The city of Auckland in 1885 was free from the depression which had troubled the greater part of the colony of New Zealand since the early years of the decade. There had been a buoyant economic atmosphere for some time. The main local bodies of the city were carrying out an expansionist public works programme. Many new public companies had been formed in recent years. The city and suburbs were visibly growing as the building of houses, shops and commercial blocks went on at a rapid tempo. By early 1886, however, the prosperity had gone. Auckland passed into as harsh a decade as any experienced in the one hundred and thirty years of its European existence. Bankruptcies multiplied and were found in high and unexpected places. Firms imagined to be of unquestioned solidity fell. Large local companies were forced to liquidate: there was usually little left over for division among shareholders who had taken up holdings in more confident days. Thousands of properties fell into the hands of mortgagees. Few were aware of how serious and general was the business collapse until October 1888 when a shareholders’ committee of the Bank of New Zealand presented an alarming report. It disclosed that the heavy losses of the Bank were relatively far worse in Auckland than elsewhere and went on to censure much of the business carried on in the city and province. Since the Bank of New Zealand had long been regarded as an Auckland institution and its board invariably drawn from prominent businessmen of the city, this report reflected adversely upon the existing commercial practices, and the leadership of the city. But if there were ‘guilty men’ as the report suggested, they were never brought to trial, nor were their names revealed except in the vaguest terms. The Banking Committee set up by the House of Representatives in 1896, failed to persuade Bank directors to name either the weak accounts, or the inadequate securities that the Bank had accepted in Auckland and the Waikato. Bank spokesmen were as tight-lipped as any private banker in Zurich. The facts were not revealed nor have been since. Yet the charges made in 1888 have generally stuck. It has been believed that influential Aucklanders did much to keep their city in a state of artificial prosperity. This thesis grew out of intermittent research into Auckland’s economic development in the 1880s that I began in 1956. Since 1964 I have more seriously and continuously studied the businessmen of the decade. I soon found explanations of the boom and collapse invariably moralistic and generally unsatisfactory. Rarely did demonological trappings fit the businessmen when studied in detail. I became convinced that the sudden growth of the city and the related economic expansion were primarily economic phenomena that had primarily economic explanations. Where I have been able I have turned in my research to business records. The Sir John Logan Campbell Papers at the Auckland Institute Library were extremely valuable. But records of firms were all too few. I relied most heavily on quite unspectacular documents: the daily press, and the records of the land registries in Auckland and Hamilton and the companies’ office in Auckland. Newspapers reported company business very fully in those days. The press invariably carried prospectuses, and had detailed accounts of company meetings. Annual reports, financial statements and shareholders’ discussions at an important company meeting might run into thousands of words. Bankruptcy proceedings, and civil actions in court, moreover, were given far more detailed press coverage than today and tell us much about how the less successful and more litigious conducted their affairs. Lands and deeds records I found exceptionally valuable. With some persistence and a little luck one can reconstruct much of the borrowing of the men whose names the Bank of New Zealand refused to reveal, and other businessmen as well. The key was usually a legal description of one piece of land of the person concerned often to be gained from the General Assembly electoral rolls. Deeds and memoranda of mortgage and transfer I found very rewarding. An unexpected bonus from Certificate of Title Register Books were maps that gave the means of establishing the dimensions of estates that usually described in very general and often erroneous terms. The virtually unused company records stored in the National Archives Record Centre at Auckland proved to be a mine of information. Records of the old law firms and banks where available proved very valuable but the position of professional trust in which the lawyer and the banker stand in relation to clients’ records must inevitably limit the opportunities of the historian to participate. / Note: Thesis now published. Stone, R.C.J. (1973). Makers of fortune; a colonial business community and its fall. Auckland: Auckland University Press. Whole document restricted at the request of the author, but available by individual request, use the feedback form to request access.

This thesis examines the public debate on homosexuality in New Zealand in the period 1960-86. Its focus is primarily on male homosexuality because the central issue was the continued criminalization of male same-sex sexual acts. The thesis notes irresolvable problems of definition of homosexuality involving discussions of behaviour, orientation and identity. Nevertheless, the debate proceeded on a binary basis, that homosexuals and heterosexuals were two clearly defined groups of people. The thesis begins by noting the repression and invisibility of homosexuals in the 1960s. It then explores the origins and significance of the New Zealand Homosexual Law Reform Society and the gay liberation movement. Because of the significance of religion in regard to the debate, a chapter is devoted to major change and cleavage that occurred within the churches relating to homosexuality in the period reviewed. Finally the intense fifteen months of debate that occurred prior to decriminalization of male homosexual activity in July 1986 is studied at depth. The thesis highlights the intensity of feeling that the debate engendered. This was the result of the clash of fundamentally different worldviews and value systems. Behind the particular issue lay the question of the moral and social status of homosexuals and homosexual acts. So fundamental was this division that from both sides the very future of society seemed to be at stake. Worlds were in collision. / Note: Thesis now published. Guy, L (2002). Worlds in collision : the gay debate in New Zealand, 1960-1986. Wellington [N.Z.]: Victoria University Press, 2002. ISBN 0864734387

Frederick Weld arrived in New Zealand early in 1884, an unassuming and shy twenty-year old with high hopes and modest assets. He left the colony two decades later, a well-regarded and prominent citizen whose reputation was regarded by imperial authorities as ample qualification for appointment to a colonial governorship. Following a successful term of office in Western Australia, he was promoted to Tasmania and thence to the Straits Settlements, from which post he retired in 1887. The purpose of this study is to demonstrate how Weld’s colonial experience greatly influenced the nature of his administrations and to illustrate how his outlook gradually changed from one of a colonist to that of a servant of empire. / Images removed from thesis for copyright reasons.

I was drawn to this topic of research by my interest in the European movement its evolution over the past thirty odd years and, in particular the British response to these developments. A great deal has been written in this field for the 1950s, 60s and 70s, but there is almost nothing on the war period itself. This seemed an important gap, for the war was the context within which the nations of Western Europe became open to the possibility of a radically new ordering of the economic and political life of the Continent. And it was in the context of the war that Britain rose to a position of unparalleled prestige vis-a-vis her European allies who looked to her to provide the leadership essential for such an ambitious undertaking. I have taken the period from 1942-3 when the tide of war turned against the Axis Powers and Allied victory was certain, to the end of 1945, when the period of flux was ending and the first outlines of the Cold War were already apparent. This thesis, then, is an attempt to contribute something to the first chapter of the ongoing Britain-and-Europe debate as it emerged from the Second World War - still a controversial issue today.

This thesis examines the role of Zhang Yuanji, both as a liberal patriotic reformer in late Qing and as China's leading publisher after 1900. A historical figure hardly known to the West, Zhang contributed substantially to China's modernization in his quiet pragmatic style. When China was challenged by the imperialist West, the response of the nation's scholar-gentry elite ranged from spirited calls for wholesale westernization to a stubborn clinging to the 'national essence'. Individuals at the extremes of this range have received more attention from historians than the middle-of-the-road group of moderates, who in the twentieth century worked for modernization without discarding tradition totally. Zhang Yuanji was a typical figure in this group who attained intellectual maturity under Confucianism and yet was open-minded enough to accept Western philosophies and to adopt Western practices of entrepreneurship. Zhang Yuanji's in tense sense of patriotic obligation to introduce progressive learning for China's benefit while popularizing the best of the classical heritage was coupled with a culturalistic viewpoint that there could be no genuine changes unless a certain percentage of China'S thinking population became modernized in outlook, well-informed of world affairs, and imbued with a progressive spirit. Zhang pioneered in modern education from 1896 and remained a dedicated educationalist all his life. His publishing career in the Commercial Press can be viewed as a logical extension of his early aim of modernizing China through the spread of new knowledge. The history of the Commercial Press and in particular Zhang's part in it have received little scholarly attention, previous treatments of the subject have relied heavily on two official Commercial Press histories and the autobiographical writings of Wang Yunwu, which neglect Zhang's major contributions. The Commercial Press, as the largest publishing house in modern China, was in the forefront of educational, scholarly, and literary development in China from 1900 to the 1950s, and Zhang played a vital role in promoting progressive publications as well as preserving the best editions of classics and histories. Zhang's efforts to run the Commercial Press successfully through all the political upheavals that beset China from late Qing to after 1949 reveal both the scholar's attempts to keep up with all the latest ideological trends as well as the entrepreneur's ambition to run a modern business efficiently. A study of Zhang Yuanji's life and career is in part a study of the evolution of China's gentry-elite and the emergence of the native capitalists. The thesis draws on newly-available primary materials, both in the original and in manuscript, including over a thousand of Zhang's letters, several hundred poems and essays, and the extant sections of his business diary. These materials are supplemented by information provided by Zhang's surviving literary and editorial colleagues. Internal publications and source-materials of the Commercial Press are also used to reconstruct this biography of a little-known man who worked for China's modernization by drawing on his solid learning about China's past.

The city of Auckland in 1885 was free from the depression which had troubled the greater part of the colony of New Zealand since the early years of the decade. There had been a buoyant economic atmosphere for some time. The main local bodies of the city were carrying out an expansionist public works programme. Many new public companies had been formed in recent years. The city and suburbs were visibly growing as the building of houses, shops and commercial blocks went on at a rapid tempo. By early 1886, however, the prosperity had gone. Auckland passed into as harsh a decade as any experienced in the one hundred and thirty years of its European existence. Bankruptcies multiplied and were found in high and unexpected places. Firms imagined to be of unquestioned solidity fell. Large local companies were forced to liquidate: there was usually little left over for division among shareholders who had taken up holdings in more confident days. Thousands of properties fell into the hands of mortgagees. Few were aware of how serious and general was the business collapse until October 1888 when a shareholders’ committee of the Bank of New Zealand presented an alarming report. It disclosed that the heavy losses of the Bank were relatively far worse in Auckland than elsewhere and went on to censure much of the business carried on in the city and province. Since the Bank of New Zealand had long been regarded as an Auckland institution and its board invariably drawn from prominent businessmen of the city, this report reflected adversely upon the existing commercial practices, and the leadership of the city. But if there were ‘guilty men’ as the report suggested, they were never brought to trial, nor were their names revealed except in the vaguest terms. The Banking Committee set up by the House of Representatives in 1896, failed to persuade Bank directors to name either the weak accounts, or the inadequate securities that the Bank had accepted in Auckland and the Waikato. Bank spokesmen were as tight-lipped as any private banker in Zurich. The facts were not revealed nor have been since. Yet the charges made in 1888 have generally stuck. It has been believed that influential Aucklanders did much to keep their city in a state of artificial prosperity. This thesis grew out of intermittent research into Auckland’s economic development in the 1880s that I began in 1956. Since 1964 I have more seriously and continuously studied the businessmen of the decade. I soon found explanations of the boom and collapse invariably moralistic and generally unsatisfactory. Rarely did demonological trappings fit the businessmen when studied in detail. I became convinced that the sudden growth of the city and the related economic expansion were primarily economic phenomena that had primarily economic explanations. Where I have been able I have turned in my research to business records. The Sir John Logan Campbell Papers at the Auckland Institute Library were extremely valuable. But records of firms were all too few. I relied most heavily on quite unspectacular documents: the daily press, and the records of the land registries in Auckland and Hamilton and the companies’ office in Auckland. Newspapers reported company business very fully in those days. The press invariably carried prospectuses, and had detailed accounts of company meetings. Annual reports, financial statements and shareholders’ discussions at an important company meeting might run into thousands of words. Bankruptcy proceedings, and civil actions in court, moreover, were given far more detailed press coverage than today and tell us much about how the less successful and more litigious conducted their affairs. Lands and deeds records I found exceptionally valuable. With some persistence and a little luck one can reconstruct much of the borrowing of the men whose names the Bank of New Zealand refused to reveal, and other businessmen as well. The key was usually a legal description of one piece of land of the person concerned often to be gained from the General Assembly electoral rolls. Deeds and memoranda of mortgage and transfer I found very rewarding. An unexpected bonus from Certificate of Title Register Books were maps that gave the means of establishing the dimensions of estates that usually described in very general and often erroneous terms. The virtually unused company records stored in the National Archives Record Centre at Auckland proved to be a mine of information. Records of the old law firms and banks where available proved very valuable but the position of professional trust in which the lawyer and the banker stand in relation to clients’ records must inevitably limit the opportunities of the historian to participate. / Note: Thesis now published. Stone, R.C.J. (1973). Makers of fortune; a colonial business community and its fall. Auckland: Auckland University Press. Whole document restricted at the request of the author, but available by individual request, use the feedback form to request access.

This thesis examines the public debate on homosexuality in New Zealand in the period 1960-86. Its focus is primarily on male homosexuality because the central issue was the continued criminalization of male same-sex sexual acts. The thesis notes irresolvable problems of definition of homosexuality involving discussions of behaviour, orientation and identity. Nevertheless, the debate proceeded on a binary basis, that homosexuals and heterosexuals were two clearly defined groups of people. The thesis begins by noting the repression and invisibility of homosexuals in the 1960s. It then explores the origins and significance of the New Zealand Homosexual Law Reform Society and the gay liberation movement. Because of the significance of religion in regard to the debate, a chapter is devoted to major change and cleavage that occurred within the churches relating to homosexuality in the period reviewed. Finally the intense fifteen months of debate that occurred prior to decriminalization of male homosexual activity in July 1986 is studied at depth. The thesis highlights the intensity of feeling that the debate engendered. This was the result of the clash of fundamentally different worldviews and value systems. Behind the particular issue lay the question of the moral and social status of homosexuals and homosexual acts. So fundamental was this division that from both sides the very future of society seemed to be at stake. Worlds were in collision. / Note: Thesis now published. Guy, L (2002). Worlds in collision : the gay debate in New Zealand, 1960-1986. Wellington [N.Z.]: Victoria University Press, 2002. ISBN 0864734387

Frederick Weld arrived in New Zealand early in 1884, an unassuming and shy twenty-year old with high hopes and modest assets. He left the colony two decades later, a well-regarded and prominent citizen whose reputation was regarded by imperial authorities as ample qualification for appointment to a colonial governorship. Following a successful term of office in Western Australia, he was promoted to Tasmania and thence to the Straits Settlements, from which post he retired in 1887. The purpose of this study is to demonstrate how Weld’s colonial experience greatly influenced the nature of his administrations and to illustrate how his outlook gradually changed from one of a colonist to that of a servant of empire. / Images removed from thesis for copyright reasons.

I was drawn to this topic of research by my interest in the European movement its evolution over the past thirty odd years and, in particular the British response to these developments. A great deal has been written in this field for the 1950s, 60s and 70s, but there is almost nothing on the war period itself. This seemed an important gap, for the war was the context within which the nations of Western Europe became open to the possibility of a radically new ordering of the economic and political life of the Continent. And it was in the context of the war that Britain rose to a position of unparalleled prestige vis-a-vis her European allies who looked to her to provide the leadership essential for such an ambitious undertaking. I have taken the period from 1942-3 when the tide of war turned against the Axis Powers and Allied victory was certain, to the end of 1945, when the period of flux was ending and the first outlines of the Cold War were already apparent. This thesis, then, is an attempt to contribute something to the first chapter of the ongoing Britain-and-Europe debate as it emerged from the Second World War - still a controversial issue today.

This thesis examines the role of Zhang Yuanji, both as a liberal patriotic reformer in late Qing and as China's leading publisher after 1900. A historical figure hardly known to the West, Zhang contributed substantially to China's modernization in his quiet pragmatic style. When China was challenged by the imperialist West, the response of the nation's scholar-gentry elite ranged from spirited calls for wholesale westernization to a stubborn clinging to the 'national essence'. Individuals at the extremes of this range have received more attention from historians than the middle-of-the-road group of moderates, who in the twentieth century worked for modernization without discarding tradition totally. Zhang Yuanji was a typical figure in this group who attained intellectual maturity under Confucianism and yet was open-minded enough to accept Western philosophies and to adopt Western practices of entrepreneurship. Zhang Yuanji's in tense sense of patriotic obligation to introduce progressive learning for China's benefit while popularizing the best of the classical heritage was coupled with a culturalistic viewpoint that there could be no genuine changes unless a certain percentage of China'S thinking population became modernized in outlook, well-informed of world affairs, and imbued with a progressive spirit. Zhang pioneered in modern education from 1896 and remained a dedicated educationalist all his life. His publishing career in the Commercial Press can be viewed as a logical extension of his early aim of modernizing China through the spread of new knowledge. The history of the Commercial Press and in particular Zhang's part in it have received little scholarly attention, previous treatments of the subject have relied heavily on two official Commercial Press histories and the autobiographical writings of Wang Yunwu, which neglect Zhang's major contributions. The Commercial Press, as the largest publishing house in modern China, was in the forefront of educational, scholarly, and literary development in China from 1900 to the 1950s, and Zhang played a vital role in promoting progressive publications as well as preserving the best editions of classics and histories. Zhang's efforts to run the Commercial Press successfully through all the political upheavals that beset China from late Qing to after 1949 reveal both the scholar's attempts to keep up with all the latest ideological trends as well as the entrepreneur's ambition to run a modern business efficiently. A study of Zhang Yuanji's life and career is in part a study of the evolution of China's gentry-elite and the emergence of the native capitalists. The thesis draws on newly-available primary materials, both in the original and in manuscript, including over a thousand of Zhang's letters, several hundred poems and essays, and the extant sections of his business diary. These materials are supplemented by information provided by Zhang's surviving literary and editorial colleagues. Internal publications and source-materials of the Commercial Press are also used to reconstruct this biography of a little-known man who worked for China's modernization by drawing on his solid learning about China's past.