Light the fuse

Not the great New Zealand mobilisation novel

An early work-in-progress dedicated to helping,
circuitously, precipitate the Great Mobilisation

Dare to be wise!
Kant

Back matter

Bibliography

Contents
author Cimino
work-in-progress published 20250711

These unshaped islands, on the sawyer’s bench,
Wait for the chisel of the mind…
James K Baxter, New Zealand, 1972

Origins of an Experimental Society, cover

Great New Zealand History: Candidate surely, as the basis for the first of an essential three-part, multi-episodic history documentary series, The Origins of an Experimental Society: New Zealand 1769–1860 —and its two companion volumes, once published—have enormous potential to contribute to rebuilding a kinder New Zealand society—a team of five or more million committed to salvaging a survivable climate, one Aotearoa at a time. publisher Auckland University Press | typographic compaction Mahurangi Magazine

Colloquium, at the first of the word’s three appearances in The Origins of an Experimental Society: New Zealand 1769–1860 , instantly became Cimino’s new most favourite word, of his new most favourite book, authored by candidate for his new most favourite New Zealand historian:

Bibliography – ordered alphabetically by titlebut disrespecting the bloody The, where regrettably deployed

The Origins of an Experimental Society:
New Zealand 1769–1860
author Erik Olssen
publisher Auckland University Press
published 20250408
light-the-fuse observation Wisdom abhors a vacuum, and Aotearoa is greatly the worse for the lazy assumption that its colonisation by Europeans was typical of that which was visited upon the Americas, and even Australia. By itself, Trial of the Cannibal Dog: Captain Cook in the South Seas was worthy of seeding a trilogy of first-contact movies which, as well as filling theatres worldwide, would have provided a springboard for the better education of New Zealanders young and old, Māori, Pākehā, Pasifika et al as to their uniquely Enlightenment-nuanced heritage. While Dame Anne Salmond’s handsome ship sailed—21 years ago this2025 August—the docuseries-beginning trilogy demanded today would have even greater heft, considering the part the Enlightenment played on New Zealand’s European settlement, and the part Aotearoa and the Pacific played in the Enlightenment, which Olssen so superbly details, not least of all the contribution of the irrepressibly polymathic Benjamin Franklin to the designFranklin had specific suggestions for Cook’s plan to establish key Old World domesticated animals and crops throughout the Pacific of the New Zealand experiment.

‹ New research | End notes ›

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Disclosure The editor of this content is no longer the secretary of either the Mahurangi Action Incorporated or the Mahurangi Coastal Path Trust. Regardless, the content published here continues to be that of the editorially independent, independently owned and funded Mahurangi Magazine.