Emeritus Professor Richard Hill
Emeritus Professor Richard Hill
Richard holds the degree of Doctor of Letters from the University of Canterbury, and was Professor of New Zealand Studies at the Stout Research Centre from 2006 until his retirement in 2020. He focuses on research on the history of policing and social control in colonial New Zealand, international comparative policing history within and across empires, the history of Crown-Māori relations in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, Treaty of Waitangi issues, and the history of security intelligence and state surveillance in New Zealand.
Richard has written four books on policing history in New Zealand and two on the history of Crown-Māori relations, as well co-editing several books and publishing numerous chapters, journal articles and academic papers. He is general editor of the Stout Research Centre’s online Treaty Research Series and Security and Surveillance History, and carries out these and other functions (e.g., on the Editorial Board of the Journal of New Zealand Studies) at the Centre in an honorary capacity.
He was Chief Historian, and a Senior Negotiator for the Crown, in the pioneering Treaty of Waitangi negotiations with iwi from 1989, including those with Waikato-Tainui and Ngai Tahu. He went on to found and manage the Stout Research Centre’s Treaty of Waitangi Research Unit (2000-2020), which produced reports for government, iwi and judicial and other agencies which mostly related to the reconciliation processes between the Crown and Māori.
Richard was a Member of the Waitangi Tribunal (from 2008 to 2014), during which time he sat on the panel hearing Te Raki o te Paparahi (Northland) claims. The Tribunal’s Stage One Report made the finding that, in signing the Treaty, the northern chiefs did not consider that they were ceding their sovereignty to the British.
Richard is a Life Member of Clare Hall, University of Cambridge, and has held fellowships elsewhere in Cambridge as well as in the University of Oxford. He is a member of various international police history networks, and in 2013 was made a Life Member of the Labour History Project (on whose committee he had served from its founding meeting in 1987). He has won a number of awards for his books and research grants, including four from the Royal Society of New Zealand’s Marsden Fund.
SELECTED PUBLICATIONS
Books
[with Steven Loveridge], Secret History: State Surveillance in New Zealand, 1900-1956, Auckland, Auckland University Press, 2023.
[with Brad Patterson and Kathryn Patterson], eds, After the Treaty: The settler state, race relations & the exercise of power in colonial New Zealand, Wellington, Steele Roberts Aotearoa, 2016.
[with Peter Adds, Brigitte Bonisch-Brednich and Graeme Whimp], eds., Reconciliation, Representation and Indigeneity: ‘Biculturalism’ in Aotearoa New Zealand, Universitatsverlag Winter, Heidelberg, 2016.
[co-author, Waitangi Tribunal Report], He Whakaputanga me te Tiriti: The Declaration and the Treaty, Wellington, Legislation Direct, 2014.
Maori and the State: Crown–Maori Relations in New Zealand/Aotearoa, 1950-2000, Wellington, Victoria University Press, 2009.
[with Richard Boast] eds., Raupatu: The Confiscation of Maori Land, Wellington, Victoria University Press, 2009.
State Authority, Indigenous Autonomy: Crown–Maori Relations in New Zealand/Aotearoa, 1900–1950, Wellington, Victoria University Press, 2004.
The Iron Hand in the Velvet Glove: The Modernisation of Policing in New Zealand 1886-1917 (Volume III of The History of Policing in New Zealand), Wellington, Dunmore Press/New Zealand Police/Historical Branch, Department of Internal Affairs, 1995.
The Colonial Frontier Tamed: New Zealand Policing in Transition, 1867-1886 (Volume II of The History of Policing in New Zealand), Wellington, Historical Branch, Department of Internal Affairs/GP Books, 1989.
Policing the Colonial Frontier: The Theory and Practice of Coercive Social and Racial Control in New Zealand, 1767-1867 (Volume I of The History of Policing in New Zealand), Wellington, Historical Publications Branch, Department of Internal Affairs/Government Printer, 1986,comprising two books:
Part I The Adaptation of British Modes of Policing Control to the New Antipodean Frontier, 1767-1853; and
Part II Provincial and ‘Official Runanga’ Policing Systems, 1853-1867.
Chapters and articles
‘La lutte maori pour l’autonomie, 1960-1980’, inTudi Kernalegenn, Joël Belliveau, and Jean-Olivier) Roy (eds.), La vague nationale des « années 1968 ». Regards croisés sur les mobilisations des peuples autochtones et sans État dans les années 1960 et 1970, Ottawa: Presses de l'Université d'Ottawa, 2020.
‘Coercion, Consent and Surveillance: Policing New Zealand’, inJonas Campion, Laurent Lopez and Guillaume Payen (eds.), European Police Forces and Law Enforcement in the First World War, Palgrave Macmillan, 2019.
‘Tōrangapū Ohaoha: Maori and the Political Economy, 1918-1945’, in Michael Reilly, Suzanne Duncan, Gianna Leoni, Lachy Paterson, Lyn Carter, Matiu Rātima and Poia Rewi (eds.), Te Kōparapara: An Introduction to the Maori World, Auckland, Auckland University Press, 2018.
‘The Portuguese Colonial Policing Mission in Comparative Perspective’, in Conor O’Reilly (ed.), Colonial Policing and the Transnational Legacy: The Global Dynamics of Policing Across the Lusophone Community, Abingdon and New York, Routledge, 2018.
‘Settler colonialism in New Zealand, 1840-1907’, in Edward Cavanagh and Lorenzo Veracini (eds.), The Routledge Handbook of the History of Settler Colonialism, Abingdon and New York, Routledge, 2017.
‘New Zealand Maori: The Quest for Indigenous Autonomy’, in John Coakley (ed.), Non-territorial Autonomy in Divided Societies, Abingdon and New York, Routledge, 2017.
‘Surveilling the ‘enemies’ of colonial New Zealand – Counter-subversion and counter-espionage, 1840-1907’, in Brad Patterson, Richard S Hill and Kathryn Patterson, eds, After the Treaty: The settler state, race relations & the exercise of power in colonial New Zealand, Wellington, Steele Roberts Aotearoa, 2016.
‘State Servants and Social Beings: The Role of the New Zealand Police Force in the Great War’, in Steven Loveridge, ed., New Zealand Society at War 1914-1918, Victoria University Press, Wellington, 2016.
‘Settling historical Maori claims under the Treaty of Waitangi: An assessment of the first twenty-five years, 1989-2014’, in Peter Adds, Brigitte Bonisch-Brednich, Richard S Hill and Graeme Whimp, eds., Reconciliation, Representation and Indigeneity: ‘Biculturalism’ in Aotearoa New Zealand, Universitatsverlag Winter, Heidelberg, 2016.
‘Policing Ireland, Policing Colonies: The Irish Constabulary ‘Model’’, in McCarthy, A., ed. Ireland in the World: Comparative, Transnational, and Personal Perspectives, Routledge, New York and London, 2015.
‘Adaptation et autochtonisation: application et raffinement des méthodes policières impériales dans la colonie de Nouvelle-Zélande, 1840-1907’, in Denis, Vincent and Denys, Catherine (eds), Polices d’Empires, Presses Universitaires de Rennes, Rennes, 2012.
‘People, land and the struggle for rangatiratanga/autonomy in New Zealand’, Identities: Global Studies in Culture and Power, 19/1, 2012.
‘Maori Urban Migration and the Assertion of Indigeneity in Aotearoa/New Zealand, 1945–1975’, Interventions: International Journal of Postcolonial Studies, 14:2, 2012.
‘Fitting Multiculturalism into Biculturalism: Maori-Pasifika Relations in New Zealand from the 1960s’, Ethnohistory, 57/2, 2010
‘War and Police: The Armed Constabulary in the Taranaki Wars’, in Kelvin Day (ed), Contested Ground Te Whenua I Tohea: The Taranaki Wars 1860-1881, Huia Publishing, Wellington, 2010.
‘Maori and State Policy’, in Giselle Byrnes (ed), The New Oxford History of New Zealand, Melbourne, Oxford University Press, 2009.
[with Brigitte Bönisch-Brednich] ‘Fitting Aotearoa into New Zealand: Politico-Cultural Change in a Modern Bicultural Nation’, in Manfred Berg and Bernd Schaefer (eds), Historical Justice in International Perspective, New York, Cambridge University Press, 2008.
‘Maori, Police and Coercion in New Zealand History’, in Danny Keenan, ed., Terror In Our Midst? Searching for Terror in Aotearoa New Zealand, Wellington, Huia Publishers, 2008.
[with Brigitte Bönisch-Brednich], ‘Politicizing the Past: Indigenous Scholarship and Crown–Maori Reparations Processes in New Zealand’, Social and Legal Studies, 16:2 (2007).
‘The Police, the State and “Lawless Law”’, in Melanie Nolan, ed., Revolution: The 1913 New Zealand Great Strike, Christchurch, Canterbury University Press, 2005.
‘Maori Police Personnel and the Rangatiratanga Discourse’, in Barry Godfrey and Graeme Dunstall, eds., Crime and Empire 1840-1940: Criminal Justice in Local and Global Context, Cullompton, Devon, Willan Publishing, 2005.