Trading Cultures: A History of the Far North

Trading Cultures is a social, economic and political history that gives fresh insights into how and why Maori and Pakeha in the far north of New Zealand traded and interacted with each other from the 1700s to the present. It explores how the far north began as a bread basket and became an economic basket case by the 1990s and how Maori and Pakeha negotiated two centuries of unprecedented change. While on first contact trade practices between Europeans and Maori were similar, increasing settler numbers and trade led to the two economic systems colliding over differences between gift, barter and moneyed exchanges. With the depression, world wars and urban migration, far north industries collapsed. Throughout this though, social ties to the area remained strong, and with the unemployment of the 1970s people returned and an informal economy revived. This history explores the continuous social and economic engagement between immigrants to the far north and far-northern iwi during these times of change.