of membership, in both representation and dues. Obliged to send delegations to the annual League Assemblies, New Zealand governments handicapped their delegates by refusing to give them the resources to represent their country adequately. However, once at Geneva, the dominion's delegates led campaigns to control the League's budget with the aim of reducing the amount the members had to pay as annual contributions. Ironically, New Zealand's determination to keep its distance from Geneva led to its obsession with the League's finances. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

One of the innovative aspects of the mandates system of the League of Nations, the oversight regime applied to the former German and Ottoman territories seized by the Allied Powers in the First World War, was that it included a right of petition. Inhabitants of any territory governed under mandate, or any interested outsider, could petition the League of Nations if they believed that the stipulations laid down in Article 22 of the League Covenant or in particular mandate texts were being violated. This article explores the origins, development, politics and scope of the practice of petitioning under the mandates system, arguing that it was much more significant, extensive and consequential than has previously been recognised. Petitions rarely offered petitioners redress; instead, they made visible the assumptions about racial and civilisational hierarchies, and the realities of power, on which the system was based. Yet petitions were not only revelatory of political relations but also altered those relations in turn, as petitioners used the opportunity of appeal to learn the skills of claim-making, international lobbying and political mobilisation. The article looks closely at one dramatic case—that of the mass movement against New Zealand's administration of the mandated territory Western Samoa in the late 1920s, which involved numerous petitions to the League—to illustrate these points. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Reminded of its strategic vulnerability during the First World War, New Zealand continued to look to Britain for guarantees of its security during the 1920s and 1930s. Wellington had reason to believe that its security concerns were taken seriously while conservative governments held office in London. But when the British Labour Party took power in 1924 and 1929, conservative governments in New Zealand felt threatened by Labour's pursuit of a foreign policy which drew Britain closer to the League of Nations. New Zealand was suspicious of the recently formed international body and unconvinced a new world order could be achieved. As a result, the British Empire's most loyal dominion found itself in the unaccustomed role of imperial dissenter as it resisted every move by the first and second British Labour governments to build a framework of arbitration and collective security agreements through the League of Nations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Australia and New Zealand (Aotearoa) have shared almost two centuries of close relations created through close geographic proximity, shared membership of political associations, and frequent policy exchange. The relevant context has shifted from the British Empire and Commonwealth to a rapidly globalizing world under US military hegemony. Australia and New Zealand were among the early settler colonies of the British Empire and this article argues that, as such, the settler colonies helped shape the form of the Empire, and subsequently the Commonwealth. This history created strong, separate, if somewhat similar, traditions of independent political experimentation. This article explores different models for explaining the cross-Tasman relationship and concludes that the path-dependent approach works best. The path was also influenced by external shocks, notably the second world war and Britain's moves towards Europe, and it was these shocks that created the necessary ruptures to create change. The first world war had catapulted Australia and New Zealand towards separate nationhood, and simultaneously strengthened their cultural and political links. The second world war pushed Australia towards the USA and led both Australia and New Zealand to develop a more explicit role as regional leaders in the Pacific. For New Zealand, Britain's membership of the European Community created an economic crisis and politico-cultural stresses which are reverberating still. Such shocks created the preconditions also for closer association, exemplified in the CER Treaty, which in turn draws upon historical precedents and experiences. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]