James Belich (historian)

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]

Not to be confused with James Belich (mayor).

James Belich

ONZM
Belich in 2010
Born1956 (age 64–65)
Wellington, New Zealand
RelativesJim Belich (father)
Camilla Belich (niece)[1]
AwardsPrime Minister's Awards for Literary Achievement 2010
Academic background
Alma mater
Academic work
DisciplineHistory
WebsiteStaff profile at Oxford University

Since 2013 Belich has been the Beit Professor of Imperial and Commonwealth History[4] and as the Director of the Oxford Centre for Global History at the University of Oxford.

Background

Of Croatian descent, he was born in Wellington in 1956, the son of Sir Jim Belich, who later became Mayor of Wellington. He attended Onslow College.

He gained an M.A. in history at Victoria University before being awarded a Rhodes Scholarship in 1978 and travelling to Oxford to complete his D.Phil at Nuffield College.

Academic career

He 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).

In the 2006 Queen's Birthday Honours, Belich was appointed an Officer of the New Zealand Order of Merit, for service to historic research.[5]

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).[6] 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.[7]

In 2011 Belich was appointed Beit Professor of Commonwealth History at Oxford University.[4][8]

Awards and honours
This list is incomplete; you can help by adding missing items with reliable sources.

Works
  • Titokowaru's War and Its Place in New Zealand's History. MA Thesis. Victoria University of Wellington, 1979.[10]
  • 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 9780199297276

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. "Professor James Belich". Faculty of History website. Oxford University. Retrieved 31 October 2013.
  5. "Queen's Birthday honours list 2006". Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet. 5 June 2006.
  6. 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.
  7. "The Best Scholarly Books of the Decade". The Chronicle of Higher Education. 14 April 2020. Retrieved 26 December 2020.
  8. "Historian James Belich heads to Oxford". stuff.co.nz. 9 May 2011.
  9. "Previous winners". Creative New Zealand. Retrieved 24 October 2013.
  10. "Catalogue". victoria.lconz.ac.nz. 2011. Archived from the original on 20 July 2012.
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