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Trading blows: what drove the musket wars
During the first decades of the nineteenth century New Zealand was swept by an uprecedented wave of warfare. The British traders and missionaries who observed events had their own view of what happened, one that has relentlessly framed the way history has since seen this period.
In this ground-breaking book, Matthew Wright explores the reasons behind these events, a time when the full range of British industrial products crashed across New Zealand, driving a Maori economic revolution. What followed shaped modern New Zealand, down to the locations of the main centres..
Available in any good bookshop and online from 22 October 2026.
Science. History. Analysis.
“Wright is a fantastic writer… in my opinion the best New Zealand historian writing today”
– ‘The Library’ 3 February 2015.
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Matthew Wright’s in-print books are available from any good bookstore, Amazon and online.
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Battleships by constraint
The latest in a series of short books exploring special interest topics in history and philosophy. This monograph examines the political, economic and industrial challenges Britain faced while trying to develop a new generation of capital ships to the backdrop of diminished industrial power and a fading Empire.
Latest feature article
Thought-provoking analysis.
Matthew Wright’s latest feature article explores the way Britain co-opted its physics community during the First World War.
Buy Matthew Wright’s books
“Wright has profound knowledge of his subject and uses lucid prose to convey it”
Fritz Logan, Timaru Herald
About
A professional career
Matthew Wright is an internationally published and multi-award-winning New Zealand author. He has qualifications in history and the sciences, and is a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society at University College in London, to which he was elected on merit of his scholarship at global level. He studied post-graduate under Professor Peter Munz.
Wright has more than 40 years professional experience as an author and editor. His publications include 65 books and more than 650 academic papers, feature articles and literary reviews. His books have been used as university texts, notably his scholarly historiographical analysis of the Treaty of Waitangi and its social place in New Zealand.
Other highlights of Wright’s work include his mammoth one-volume history of New Zealand, which has been in print since 2004; an analysis of the New Zealand Company’s experiment in social idealism; a biography of Sir Donald McLean; and books covering the science and history of New Zealand’s earthquakes. He has been primarily published by Penguin Random House, Oratia Books and Bateman Books.
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