Making Peoples: A History of the New Zealanders, from Polynesian Settlement to the End of the Nineteenth Century
by James Belich
Category: Maori (New Zealand people)

The first book in a major two-volume general New Zealand history, now published in paperback. Along with its companion volume Paradise Reforged, this book has been hailed as redefining New Zealand history. Making Peoples is an account of how two huge, fertile, uninhabited Pacific islands became the focus of intensive human settlement, first by the Polynesians and then much later by the British. The book aims to cahllenge both Maori and Paheka' traditions and create a new interpretation of their self-images and their highly complex, often brutal interaction.