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James Belich (historian)

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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

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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

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Belich lectured at Victoria University of Wellington for several years before moving to the University of Auckland.[citation needed] His book The New Zealand Wars won the international Trevor Reese Memorial Prize in 1987.[9] Based on his Dphil thesis,[10] it was later turned into a major documentary series for Television New Zealand.[citation needed] The New Zealand Wars was a five-part series with Belich presenting[3] that was released in 1998.[11][10] It was controversial for the startling claim that northern Maori invented trench warfare.[citation needed]

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.[citation needed] Belich has written a two-volume work A History of the New Zealanders,[citation needed] consisting of Making Peoples (1996) and Paradise Reforged (2001).[4]

In 2007, he moved from the University of Auckland to a professorship at Victoria University, and was appointed professor of history at the Stout Research Centre for New Zealand Studies.[10] 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).[12] 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.[13]

In 2011, he remained professor of history at Victoria University's Stout Research Centre for New Zealand Studies.[9] That year, 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][9] In 2023, he remained Professor of Global and Imperial History at Baliol College, Oxford.[11] His book The World the Plague Made: The Black Death and the Rise of Europe was shortlisted for the Wolfson History Prize in 2023.[11]

Honours and awards

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In the 2006 Queen's Birthday Honours, Belich was appointed an Officer of the New Zealand Order of Merit, for service to historic research.[14]

Belich was the winner of the non-fiction category at the 2011 Prime Minister's Awards for Literary Achievement[15] His book, The World the Plague Made, was shortlisted for the 2023 Wolfson History Prize.[16]

Works

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  • Titokowaru's War and Its Place in New Zealand's History. MA Thesis. Victoria University of Wellington, 1979.[17]
  • 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

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References

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  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. ^ a b "The New Zealand Wars". NZ On Screen. Retrieved 29 October 2016.
  4. ^ a b "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. ^ a b c "Historian James Belich heads to Oxford". Stuff. 10 May 2011. Retrieved 5 June 2024.
  10. ^ a b c James Belich: Acclaimed New Zealand historian to join new faculty, HNN press release
  11. ^ a b c The return of James Belich, Newsroom, 21 November 2023{{citation}}: CS1 maint: year (link)
  12. ^ 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.
  13. ^ "The Best Scholarly Books of the Decade". The Chronicle of Higher Education. 14 April 2020. Retrieved 26 December 2020.
  14. ^ "Queen's Birthday honours list 2006". Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet. 5 June 2006.
  15. ^ "Previous winners". Creative New Zealand. Retrieved 24 October 2013.
  16. ^ "Kochanski wins £50k Wolfson History Prize". Books+Publishing. 14 November 2023. Retrieved 20 November 2023.
  17. ^ Titokowaru's War and Its Place in New Zealand's History (Thesis). OCLC 154215317. Retrieved 12 May 2014.
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