James Belich (historian)

James Belich
ONZM
Belich in 2010
Born1956 (age 67–68)
Wellington, New Zealand
RelativesJim Belich (father)
Camilla Belich (niece)[1]
AwardsPrime Minister's Awards for Literary Achievement (2011)
Academic background
Alma mater
Academic work
DisciplineHistory
WebsiteUniversity of Oxford profile

James Christopher Belich ONZM (born 1956) is a New Zealand historian, known for his work on the New Zealand Wars and on New Zealand history more generally. One of his major works on the 19th-century clash between Māori and Pākehā, the revisionist study The New Zealand Wars (1986), was also published in an American edition and adapted into a television series and DVD.[2][3]

In 2011, Belich was appointed the Beit Professor of Imperial and Commonwealth History, and he is a co-founder and former director of the Oxford Centre for Global History at the University of Oxford.

Background

Of Croatian descent, Belich was born in Wellington in 1956, the son of Jim Belich, who later became the mayor of Wellington.[4][5] Educated at Onslow College,[6] he went on to study at Victoria University of Wellington, where he earned a Master of Arts degree in history. He was awarded a Rhodes Scholarship in 1978 and went to the University of Oxford to complete his DPhil at Nuffield College.[7][8]

Academic career

Belich lectured at Victoria University of Wellington for several years before moving to the University of Auckland. In 2007, he was appointed professor of history at the Stout Research Centre for New Zealand Studies at Victoria University.

The New Zealand Wars (1986) was based on his DPhil thesis, and won the international Trevor Reese Memorial Prize. It was later turned into a major documentary series for Television New Zealand. It was controversial for the startling claim that northern Maori invented trench warfare.

I Shall Not Die': Titokowaru's War (1990), based on his MA thesis, was also highly praised, winning the Adam Award for New Zealand literature.

Belich has written a two-volume work A History of the New Zealanders, consisting of Making Peoples (1996) and Paradise Reforged (2001).

He expanded his area of research to colonial societies in general and the place of settler colonialism in world history with Replenishing the earth (2009).[9] The book was the choice of Maya Jasanoff in a list of the 11 best scholarly books of the 2010s by The Chronicle of Higher Education.[10]

In 2011, Belich was appointed Beit Professor of Commonwealth History at the University of Oxford, where he is a former director and co-founder of the Oxford Centre for Global History.[8][11]

Honours and awards

In the 2006 Queen's Birthday Honours, Belich was appointed an Officer of the New Zealand Order of Merit, for service to historic research.[12]

Belich was the winner of the non-fiction category at the 2011 Prime Minister's Awards for Literary Achievement[13] His book, The World the Plague Made, was shortlisted for the 2023 Wolfson History Prize.[14]

Works

  • Titokowaru's War and Its Place in New Zealand's History. MA Thesis. Victoria University of Wellington, 1979.[15]
  • New Zealand Wars 1845–1870: An Analysis of Their History and Interpretation. 1982. PhD Thesis. Nuffield College/Oxford University
  • I Shall Not Die: Tītokowaru's war, New Zealand, 1868-9. Bridget Williams Books, 1993. ISBN 0-04-614022-0
  • Making Peoples: A History of the New Zealanders from Polynesian Settlement to the End of the Nineteenth Century. Penguin, 2007. ISBN 978-0-14-300704-3
  • The New Zealand Wars and the Victorian Interpretation of Racial Conflict. Auckland University Press, 1986. ISBN 1-86940-002-X
  • Paradise Reforged: A History of the New Zealanders from the 1880s to the Year 2000. University of Hawai'i Press, 2001. ISBN 0-8248-2542-X
  • Replenishing the Earth: The Settler revolution and the rise of the Anglo-world, 1783–1939. Oxford University Press, 2009. ISBN 978-0-19-929727-6
  • The Prospect of Global History. co-edited with John Darwin, Margret Frenz and Chris Wickham. Oxford University Press, 2016. ISBN 978-0-19-873225-9
  • The World the Plague Made: The Black Death and the Rise of Europe. Princeton University Press, 2022. ISBN 978-0-691-21566-2

See also

References

  1. ^ Wade, Amelia (24 May 2020). "Labour Party's latest candidate to contest key Epsom seat". The New Zealand Herald.
  2. ^ Belich, James (1998). The New Zealand Wars (1998 ed.). Auckland: Penguin. pp. 10, 11. ISBN 0-14-027504-5.
  3. ^ "The New Zealand Wars". NZ On Screen. Retrieved 29 October 2016.
  4. ^ "James Belich". Auckland University Press. Retrieved 5 June 2024.
  5. ^ Winter, Chloe (18 September 2015). "Hundreds farewell former Wellington mayor Sir James Belich". Stuff. Retrieved 5 June 2024.
  6. ^ "Canvas books wrap: Jumping Sundays by Nick Bollinger, and a conversation with Kiran Dass canvas". The New Zealand Herald. 20 August 2022. Retrieved 5 June 2024. ... Onslow College, where I was entering my 4th Form year, a threatened strike by students (led by future historian James Belich who ...
  7. ^ "James Belich". Read NZ Te Pou Muramura. Retrieved 5 June 2024.
  8. ^ a b "James Belich at Keble College, Oxford". Princeton University Press. Retrieved 5 June 2024.
  9. ^ Belich, James (2009). Replenishing the Earth: The Settler Revolution and the Rise of the Anglo-world, 1783–1939. Oxford: Oxford University Press. p. 573. ISBN 978-0-19-929727-6.
  10. ^ "The Best Scholarly Books of the Decade". The Chronicle of Higher Education. 14 April 2020. Retrieved 26 December 2020.
  11. ^ "Historian James Belich heads to Oxford". Stuff. 10 May 2011. Retrieved 5 June 2024.
  12. ^ "Queen's Birthday honours list 2006". Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet. 5 June 2006.
  13. ^ "Previous winners". Creative New Zealand. Retrieved 24 October 2013.
  14. ^ "Kochanski wins £50k Wolfson History Prize". Books+Publishing. 14 November 2023. Retrieved 20 November 2023.
  15. ^ Titokowaru's War and Its Place in New Zealand's History (Thesis). OCLC 154215317. Retrieved 12 May 2014.
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