The Meeting Place - A New Zealand History Blog

Ministry for Culture and Heritage Seminar: Please join us on Wednesday 3 April, 12.15pm (just after Easter) at the Ministry for Culture and Heritage, L4 ASB House, 101 The Terrace, to hear Professor Geoff Rice on: Christchurch 's Temple of Truth: Religion, Sex and Fraud in the 1890s .   Christchurch in the 1890s was visited by the extraordinary phenomenon of a much-married American evangelist, Arthur Bently Worthington, who proceeded to set up a new cult of revivalist Christianity. He gathered a large and enthusiastic following, whose liberal donations enabled him to build an impressive ‘Temple of Truth’ on Latimer Square. However, opposition from the established churches and rumours of sexual scandals, together with a controversial change of ‘wives’, made him flee to Tasmania. Amazingly, he returned and tried to make a comeback, but only caused public disorder and the only time the Riot Act has been read in Christchurch. This illustrated talk is...

Ministry for Culture and Heritage Seminar: We're delighted to invite you to hear Ewan Morris at our first public history seminar in 2013 at the Ministry for Culture and Heritage, L4 ASB House, 101 The Terrace, Wellington at 12.15pm on Wednesday 6 March. Māori Monument or Pākehā Propaganda? The Memorial to Te Keepa Te Rangihiwinui , Whanganui Statue in memory of Te Keepa Te Rangihiwinui , also known as Major Kemp, at Wanganui , 1912. Image courtesy of the Alexander Turnbull Library, Reference Number: 1/1-021036-G In 1912 a memorial to the rangatira and soldier Te Keepa Te Rangihiwinui (Major Kemp) was erected in Pākaitore / Moutoa Gardens, Whanganui . It consists of a statue, four bronze panels depicting battles in which Te Keepa was involved, and eight separate panels of text. The memorial was the subject of a series of court cases in 1913-14, resulting from the unwillingness of Te Keepa’s sister to pay for a statue that she felt did not properly ...

The biennial New Zealand Historical Association conference is being held in Dunedin from Wednesday 20 November until Friday 22 November. The conference organizing committee is looking forward to welcoming a large and energetic group of historians, archivists and librarians, teachers, curators, and heritage professionals as well as the historically curious. We have an excellent line-up of keynote speakers: Professor Elizabeth Elbourne (McGill University), author of Blood Ground: Colonialism, Missions and the Contest for Christianity in the Cape Colony and Britain, 1799-1853 ; Professor Maya Jasanoff (Harvard University), the author of Edge of Empire: Lives, Culture, and Conquest in the East, 1750-1850 and Liberty’s Exiles: American Loyalists in the Revolutionary World ; and Professor Henry Yu (University of British Columbia), author of Thinking Orientals: Migration, Contact and Exoticism in Modern America . Associate Professor Damon Salesa (University of Auckland), whose Racial C...