Why are we speaking English? Replenishing the Earth gives a new answer to that question, uncovering a 'settler revolution' that took place from the early nineteenth century that led to the explosive settlement of the American West and its forgotten twin, the British West, comprising the settler dominions of Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and South Africa. Between 1780 and 1930 the number of English-speakers rocketed from 12 million in 1780 to 200 million, and their wealth and power grew to match. Their secret was not racial, or cultural, or institutional superiority but a resonant...
Why are we speaking English? Replenishing the Earth gives a new answer to that question, uncovering a 'settler revolution' that took place from the ea...
Revealing the enormous tactical and military skill of Maori, and the inability of 'Victorian interpretation' to acknowledge those qualities, Belich's account of the New Zealand Wars offered a very different picture from the one previously given in historical works. Maori, in Belich's view, won the Northern War and stalemated the British in the Taranaki War of 1860-61 only to be defeated by 18,000 British troops in the Waikato War of 1863-64. The secret of effective Maori resistance was an innovative military system, the modern pa: a trench-and-bunker fortification of a sophistication not...
Revealing the enormous tactical and military skill of Maori, and the inability of 'Victorian interpretation' to acknowledge those qualities, Belich's ...