Notes

344 p.: A history of the South Island from the 1840s, covering: early Maori-Pakeha conflict, the Wairau Affair, colonial settlement, the Gold Rush, the growth of farming and the pastoral elite, and the development of towns and cities. Of particular focus are the rise and fall of the first privately founded Pakeha settlements with their mixture of social idealism, business enterprise and religious conviction. These settlements were doomed, overwhelmed by the developing southern frontier - the world of gold and wool, of social climbers, would-be aristocrats and ambitious ne'er-do-wells