Browsing by Author "Wood, Gregory"

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    James Cowan : the significance of his journalism : a thesis presented in three volumes in fulfilment of the requirement for the award of Doctor of Philosophy in History at Massey University, New Zealand
    (Massey University, 2019) Wood, Gregory
    This thesis argues that to understand Cowan the historian, his interest in history and his way of writing history, one must return to the roots of his writing – his journalism. Cowan’s adroit penmanship meant that his history writing existed in close parallel to his journalism. His writing style varied little between the two areas, which meant that he reached a wide group of readers regardless of their reading level or tastes. His favourite topics included travel writing and recent history, that is, history in his lifetime. For a better understanding of how and why he wrote, some key aspects of his life and career have been selected for study. These aspects include his childhood, his early journalism as a reporter for the Auckland Star, and his later journalism for Railways Magazine. Finally, his legacy is considered from the viewpoint of his colleagues and contemporaries. Cowan the journalist was the making of Cowan the historian, and to better understand the strengths of his histories one must appreciate his journalistic background. Past and present cannot be easily separated, and his historical work becomes more clearly articulated in the present with the discovery of previously unknown material from the nineteenth century and representing a quarter of his journalism output. That material has can now be appreciated for what it is – as the wellspring of his writing, the original source of his histories.
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    Revisiting James Cowan : a reassessment of The New Zealand Wars (1922-23) : a thesis presented in fulfilment of the requirement for the degree of Master of Philosophy in English at Massey University, Albany, New Zealand
    (Massey University, 2010) Wood, Gregory
    Widely differing perceptions of the early twentieth century New Zealand writer James Cowan have led to confusion over how he should be best remembered – as a journalist, an historian, or a combination of both. Most of the previous scholarly assessments of Cowan have focused on his greatest achievement, The New Zealand Wars (1922-23), and not sought further connections with his other works to reveal the existence of a coherent historiography. This thesis fleshes out Cowan’s historiography by including and reviewing three other books in his oeuvre, two written immediately before the release of The New Zealand Wars (The Maoris of New Zealand and The Adventures of Kimble Bent), and one shortly afterwards (The Maoris in the Great War). All four books contributed in their own unique way to an early goal of Cowan’s to write a history of Maori-Pakeha interaction and reconciliation following the turmoil of the New Zealand Wars of the nineteenth century. They also reveal a progressive attempt by Cowan to write history of a suitable standard to ultimately earn him the dual status of firstly, ‘oral historian’ and secondly, ‘public historian’, that is, ‘an historian writing outside academia’. The terms did not exist in Cowan’s era, so his research methods must be considered advanced for the time. My subsequent review of Cowan’s major work The New Zealand Wars shows that his writing transcended journalism in its creation, and has led to this reassessment of Cowan as a much more significant writer for his era than has been accorded to him so far.