Editorial Introduction

Tēnā koutou katoa,

WE ARE PLEASED to announce a new episode in the history of the New Zealand Journal of History, forming a closer relationship with the New Zealand Historical Association, which we believe will greatly advantage both. In 2021, the NZHA conducted a survey of its members, and comments indicated a strong desire for them to receive the journal as part of their subscription to the Association. It makes sense to link the major historical professional organization in Aotearoa New Zealand and the country’s premier historical journal. This alliance was proposed by the NZJH Board of Management and agreed to at the 2021 NZHA AGM. Students’ subscription to the NZHA, including two issues of the journal annually, continues to be free of charge as before.

The NZHA and NZJH not surprisingly share the same values of promoting and disseminating historical research of Aotearoa New Zealand of the highest quality. Like the NZHA, we at the NZJH recognize our responsibility to foster and promote Māori history and Māori historians, including students and iwi and hapū historians, and our responsibility to recognize and encourage Māori perspectives of the past. We acknowledge the need to be inclusive of historians outside the academy, and welcome journal submissions from other sectors, such as museums and independent scholars. As NZHA past-president Michael Belgrave stated in his 2021 annual report, ‘Together, we have a collective responsibility to promote inclusive, supportive and collaborative approaches to understanding the past’. We welcome a wide range of submissions to the NZJH. Like the NZHA, the journal believes in the importance of placing the history of Aotearoa New Zealand in an international context, and in particular recognizing its place in the Pacific.

Over the past few years, the NZJH has included two panel discussions devoted to teaching Aotearoa New Zealand history in secondary schools and in the tertiary sector. This is a discussion which we believe will be ongoing, and it has taken on a new urgency with the new school curriculum recently launched by Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern and Ministers Kelvin Davis, Jan Tinetti and Aupito William Sio at Sylvia Park School in Mount Wellington, Auckland. We welcome contributions from our constituency on pathways forward addressing the new challenges for teachers. The journal is a good place to have those conversations.

As we write, history is being made – from the Russia–Ukraine war to the world of COVID and climate change we currently live in. All will be subject to historical research in due course.

Kia kaha,