The Financial Colonisation of Aotearoa
Author:
Catherine Comyn
Publisher:
Economic and Social Research Aotearoa
ISBN:
9780473644062
Date published:
November 19 2022
Format:
Paperback
RRP:
$30
Finance was at the centre of every stage of the colonisation of Aotearoa, from the sale of Māori lands and the emigration of early colonists to the founding of settler nationhood and the enforcement of colonial governance.
Described as “Theoretically sophisticated, historically precise, and politically urgent” by Max Haiven, this book reveals the financial instruments and imperatives that drove the British colonial project in the nineteenth century. This is a history of the joint-stock company, a speculative London property market that romanticised the distant lands of indigenous peoples, and the calculated use of credit and taxation by the British to dispossess Māori of their land and subject them to colonial rule.
About the author:
CATHERINE COMYN is an ESRA researcher and PhD candidate in the School of Politics and Economics at King’s College London. Her work explores intersections of finance and colonisation, and possibilities for their overcoming.
