First published in 1929, Raymond Firth’s original and insightful study offers an incredibly detailed account of the social and economic organisation of the Maori people before their contact with Western civilisation. Bridging the gap between anthropology and economics, the work covers the class structure, land system, industry, methods of co-operative labour, exchange and distribution, and the psychological foundations of Maori society. This reissue will be welcomed by all students of anthropology and anyone interested the history of the Maori people.
The archetypal story of Thomas Kendall, a self-torturing, struggling missionary in nineteenth century New Zealand, is also a remarkable history of cross-cultural experience. Posted to New Zealand in 1814, Kendall was immensely devout but entirely unprepared for dealing with Māori. He nonetheless helped produce the first Māori Grammar, but was hindered by rumours of an affair with a Māori chief’s daughter. Dismissed from his duties in 1823, he continued studying Māori culture until his death nearly a decade later. Long out of print, this work by a leading New Zealand historian tells an absorbing story of the difficulties and dangers of the evangelical mission.
This book is a major scientific contribution to economic anthropology and has now become a standard work. The original edition gave the first systematic analysis of the basic problems concerned with the accumulation and disposal of wealth among the pre-European Maori. In the elucidation of this important aspect of Maori sociology the rich data accumulated by generations of scholars were brought into perspective in the light of modern theory. The analysis of the structure and operations of primitive Maori economic affairs was completed by an examination of the changes resulting from the contact of Maori with Europeans. For this new edition the general introductory chapter has been completely rewritten and much new material added. The final chapter on the post-European period has been much expanded to show the developing contribution of the modern Maori to New Zealand society as a whole.
Fortifications are found on many of the scattered Polynesian islands. In no place are they known to have occurred until at least 200 years after the initial settlement, and each island group that built them initiated their own particular style. It is my contention that the building of fortifications is not a rote cultural activity divorced from any cultural context, but that their construction reflects individual responses to a complex of military needs. Different types of fortifications served different functions. A garrison camp built to hold siege against a fortified village serves a different purpose than the walls of the village it is besieging, and both are different from a walled fastness in some desolate area serving to protect fugitives when all else has failed. Societies have specific concepts of social structure and military procedure, and if they built fortifications, these defences will reflect the specific criteria of their builders. It is my intention to correlate the available data on political organization, military organization, weapons, and patterns of warfare to the advent of fortifications. The massive amounts of labour involved in the construction of some of the Polynesian forts did not require, as some might think, a highly structured system of government. But the manner in which the society was organized, their level of factions, does influence the construction of their forts by influencing the size and organization of the armies that could be fielded, the reliability of allies, the probable results of the conflict, and the reasons for which the war was being fought. When this is understood, along with a knowledge of their available military tools, we should then be able to grasp the functional aspects of the Polynesian fortifications and correlate similar input with a similar constructural response.
