The Discovery of Islands

Written by one of the world’s leading historians of political thought and published over the past three decades, the purpose of these essays is to present British history as the history of several nations interacting with–and sometimes seceding from–association with an imperial state. The commentary presents this history as that of an archipelago, situated in oceans and expanding across them to the Antipodes. Both New Zealand history and ways of seeing history formed in New Zealand enter into the vision.