Title: The broken decade: prosperity, depression and recovery in New Zealand, 1928-39 /
Authors: McKinnon, Malcolm
Year: 2016
Subjects: Depressions New Zealand.; Depressions; Economic history; Social conditions.; New Zealand Economic conditions; New Zealand Social conditions.; New Zealand History; New Zealand
Abstract: "The Depression of the 1930s was a defining period in New Zealand history. It had its own vocabulary – swaggers and sugarbags, relief work and sustenance, the Queen Street riots and special constables – that was all too familiar to those who lived through that tumultuous decade ... While the lives of those most affected by the Depression have been admirably documented in oral histories in various forms, the political and economic context, and the manoeuvrings and responses to the unprecedented conditions have not, until now, been given the extensive analysis they deserve. [This book] ... unpicks the Depression year by year. It begins by introducing the prosperous world of New Zealand in the late 1920s before focusing on the sudden onset of the Depression in 1930–31, the catastrophic months that followed and, finally, on the attempt to find a way back to that pre-Depression prosperity. Informed by exhaustive research, relevant statistics and fascinating personal accounts, and made accessible and meaningful by insightful analysis"--Publisher's description.
Contents: An Indian summer, 1928-30 -- Economy and adjustment, 1930-32 -- Out of mind, out of sight? the unemployed crisis, 1930-32 -- After the disturbances, 1932 -- How to raise prices, 1932-33 -- At odds, 1933 -- Expansion and protection, 1933-35 -- Back and forward to a welfare state, 1933-35 -- The 1935 election -- A Labour restoration? 1935-39 -- The Depression as history and memory, 1940-2015.