Jim McAloon

Associate Professor

MA (Canterbury)
PhD (Otago)

Contact details

Lectures in

HIST 112: Introduction to New Zealand History.

HIST 317: New Zealand History

HIST 419: A Topic in Historiography and Historical Method 1: History and Theory

Research Areas

I have a wide range of interests in the economic and social history of New Zealand and other places, including settler societies, colonial development, class and history, labour history, migration, and twentieth century political history.  I am happy to supervise in all these areas and others.  I have also had some experience in Māori land issues, particularly with reference to the South Island. 

I am a member of the NZ Historical Association and the Economic History Society of Australia and New Zealand.

Major research projects at present are the history of economic policy in New Zealand 1945-84, and (in collaboration with a number of scholars in different universities) Scottish migration to New Zealand. 

Current Research and Publications

Books

• McAloon, J. No Idle Rich: the Wealthy in Canterbury and Otago 1840-1914, 230pp, Dunedin: University of Otago Press, 2002. (This book won the History section in the Montana NZ Book Awards in 2003, and the Archives and Records Association of NZ Ian Wards Prize in 2002).
• McAloon, J. Nelson: a regional history, 261pp, Whatamongo Bay: Cape Catley/Nelson City Council, 1997.
  (This book was joint winner of the 1999 J M Sherrard Award in Regional History)

Chapters

• ‘The State and Economic Development in Australia and New Zealand 1945-84’, in Christopher Lloyd, Jacob Meltzer, and Richard Sutch, eds, Settler Economies in World History, Leiden: Brill Academic Publishers, forthcoming.
• ‘The New Zealand Economy, 1792-1914’ in Giselle Byrnes, ed, The New Oxford History of New Zealand, forthcoming, 2009.
• ‘Scottish-Colonial business relationships in the nineteenth century: Sanderson & Murray of Galashiels and Murray, Roberts and Co of Dunedin’ in Brad Patterson and John M Mackenzie, eds, The New Zealand Scots in International Perspective, forthcoming, 2008.  
• ‘The Making of the New Zealand Ruling Class’ in Melanie Nolan, ed, Revolution: The 1913 Great Strike in New Zealand, Christchurch: Canterbury University Press, 2005.
• ‘Ulster Settlers and the Colonial Middle Class’ in Brad Patterson, ed, Ulster-New Zealand Migration and Cultural Transfers, Dublin: Four Courts Press, 2005.
• ‘The Scots in Colonial Business’ in Tom Brooking, and Jennie Coleman, eds, The Heather and the Fern: Scottish Migration and  New Zealand settlement, Dunedin: University of Otago Press,  2003.
• ‘Resource frontiers, settler capitalism and environmental change 1770-1860’ in Tom Brooking and Eric Pawson, eds, The Oxford Environmental History of New Zealand,  Auckland: Oxford University Press, 2002.

Refereed Articles

• ‘Unsettling Recolonisation:  Labourism, Keynesianism, and Australasia from the 1890s to the 1950s’, Thesis Eleven, 92, 2008. 
• ‘By Which Standards? The Waitangi Tribunal and New Zealand History’, New Zealand Journal of History, 40, 2, 2006.
• ‘Long Slow Boom? Manufacturing industry in New Zealand 1945-70’, Australian Economic History Review, 46, 1, 2006.
• ‘Class in Colonial New Zealand: towards a historiographical rehabilitation’, New Zealand Journal of History, 38, 1, 2004.
• ‘Gentlemen, Capitalists, and Settlers: A Reply to Hopkins’ Australian Economic History Review, 43, 3, 2003.
• ‘Gentlemanly Capitalism and Settler Capitalists: Imperialism, Dependent Development and Colonial Wealth in the South  Island of New Zealand’, Australian Economic History Review, 42, 2, 2002.

Recent Conferences

• ‘The Scottish Diaspora and the Colonial Middle Class’.
  Paper presented to the Nations, Diasporas, Identities Conference, Irish Scottish Studies Programme Victoria University of Wellington/AHRB Centre for Irish and Scottish Studies, University of Aberdeen, Victoria University of Wellington, March 2008.
• ‘Full Employment and External Constraint: New Zealand 1945-52’.  Paper presented to the Asia-Pacific Economic and Business History Conference, University of Melbourne, February 2008.
• ‘“Governed by that absorption in his own life - his own success – which is so common a trait in Scotchmen”: Scottish settlement in nineteenth century New Zealand’. Paper presented to the NZ Historical Association Conference, Victoria University of Wellington, November 2007.
• ‘Information, Staples Production, and Environmental Change’. Paper presented to the Asia-Pacific Economic and Business History Conference, Sydney, February 2007.

Recent Theses Supervised

Quentin Findlay, ‘The Development of Democratic Socialism and the New Zealand Labour Party 1919 – 1935’, Ph D thesis, in progress.

Antje Bednarek, ‘Put on the Margins? The Mainstream Culture and the Alienated Writer in the Fifties’, M Soc Sc thesis, completed 2006.
 
Lucy Baragwanath, ‘Fortress Dwellers to Global Players: Globalisation and New Zealand – description, discourse, and action’, PhD thesis, completed 2003.

Christopher Davis, ‘The Muldoon government and the trade union movement, 1975-79’, B Soc Sc (Hons) dissertation, completed 2003.

Nicole A Murray, ‘A History of Apprenticeship in New Zealand’, M Soc Sc thesis, completed 2001.

Carrie L Murdoch, ‘Unemployment and the Muldoon Government’, M Soc Sc thesis, completed 2001.

David A Johnson, ‘The Methodists of Selwyn County: the “society of classes” in a “classless” society, 1860-1913’, M Soc Sc thesis, completed 2001.
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