Listen: The unsettled afterlife of Captain Cook

8 August 2026 First published RNZ

Even 250 years on from the sea voyages that made his name and set our colonial history in motion, Captain Cook remains a much-discussed figure here in Aotearoa. He's one of the most controversial figures in our country's history, conscripted into the 'culture wars' - a symbol of colonial sins to some, a hero and pioneer to others.

Historian Tony Ballantyne has taken on the mammoth task of unweaving the tangled web of Cook's legacy in his new book, Captain Cook and Unsettled Afterlives, he told Mihingarangi Forbes on RNZ's Saturday Morning programme about how he's sorted the legacy of Cook into three eras that have all come to define his reception in modern New Zealand.